Building an Urban Display Base Part 3

Pretty much all the easy stuff is now done. I have built the base, basecoated it, washed some parts, and drybrushed everything.

I am going for a dirty grey colour, a scheme that was once labeled 'urban' or 'hive world' or something like that by GW - until they decided to remove all pages that mentioned their 'old' colour range. First I went with a very dark grey - a mix of Chaos Black and a little Codex Grey. I then washed the ground with black wash. Everything has then been drybrushed with Codex Grey, then Fortress Grey, then, for the stone parts only, an extreme highlight of Skull White. Its a challenge to make the different textures stand out from each other while using the same colours. But that's one of the nice things about drybrushing - by varying the intensity or even just the direction with which you do it, you can create different effects that look quite convincing, quite quickly.

At the moment then, the base looks nice, but monochromatic. The next step is to bring out some of the details, particularly the gold on the collapsed balustrades and fallen Imperial icon, and get a bit of colour in there.

Its also important to remember that a lot of the base will end up covered by the figures I am going to display on it though, but hopefully there will still be enough of it visible to add character and a sense of belonging to my miniatures.

Building an Urban Display Base

There was a time when I thought I wanted a Grey Knights army. I kind of liked the idea of an Inquisitor-led group, rolling up heretics and xenos, then going home to toast the Emperor. Or whatever an Inquisitor army would do after a good fight. I went as far as getting a Gideon Lorr model from ebay (a £10 bargain!) and a couple of assassins, but never got round to painting them. The only models for the army I have gotten round to painting are these Terminators.

(Picture forthcoming)

Most of the time they just sit on a shelf, all lonely because noone wants to play with them. And most of the time I can't be bothered with entering my local GW's painting competition. But this month the theme is 'an infantry unit' and there may be some other good competitors so, time for these boys to see fresh air!

I am fairly happy with the paint on these models overall, but I particularly like the urban-style bases I did. I'm really proud of the salt-technique painting I did on the sergeant's base to give the impression of a shattered piece of roadway. Frankly, bases are normally my weakest area when it comes to models. Maybe I get bored easily, maybe I lack imagination, maybe I just don't see that many inspiring bases at all (not that they're not out there, just that they're not around here). But usually my basing doesn't go very far beyond sticking a bit of flock or some slate down.

I made an effort with these guys though and I figure I really don't want to lost the competition because even though my soldiers are the best painted, they lose because some other yahoo comes along with his massively over-worked base and wins because everyone goes 'oh, that's so cool', and votes for it even though most of the entry isn't even a GW product....

Didn't there used to be a rule about percentages of a submission being GW stuff?

 Well, not this time, buddy!

So, here's the start of my new project: Urban Display Base.

I'm starting out with a small piece of polystyrene foam, an offcut from another project. I have coated it with a layer of water-thinned PVA glue. This should help seal the base and make spray-paint-related melting incidents less likely further down the line. I've also started building a small collection of urban-themed scenery pieces to add on and will start sticking them on tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more urban goodness!