A firm foundation

As noted in my last article I offered to build and paint Dave Forster's Konquest base in a similar way to my own and I thought I'd write an article on how I build mine and paint stages should any reader be interested!

Slate glued down

Materials:

Simple really, ordinary garden slate which is generally a blue/purpleish colour.  Very cheap and abundant; I smash the larger bits up with a hammer to get more manageable pieces.  For the earth I use medium grade model railway ballast; something I've recently started using, but find that it 'clumps' nicely and has a nice texture for drybrushing.

Assembly:

Ballast & PVA mix

Once the slate has been bashed up into manageable chunks I tend to dry-fit pieces with the legs looking for an interesting fit, for example the Conquest has a bent right foot which will fit with some angled slate, whereas the flat left foot would need to be modelled on some flat slate otherwise the model would end up off balance and look wrong.  In Dave's base the right foot would be mounted on some angled slate, which was actually quite thick, so therefore the left foot would need to be raised with the thickness of the earth, around 5mm.

Ballast mix applied to base

Once the foot positions were figured out I glued the slate in position with thick superglue, thick adds a greater contact and acts as a filler too.  The next step is worth taking time over to save problems later.  I use a pencil to mark the final foot positions and make ready to site the pins, with the Colossals this is quite important as they have pre-determined LOS markings on the base itself.

Close up once dried (note pins for feet)

To get accurate pin positions I first drilled the Colossal's feet in places suitable for the pins, i.e. where sufficient depth could be achieved as well as hidden when complete.  The next step was to cut pins that are deliberately too short, just enough to poke out of the holes; these were left in the feet and the model sited on to the pencil positions drawn earlier.  Next the feet were pushed firmly allowing the too short pin to make an indent on the plastic or slate where the other hole needed to be drilled.  This should make an almost exact fit for the pin to line up...

Drilling through slate is possible and certainly worth it, it just takes time and patience!  Once the holes were drilled I inserted much longer pins than the previous ones and bent the ends into an L shape in order to secure them on the base, for the feet to slip into later.  After a quick dry-fit the pins should be correctly aligned, possibly a slight tweak with some pliers to bend them, but hopefully a good fit has been achieved.

Once the slate has been glued into position with superglue the next step is to fill the gaps with earth, basically mix the ballast with PVA glue and some water into a very thick paste.  I used a sculpting tool to lay the mixture down and sculpt it into an undulating earth that would look good when painted.  One final thing was that I fitted the legs into position as the earth mixture was drying in order to make the left foot fit snugly; the earth was pushed slightly to leave a footprint and the legs then removed and cleaned up after any excess got stuck.  All done and just ready to dry now!

Painting:

The paint scheme for the base is quite simple, basically drybrushing the following colours in order:

1.Chaos Black primer undercoat

2.  Scorched Brown drybrush

3. Bestiel Brown drybrush

4.  Snakebite Leather drybrush

5. Menoth White Base drybrush (initially don't clean the brush, but  leave some of the previous colour (Snakebite Leather) to get a halfway tone.  Then do a pure Menoth White Base drybrush

6. Skull White drybrush (very light)

7. The slate rocks were basecoated in Bastion Grey

8. Slate washed with Badab Black

9. Slate re-highlighted with a drybrushing of Trollblood Highlight and very light Skull White

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 In this example there is no static grass or tufts, which I think is the finishing touch that makes all the difference and lifts the whole thing.  This is because Dave will be adding his own to match existing miniatures in his army, but below is the Konquest on his base, hope you like it Dave :-)