Wiser, more experienced painters once told me that you can’t simply place a piece of nature such as a stone on the miniature base and call it “done.” Doing so can negate any work put into Object Source Lighting, shading, and various other miniature effects because it will look out of place in your overall composition
To keep things looking natural, I pre-paint stones with a proven triad of gray paints. This makes the rocks ready for basing. So, I can grab a few and place them as readily as I could some tufts or flowers. And I’ve quickly created a good-looking base that doesn’t draw attention away from the subject.
Below are instructions for making your own stones to use for miniature basing. The idea here is to batch paint a lot of these for future use, as doing them on demand can be tedious. Plus, you don’t want to be painting your basing materials after you’ve done a beautiful job on a model and then accidentally get paint on a leg!
The Material
Decomposed granite, or DG (a common landscaping material) makes a great basing material. It’s very angular, so on a miniature base it mimics large granite rocks. Plus, it’s cheap and readily available in large quantities! You can find 40 lb bags of it at your local home improvement store, and that’s more than enough for all the miniatures you’ll ever paint. I happen to already have a lot of it in my landscape.
Picking through the Rubble
Select appropriately sized stones for your models. A bag of DG will generally have pieces ranging from the size of a large pebble down to grains of sand. Choose pebble-sized pieces of stone to represent boulders and rocks. Smaller pieces work well for scatter terrain.
Wash and dry the stones you’ve picked. Any pieces of sand and dust on the stones can flake off after they’ve been painted, ruining all your effort.
A Stable Base
Get a scrap of cardboard large enough to serve as a base for your chosen stones. Affix the pieces to the cardboard with PVA / Mod Podge, approximately an inch apart. I recommend using something sturdy like corrugated cardboard from a shipping box versus paperboard, as you don’t want any flexibility on the base during the next few steps.
Give the glue a couple of hours to dry enough for the next step, so you can take a break while it cures.
Painting a Rock to look like… a Rock
For the next part, you’ll want to select brushes that you don’t mind taking a beating. Putting paint on a rock is pretty rough on brushes, especially this particular stone.
After the glue has dried, either airbrush or brush on a black base coat. For these, I’ve airbrushed Badger’s Stynylrez black primer. Be sure to let the paint dry completely before adding another layer. I find two layers of the black is good enough.
I recommend a final quick pass with a brush around the base of each with black to make sure none of the original rock color is showing. You want complete coverage with the black, as fixing this now is far easier than after they’re glued to the model’s base!
Dark Dry Brush
Once the base coat is in place, it’s time to start the dry brushing. Starting with a dark gray, focusing on the top. Here I’ve used Stormy Grey (9088) for the second color. It’s not necessary to be too precise, and leaving some black showing near the bottom of the rock is a good idea. It’s the darkest shadow, after all. You just don’t want any black showing on the tops. Note that visually there’s not a huge difference between the dark gray and the black base coat, but each step is needed for the full effect.
Light Dry Brush
Now you are ready to dry brush a lighter gray. Cloudy Grey (9089) is my color of choice for this particular paint job. The important part is to leave some of the darker gray visible, so don’t go for complete coverage. We’ll start to see some detail here, but not a lot.
Finally, the lightest gray goes on. Here I used the third color in the triad, Misty Grey (9090). This stage calls for an even lighter dry brushing to pick up the corners and any interesting raised bits, while leaving the recesses dark. At this point you see the biggest difference, and it’s also the least amount of work.
A note on choosing colors
You’re not limited to gray. Brown or another color could work better for your particular model and color scheme. It is important to pick three distinct colors of the same hue. This gradient of colors simulates the play of light on a rough surface, with lower and recessed portions in shadow. Almost any of the Triads in the Reaper Master Series Core Color paint line would be workable, depending on the environment you want to create.
The Final Product
This process takes about half a day’s work including dry time, but you’ll end up with a lot of stones for basing. Here, I created around fifty rocks, which I estimate is enough for twenty to thirty model bases (using about 2-3 per model).
Check out the naga miniature above for an example of a finished project, using custom-made rocks to blend with the existing base.
The investment of some time upfront pays off when putting the finishing touches on a model. Plus, strategically placed painted rocks onto a base is much more visually interesting than just standard flocking. Adding thoughtful, custom details like this is a simple yet effective way to take a miniature to the next level.
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