Taking Ground Part One

It may have seem that I have been ignoring my blog over the last week and in a sense I have been. I actually have quite a bit I want to post about but most of it is in the final stages of completion or requires another project to be completed before I can share it. However, I am ready to start posting about how things went basing my Warmaster miniatures I have recently completed painting.

I have been told by numerous people that miniatures aren't really done until they are based. I didn't buy into this at first but now that I am done they do look better and significantly so. So, five units of Warmaster were on the block to be completed and I had anticipated it taking me a week. Well, it actually took me eight days so not too bad. I know as I do this more and more the process will speed up and I'l feel good about my accomplishments. Yay!

After an aborted first attempt I knew I wanted to do something more than just slap some watered down PVA glue on to the bases and cover it with ballast and sand. But, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do so I asked around. It was Ed that gave me the crucial advice I needed to get it done. My first attempt was to just glue ballast/sand on with watered down PVA It didn't look good, or secure in my opinion. So, Ed's advice was to make a paste of sand/ballast/glue/water and then brushed the paste on. I did that for the first unit... the Trolls but decided to add some watered down paint to the mix on the next batch. Hopefully this would eliminate the first step of painting and make this a bit quicker, which didn't really work. It did color the mixture but I obviously did not put enough craft paint in as it did not alter the color as much as I had hoped. Stay tuned for Part Two tomorrow.

My first attempt. It just looks meh.

The mix which I fondly refer to as porridge and has about the same consistency.

Here is the second attempt and it's starting to look better.

The Trolls with the porridge mix. Eventually I would go back and cover the actual metal base at their feet.

This mixture is slightly altered from the first batch having a greater sand to ballast ratio than previously. It also has quite a bit of craft paint mixed in.

Here is a shot of the completely covered Troll base.