I finally bought my third Tabletop World model. I chose their windmill, since I already had enough actual village buildings and I thought a windmill would be a unique addition to the tabletop.
As usual, Tabletop World's detail is amazingly crisp. The model comes in six big pieces that, like all their models, have absolutely ZERO flash on them. To me they are hands-down among the best makers of resin terrain out there. Beyond washing the parts their models require no additional preparation whatsoever, and the components fit together and glue together like a dream. You're able to begin painting after about 15 minutes of assembly!
I decided to branch out into the unknown somewhat and try some stonework effects with a totally different process. Instead of doing my usual black primer undercoat followed by straight basecoat colors, I decided to attempt a technique used by many railroad modelers and diorama builders do for cliffs and rocks/stones, which is to use washes over a white basecoat.
Stonework continues to feel like an elusive thing to me! Can't quite put my finger on it. I feel like I've gotten fairly good at doing stone effects, but I haven't gotten GREAT at it. I always struggle with getting it right no matter how many times I paint stonework and no matter how much information I gather beforehand.
This time I wanted to try an all-wash process for the stone coloring and shading, with only ONE highlight done near the end of the process.
After doing a basecoat of straight white paint, I gave the white a wash of black tempera washable paint:
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After the tempera wash dried, I mixed up three blends of colors to be used for the wash colors of the stones. I decided on a brownish orange, a greenish brown, and a more straight up gray. In between all these areas I also washed other clusters of stones in a straight brown, so that there would be four overall stone colors.
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After the specific wash colors were applied, all of the stonework was given an overall wash of straight brown. This was followed by an overall highlight of straight white paint.
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After the white highlight was applied, all of the stonework was given a second overall wash of straight brown.
The following views show the finished stone effect. I think washes work pretty well and look pretty realistic, but I still don't quite have total control over the process in terms of making things too muddy or using too much highlighting:
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wonders why create different 3D models, if you can create one that can be customized?
