5 - Basing Caesar

Lee Olson of Pewter Illusions writes:

Last time we finished painting Caesar up, and now all that's left is his base. At this point, I hit him with a quick coat of Dullcote, to help make sure that I don't screw up what I just finished.

Many people prefer to glue on their basing material before they start painting - however, I prefer to do it last. An empty base makes for a good place to hold on to the figure without having to get my fingers all over the paint job. If there's any basing material there, it just gets rubbed off and I have to base post-paint job anyway.

I applied a healthy layer of glue, and nestled Octavian nice and cozy in a container of my basing material mix. The mix is an assortment of random stuff - most notably sand, a smidge of ground pepper, some railroad ballast, ground sea-kelp (look for this stuff in the soapmaking aisle of your local craft store - doesn't smell too good, but makes for a great "fall litter" sort of base without painting), and some aquarium rocks tossed in for good measure. I usually add in a bit more sand than the other ingredients, but having a mixture of variously sized particles leads to a more natural look to the ground, when you're done painting it.

I had to go back and touch up a few spots on the base where the glue didn't adhere well enough, but I had a nice layer of basing material ready to go in short order.

Next step is to paint it. My painting technique follows what Jeff Wilhelm has written down in his Basing 101 tutorial fairly closely. I started with a basecoat of Ral Partha's Dark Brown (#1 below). I went over it twice, to make sure that I hadn't missed any spots. Next, I went over it with a relatively heavy drybrush of RP Red Brown (#2). Finally, I did a light drybrushing of RP Asian (#3). (Jeff recommends RP Dunkel Braun, but since I don't have that color, I make do with what I've got.)

Now we're getting down to the final touches. The next step was to give the remaining unpainted edge of the base a solid coat of black, including the edge of the metal washer attached to the bottom.

I then applied two coats of Dullcote to protect our short friend from the dangers of the battlefield, and then gave his base a couple spots of static grass.

Lastly, I signed my work with a bit of brush-on gloss sealer on the back of the base. Unobtrusive for the most part, but at the right angle to the light, it lights up to nearly white against the black background.

And there you have it!

One Caesar Octavian, painted and ready to do battle against the villainous Other Guys! I hope you enjoyed this little Workbench article of mine as much as I enjoyed writing it. Special thanks to Bill for letting me paint up Octavian, and a dubious thanks to the readership of TMP for giving me the opportunity to paint him by not voting for me in the Legionnaire Painting Contest. ;) Now I'll be waiting with eager anticipation to see how the rest of the Simian Empire army will turn out!