Before I could get started painting the Temple Entrance, I needed to get some sand glued onto the base, and I needed to figure out exactly where everything was going to go.
I laid out the terrain first by simply placing things where I thought they might look good (referring to the instructions for the original composition along the way). Once I had things the way I wanted them, I did some measuring to make sure things would square up, and then glued down the pieces of the Temple Entrance.
Next, I used regular Elmer's glue (white glue), thinned a bit with water, to glue down the sand in large patches.
Since the glue on the sand was still drying, I started the painting process on the obelisks, statues and pillars. I used an orangey-brown craft paint (thinned with water) as the base color for the stone pieces.
You can see from the way the paint pooled at the bottom of the pillars that my mix was pretty thin (and I wasn't terribly concerned about neatness…).
Next, I added some tan to my base color and liberally drybrushed the stone pieces.
Another (largish) helping of tan into the mix and another heavy drybrush finished off the stone bits of the terrain piece.