Red Leader, Return to Base
A couple of days before I decided to start my (Un)Impossible Dream Challenge, my friend and neighbor was over, just hanging out. I forget exactly how it came up, but we started talking about the paint job on my Basilisk Drake (the only finished model of my Skorne stuff). He remarked that it’s base looked like “brown stones in red mud” rather than a dried out riverbed. I was kind of disappointed at first, because I had thought it looked pretty good. Not exactly what I was going for, but close enough.
He said that the color showing through the cracks was too red; it made the ground look like a different material. I pulled out my Vallejo paint color chart and asked him to suggest a new base color. He told me to try Beasty Brown, which I laid down on a small section of the base. After it dried, I painted Earth over the raised portions as the first highlight. I could see absolutely no difference between the two colors. At all. Despite that, my buddy said it looked good. I was skeptical, but repainted the whole base (carefully avoiding my Drake’s feet) with his new color choice. After I had put all the highlight layers on, blended them a little around the edges, and let them dry the thing looked fantastic. Much closer to the dried, cracked earth I had envisioned my Skorne marching across as they come to subjugate Western Immoren.
Here are the new colors I will be using for my desert bases. As you can see, Beasty Brown and Earth are much closer in color to one another than Terracotta was. Looking at them now I can’t understand how I didn’t see that before. That’s one of the good things about the miniature wargaming hobby – if you don’t like something (or make a mistake) you can just paint over it.
Here are some 30mm bases, done in the new (improved) color scheme and just waiting for the 10-man unit of Praetorian Swordsmen that will be standing on them. You can just make out two of the PET bottle caps (see, I do recycle) that six of my Swordsmen are currently mounted on in the upper left corner of the picture. I tried to take a pic of them, but it came out really dark and blurry. Meh. I guess I’ll post a picture after they’re all finished.
