A simple experiment in basing

Historically, I suck at basing. Like, a ridiculous amount. I haven't really done any basing since the old "sand and goblin green" days, apart from just desperately gluing some sand onto my Tallarn for a tournament, and a disaster with some clan rats that I don't like to talk about.

So, I decided to experiment with some Stuff to see what I could do.

After a bit of digging around my wife's painting stash, I 'liberated' a pot of Games Workshop Astrogranite and a pot of Model Colour Sandy Paste.

The Sandy Paste smells funny.

For the purposes of my experiment, I chose my recently finished conscripts, on the grounds that I don't care particularly strongly about the cannon fodder...

It also meant they'd stop looking like they came from a very flat iceworld where there'd been some paint spillages!

As a first step, I painted a smooth coat of Iyanden Darksun onto the bases. The wife advises that this was completely unnecessary, but it gave me something smooth and neat to work on.

I then put a few daubs of Astrogranite onto each base, one or two per miniature. The idea here was that the Astrogranite texture is much thicker than the Sandy Paste, so it would break up the base a tiny amount without being obvious.

I then painted around the Astrogranite with the Sandy Paste.

Once this was done, I repainted them all with another coat of Iyanden Darksun.

After a quick comparison between a coat of Nuln Oil and a coat of Devlan Mud, I decided I liked the Devlan Mud option more, so then washed in that - and was done!

I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out. They aren't works of art, but they are functional. I'm still undecided about the "using different textured paints" thing - I should have made some with just one or the other to compare to - but I'm certainly getting over my fear and hatred of basing in the meantime!