Basing the Varsym

 We're going to take a week's break from the overlord as some parts turned up that I was waiting to finish another project. This project was mostly painted before I started writing here but I wanted to do a plinth base for the first time. The miniature is a Cynwall Varsym from the Rackham range. In my mind when planning the base I saw the elf on a stone/marble dais scattered with leaves, similar to scenes of Elrond in an Autumn Rivendell in the final LOTR film.

I started off using cork tiles to create the basic structure of the dais, cork is a nice basing material to work with for numerous applications. It's pretty cheap so it's very nice to use it as a 'core' rather than just using modelling putty.

I rolled out some Sculpey into a thin sheet to use for the top of the steps, sanding the edges to give those smooth overhangs you see on marble stairs. I used some Milliput to fill in the gaps, smooth out the rear of the plinth and just tie it all together. Finally some sandpaper to finish it off. This model was too difficult to pin ( the bottom of the model is very thin) so I decided to cut a hole in the top of the base and glue the model and tab in, then used milliput to cover the hole up.

I've never painted marble before, so I started by finding reference images. Google is your friend when it comes to painting, an exhaustive database of everything you could need! I decided on a grey marble, I knew I was going for some autumn leaves on top so I wanted to keep the base fairly minimal. I prepared some different shades of watered down grey on my pallet and then just sketched on the base, all very watered down, all colours used at the same time. I mixed in some spots of watered down black wash (I used soft body black from Secret Weapon) as well. This was very much an experiment and thankfully it worked ok!

Next step I grabbed a sponge (I used some blister sponge) and lightly sponged various shades of grey and white on to introduce more variation.

I mixed up some dark grey and using a brush with a good tip sketched some veins onto the marble. At this point I established that the dais was cut from one slab of marble. Had it been constructed from multiple pieces of marble then the veins would have been done very differently. I then used some dark and light glazes to introduce variation around the veins.

I used some more glazes to tie it all together (and removed a couple of veins that didn't look right) Then I coated the whole thing in satin varnish to make it look like polished marble.

Final step was to add some Autumn leaves (these are from Basecrafts which are available from www.wampstore.com) I decided they were a little too bright so I used some watered down Agrax Earthshade to tone them down. Here is the final miniature! Please share any feedback or queries in the comments.