On The Desk - Saim-Hann Wraithguard Part 3 - Constructing the Base

 Work on the wraithguard continues! If you missed the previous parts then here are links to them:

Part 1 - Armour

Part 2 - Swords and Gems

Usually if I don't have a clear idea for a base at the start of the project one will come to me as I'm painting but this time...it just didn't. Luckily there is a whole world out there! I ended up looking at a lot of art for inspiration, in particular art from the various Eldar codices. In the end the scheme I've gone for came as the result of 2 influences. The first is the Eldar Exodites. For those that don't know the lore, before The Fall some amongst the Eldar race denounced their decadent society and left to settle distant worlds. These became the exodites. They do not have much of the advanced technology of the Craftworld Eldar and a result often the Craftworlds will come to their aid if they are under attack.

Well that is influence 1 sorted, so what is the second influence?

Terminator.

More specifically the future scenes of the metal exo-skeleton killing machines crushing a sea of skulls (see image below for reference) I love the

image of a Wraithguard trampling human bones that have dared to set foot on an Exodite world.

A recent Painting Buddha series for Khorgos Khul from the Age of Sigmar boxset showed Ben komets creating a bloody skull base that will be a good start for mine. Here is the link to the video Building the Base'n'Skullz

First step was cutting a hole in a standard base and sticking some plasticard to the bottom. Simple enough. Then came the very time consuming sanding to have the plasticard flush with the old base side, did this while catching up on some TV!

I decided rather than having just a base of skulls to have a partially damaged wraithbone temple, to help tell the story I wanted of the world being under attack. I used some sculpey offcuts I had (always keep your offcuts!) to create a simple two tiered layer, again sanding to ensure it follows the contour of the base. I crumbled the lower layer to show where the wraithbone has been damaged, the skulls will be going in this hole.

I used some cork tile to help fill the gaps under the sculpey and give some interesting contours to the hole.

Next up a milliput frenzy, smoothing out some defects in the sculpey and adding a base for the dirt in the hole

I used some watered down glue to add the dirt (which as you may have seen from my past projects is actually just dried out dirt from the garden) to the base and then glued the skulls into place. I also made a few of the bones (see the PB video linked earlier for details on how to make them) to add some variation.

Next week hopefully we'll paint the base and start finishing off the miniature.