Creating a Snow Base

 I had a friend staying for a few days last week so we each painted a Rackham figure from my collection. I chose the Mystic of the Behemoth, a fantastically detailed wiry old orc shaman. I took a few WIP shots of the miniature but I don't plan on doing a step by step for him. If you have any questions though I'll be happy to answer them in the comments!

While I'm not doing a step by step for the miniature I would like to walk through the base, I've not tried a snow base before so it was new ground.

Once I had a basic plan for 'snowy rock' I grabbed some bark (scavenged from nearby woodland) and some bits of slate (I got mine from Element Games but you could find these around as well). Super glued them onto the included game base to make an outcropping.

It's a good start but there is more to do, I used some Vallejo Oxide paste to help hide the 'corkiness' of the cork and fill some of the gaps, it will also be a nice base for the dirt and snow.

PVA glue and some dirt out of the garden were then added on top to mix up the texture of the paste.

Primed with my usual zenithal technique. I then went back in with some watered down black paint and made sure every nook and cranny was filled.

I hit all the areas that I wanted to be dirt with some tank brown.

Then dry brushed with tank brown mixed with off white.

I added some pigments to the dirt as well, browns and a bit of brown and black mixed in the darker areas. For the rock areas I again drybrushed with GW Fenrisian Grey and then an almost white Fenrisian Grey/White mix. While drybrushing is great for rocks it can leave a bit of an odd appearance in place so I went back in with some watered down fenrisian grey/white mix and helped blend some of the highlights so they were less stark.

Here is the figure pinned to the base. I could have stopped here, maybe added some foliage but I wanted to experiment with snow and see what I could achieve.

I mixed up a paste in a plastic pot I had spare, the mix was PVA glue, Bicarbonate of Soda and a little white paint. Depending on what ratios you add the glue in depends on what kind of snow effect you get at the end. I wanted quite a settled thick layer so I went pretty heavy with the bicarbonate of soda. I applied the snow to the miniature with an old brush and a tooth pick in some places where I needed more precision. Around the miniatures feet it didn't bother me if I got some on the robes and boots, he's been travelling through the snow after all! After this was done I then sprinkled some more bicarbonate of soda on top afterwards to get a powdery look.

Leave it to dry and then lightly brush off the excess bicarbonate of soda. Again at this point you could stop but I wanted to push it further! Roman Lappat from Massive Voodoo did a fantastic article on snow back in January (http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tutorial-visualizing-winter.html). I've been strongly influenced by both the article and some of the recent works he's done . He talks a lot about temperature of snow shadows and how they're not just white. I used some turquoise mixed with white, heavily diluted to add some colour to the shadows of the base. This was....difficult. I know Roman uses an airbrush but I only have brushes and it was hard to do this over the texture of the bicarbonate base. I ended up with quite a subtle effect but I think it adds a lot to the final appearance. Another way to do this in the future might be to paint the effect on the base underneath and then use a thinner layer of the snow paste so the colours still show through.

Another tip I got from Roman is making icicles! He uses clear plastic tubes melted with a lighter. I didn't have any tubes so I cut up an old tic tac box I had on my desk into plastic shards. I melted them slightly to create the icicle drop effect and then carefully superglued them to the base in areas where I felt melting snow might cause them to form. I used gloss varnish on the icicles and some areas of the rock near the snow (to give that slight icy appearance that you see on frozen rocks sometimes) I also put more detail into the snow on his robes, boots and staff. Using PVA and sprinkling Bicarbonate over it. I envision that he used his staff as a walking stick and perhaps probing areas of the snow to test the ground!

I also used some crushed glass, you can buy this from a number of manufacturers but I didn’t have any so I made some myself out of some spare glass and a pestle and mortar. If you do try this be careful, wear safety glasses, thick gloves and a face mask. You don't want to inhale crushed glass trust me!

I mixed the crushed glass with some satin varnish and a little bicarbonate of soda to make a paste. I then carefully brushed this onto areas where I wanted the light to hit the snow the most (mostly the right areas of the model and a little bit on his cloaks. This was quite fiddly and the effect isn't as good as I hoped it would be, it still adds that little sparkle when you move the model that you get from snow though. Final step was to paint the original gaming base black.

Looking back through this I realise that a lot of the effort painting the rocks was...well wasted because they're now covered in snow! Sometimes though you just run with something and even if these end up hidden it helps you reach the final look you want.

So that's how I created my snow base! Share any questions or experiences you have with basing snow below in the comments. Check out the other article (http://noobsandtheirpaintbrush.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/showcase-mystic-of-behemoth.html) for some better showcase shots of the final piece.