Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part VIII - Basing

In case you missed some:
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part I - Intro
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part II - Preperation
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part III - Airbrushing
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part IV - Detailing
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part V - Wash & Highlight
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part VI - Decal Tutorial
Schwere PanzerJagerKompanie Part VII - Detailing...again?

Time to base.  I use a hobby foam putty that you can get from train stores.  This used to take me for ever.  It was so hard to get it to stick to the base.  But the foam becomes really softer with water.  Now, I just dip my putty knife in water and then take some foam.  It practically melts onto the base this way.  Base the whole thing so that you can't tell each individual guy is standing on a base.  I've seen far better paint jobs then mine ruined because you can still see each individual mans base.













 

The downfall to using foam putty is that you have to let it dry over night.  I tough chore for some...eh Luke? ;)

While I let those dry I can weather some other stuff.  This is something I'm not very good at.  I really like how my tanks look 'clean', but I don't like how unrealistic that looks.  So, I keep trying to weather.  The JagdPanther and Panther I will not weather here.  I like to give credit where credit is due but I can't, for the life of me, remember who told me this, but he said to try 'dusting' after the varnish.  So we'll see.

But, i'll muddy up the KV-1e and the BergePanther.  I paint using a muddy brown color in a sweeping motion in the direction mud would fling off the tracks.  Then I use a Tamiya mud stick to apply mud.  This is a very cool effect.  Mud I have no problem doing.

Now, back to the artillery teams.  I will paint the entire base Reaper Earth Brown.

Then dry-brush the whole thing with a 50/50 earth brown to white.

After that I had static grass, and voila done.  Unfortunately static grass in impossible to stand up.  Despite what people say.  I've tried all the tricks...TV, Balloon, blowing...nothing makes that stuff stand up.  Best I can do is put 2 coats on.



















Good news is my good friend Shawn "the terrain guy" has turned me on to Silfors.  They are little tuffs of grass that are already standing up.  So, I'll get a much better effect with zero mess.  Because of his business in terrain, he has lots of these, and I'll pick some up from him next weekend at our pairs tournament.  

You can check out Shawns stuff the RHQ Terrain Studio section of my blog.