Paintng Desert Bases
A Step By Step

By Jeff Wilhelm of Dragon Forge Design.

This is meant to be a quick tutorial for painting Desert Theme Resin Bases made by Dragon Forge Design.

Many of the ranges in my base series are of a Desert or Wasteland Theme.
So a good method of painting them is needed, something I think I have developed with a little trial and error.
Below you will find a quick step by step tutorial for painting them.

I imagine by now you have purchased some bases from my store and have received them.
So your starting with a bag of unfinished bases cast in Gray Urethane Resin.
Remove the bases from their bag and begin by cleaning the small amount of flash on the bottom edge.
Due to my casting process you will find your bottoms already flat requiring no sanding other than a quick clean up on the
bottom edge with some fine grit sandpaper. I use 400 grit personally myself.


Once cleaned up I suggest a quick wash with some warm soapy water and dry.
Then spray with a white primer. I use white for this process.

Once primed white coat with a desert sand like color.
In my case I use a P3 color made by Privateer Press called Base Menoth White.



Once dry I now apply a wash made from Artists water colors. In this case I'm using
Winsor&Newton 076 Burnt Umber and a small dab of 465 Paynes Gray to darken slightly.


I mix the two in a ceramic well pallet with clean water to create a wash which I apply to the base liberally and allow to dry.


Once dry I take a damp piece of sponge or a cotton swab to wipe off some of the dried watercolor paint.
Being watercolor does not dry permanent you can do this.

This laves your darker color in the lower recesses of the base. Now I dry brush a little of the original color to the top surface and add a small amount of an off white to highlight.I then finished off with a 50/50 wash of GW Devlan Mud wash and water to give an even tone.

The base edge was then painted Graveyard Earth.

Once dry I applied a small amount of liquid artists Matte medium in various areas and applied some yellow static grass.
Once dry I dry brushed the grass and the base lightly with an off white/ivory color to highlight.

The final finished product.



Keep in mind just because the bases say Desert, does not mean you can't paint them in shades of Gray from Ash wastes
or reds for Mars or brown for earth like tones. Anything is possible.