I went with a stone-grey wash, made from a watered-down black paint and water. this does two things:
1-It allows the paint to take on a grey look, more "stone' like than a standard mat grey or black.
2-the watered down recipe allows the paint to seep into the cracks and crevices of the DAS claymore naturally, giving the look of divots and pock marks, rock holes and cracks in the natural shape and structure of the terrain.
I started by laying a flat grey paint all over the entire piece, filling every hole and crack with the same thin layer of standard grey acrylic paint.
I paint over a slab of marble. It's smooth and glossy, and allows me to use it as a palette well, mixing colors with the right amount of water and then easily brush off the excess for a clean surface later. a Metal sheet works well for this too.
Not a lot to see at this stage, but the flat grey tone throughout laid by brush, seemed to really get into the cracks better than a typical spray primer. The spray primers often can gloss over the subtle surface textures too much, filling holes with globs of sprayed paint and eliminating the small details that the DAS clay really brings out, especially with natural terrain, like rocks and cavern structures. Also, I wanted my cavern structures to mimic the terrain creations of War Torn Worlds Greencast line - (http://www.wartornworldsstore.com/) a line of products the guys over at WTW make from recycled tire rubber adn that looks and LASTS forever!!! It tends to have a white finish to the natural grey stone as seen in the image here, and thus, I needed the grey-black base to brush the white finish over the top of in the final stages, coming soon.
(Picture by War torn Worlds-Rugged Spire A)
Having two of these rugged spires, I love how they can work for outdoor natural mountainous terrain or underdark or cavern type spires. My goal here is to try and make modular pieces of cavern stalagmites that match this same finish. Notice the heavy white-gray brushing over the dark gray-black of the undercoated recycled rubber.
A note on the clay here too. this is great stuff for several different things, but as good as it is, I have yet to really nail man-made structures - buildings and bridges that I have designed in the past simply came out looking too "worn" or "dilapidated" with the DAS clay, and so natural terrain, caves especially, seems to be where this material really excels.
Mushrooms
My original mushroom aim was to create a similar mushroom stack to the D&D Miniature, the Deathcap Mushroom, but in smaller stacks of two, to allow them to be used alongside the standard D&D Minis and give a natural cave growth look.
I started with just the base on these. Again with a watery-grey primed mix of acrylic and water, set into the stocks and underside of the mushroom caps to allow the paint to seep deeply. these DID NOT get the flat grey undercoat, however, and here is why:
On the D&D version I am mocking these up to look like, the plastic of the miniature actually shows through a bit, giving the undertone of the stalk a whit-ish look, lighter than a grey or primer base would allow. Because the DAS clay works so well at absorbing paint, and dries white, it makes a perfect base to match the "light grey" of the D&D Deathcap mini. Once this dries, it will get brushed with the right color, and will actually be a somewhat faster process than the cavern terrain above.
Next stage: Painting and color and Lava accents...oh my......
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