Another base plate

An aerial hex

This hex plate was a bit bothersome, as I didn't want to leave it flat black and pretend it was flying in deep space, but muddy goo also didn't inspire. My basic "sand and some weeds" approach didn't sound victorious, either, and I didn't have good sand right now anyway.

Prototyping

Then I remembered my slightly stiff technical Citadel paint that I last used on my Flanker's base/stand. A silly idea I got from that was that I could paint a layer of orange below, then the cracking while drying -stuff and then move from that.

For the first layer I painted two oranges (VGC 72008 Orange Fire; VMC 70733 Orange Fluo (RAL 2005)) in a random way. While wet the paint was much brighter than after the drying time (I also took the photos in different lighting conditions).

Technical mud, pt. 2

Much later I spread a thick layer of this goo (Citadel Technical: Magellan Earth), as I remembered an article I read and how that person told these things behave at different thicknesses, and how they recommended using these.

My Flanker's base had been coated pretty lightly, so now I thought I'll try how a thick layer behaves. My layer ended up being both thick and uneven, which I hoped to result in an interesting result.

After curing until the next afternoon the result was as follows. The goo splintered much less than what I had expected. My expected result was something like "a few large chunks with smaller bits around them" and I didn't really expect to see the fiery-glowy oranges to even show in more than a few selected spots.

Painting on paint

On top of the weak brown I drybrushed my darker general grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey) and then highlighting some edges with the lighter general grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey). Time-old traditions being honoured and whatnot.

Perhaps it didn't bring a half-molten surface of a lava world, but more like something pretty iron-heavy. But who in their right mind would allow the Kuritas to wage war on Mars itself?