Hello! After a week hiatus and a short break in New York I'm back to hammer at the gates of a Terra once again. In this article I will share my thoughts on basing and how I went about creating the million, million fallen monuments that littered the ground at the siege of Terra.
One of the appealing aspects of collecting a Heresy army is thinking about where it is placed in the timeline. The basing can contextualise a force. It can tell you where the warriors are fighting and tell you a little about the character of the force itself. An Imperial Fist force taking arms and armament from the Red Sands of Mars would look different from VII defending an outpost on an ice world.
The mythos of the Blood Angels defending the Imperial Palace has been an enduring image since childhood. What is more evocative that the epic final battle of mankind on the homeward of the species? But what does Terra look like? Well thankfully there have been many pieces of art published over the years. Below are some of my favourites.
I imagine the imperial palace to be a place of palatial gardens, administration buildings, villas and monuments from all the ages of mankind. A phrase came to mind: “We wage the final war of mankind choking amid the pummelled ruins of a million, million cultures.' I want to convey that the ruins of the Imperial Palace was positively choked with monuments and the rarest works of art a galaxy spanning empire has produced. The artillery smashing down on these grounds would create a a fog of pulverised masonry. But again we have to ask ourselves, how do we go about creating this?
In comes power putty and the 1:33 scale busts. The busts were bought from eBay. They are Chinese reproductions (there's a joke in here somewhere about Chinese knock offs and Forgeworld but jet lag dulls the senses wonderfully) and are made from plaster. The idea is to create impressions of the states with the putty, then use more putty to create negatives.
Step one: mix up the putty and coat the statue with vaseline. This putty has a setting time of about five minutes so you don't have to wait long.
Step two: mix up more putty and press into the recess of the mould you have made. Wait another five minutes and voila. Although these casts won't be as sharp as the originals, they don't need to be. You can drill into them, add jutting spars of supporting metal, or add bullet holes. With weathering powders and other basing materials you can create some handsome bases for your own army.
For three dimensional bases you can break up the originals. I did this by drilling through them with a Dremel then super glueing them to the base.
The next stage was the painting. I’ve been experimenting with marble effects and I thought I’d be adventurous and extend it across an entire army. The marble technique I use is quite simple but involves lots of layers and brush technique that I can’t really explain in a step by step tutorial. But I will try and put a very basic outline in another article.
