So often we tend to focus on the higher end skill set while we strive ever closer toward a Golden demon style of painting. However I want to introduce you to a term I use often in my circle of buddies. The word "Tournament Painting". While so many people love the hobby side, there is a large group that either cares more about the gaming side, or just isn't skilled at the hobby side to the point they strive for passable, non embarrassing, or more importantly decent soft score. Yes my tournament brothers and hobby handicapped homies, this article is for you!
I am going to show you a fast and super easy method to make simple bases. Perfect if you don't want to mess with the hobby side, but want something that looks solid, or pulls your force together. A process that you can do for a event your staying up late trying to get those three colors done on your army for. Also something you can do in bulk with a solid result. I have used this for smaller forces, quick commissions, and have gotten several compliments on models done this way.
First lets start with your basic base. You can do this with any base, or with models already on the base with the exact same result nothing to it. Let's start with some biker style bases that I am going to throw together for a friend of mine.
First we will add some stone to the base so that our grass isn't so bland. If you simply put grass all over the base it doesn't pop and looks too generic. So we add some rocks through out the grassy field to make it look more realistic and not like someone's front lawn. I tend to use Aquarium Gravel for this result, it is super cheap and one bag will last you just shy of forever.
All your going to do is pick a area at random, put some glue down, then make small gathering of the rock as randomly as you can. You can use just about any glue you want depending on your preference. I have used super glue because it dries fast and I don't have to mess around with several different types of glue so more often than not I just use super glue for everything when I can.
This can be done in mass super quickly. I am doing 21 bases for a friend and honestly you could easily finish this in a afternoon if you needed too.
Next step is to prime the base. You really only need to Prime the rocks. If you are doing this to already painted models simply prime the rocks before you glue them to the base.
Once the primer is dry, you will dry brush the rocks with white paint. A light dry brush will create a nice grey stone color that has detail in it with only one passing. The key here is to dry brush, if you have too much paint on your brush the rocks will just get painted white. That isn't the goal. You should wipe the paint off your brush until when you paint on your skin or finger you barely get any paint. You only need to paint the stones not the entire base. Remember we are looking for fast, easy, and solid result at the end. Don't get carried away and decide to paint the entire base. You will just add more painting time to finish your project.
Closer look to help show the result. Again this is only one passing of a white dry brushing.
Next we add flock. We simply put glue down all over the base, there are several methods you can use to do this. To keep it simple and show you how fast you can get results I have again simply used super glue on these bases. Spread around your glue everywhere around the rocks too, add the flock really thick, then shake off the extra flock and repeat on the next base. The brand of flock isn't important you can use any of the green and get almost the same result. Using other shades will not produce the same quality result. The Green contrasts with the stones enough, that they really compliment each other without needing anything fancy, and create a back drop for your model to be displayed on.
That's it. Solid results, that are simple, and fast to achieve.