How to: Swamp Bases

Project ADD has set in and its time to start a new army.  As such it's a perfectly good time for a basing tutorial.  This time we are making some boggy quagmire for the undead legions to rise from.

You will need:

Vallejo water texture (or some other water effect)
Paints
Cork
Plasticard (I'm using a 2mm thick piece)
Glue
Sand
suitably marshy flock (I used gale force 9 but there are plenty of options for this type of base)

To start off with I've taken broken up cork and glued it onto the plasticard.  These will be the little spots of land between the swampy bog so be ready to leave room for miniatures to stand on both land and swamp.  The stone monument came from somewhere in a bits box and was just added for fun.

After our usual priming of black I've gone back and painted all the land parts dark blue.

Next mix some blue in with grey and dry brush all the land.  This should give you slightly weird and unnatural blue tint to your land.  Hang on it's about to make sense...

Next we finish off the land parts with a sepia wash.  This will leave the land looking suitably dingy and disgusting.  On top of that the sepia over blue makes a fun weird color that's a little hard to pin down and thus may lead to further madness.

Next I have taken my finest cheap paint (walmart acrylics even!) and painted all the water purple.

Without waiting for it to dry mix a little black and purple and start blending it in to begin making the deeper portions of the bog.  Remember it will get deeper as we move away from the land masses and thus darker.

Again without waiting for it to dry start mixing more and more black in until you are happy with the overall coloring.  The transition won't have to be super smooth as our water effects will mask imperfections later.

Speaking of water....

It's easiest to put your miniatures that will be partially submerged in the swamp down first before we do water effects.  Once their glue is dry apply a thick coat of water texture all over the water areas.  If you are using vallejo water texture it will go on white and (trust me) eventually dry clear.  Thicker areas may take upwards of 24 hours to fully dry.

Once the water is dry (and only after it is dry) add some flock to the land areas for a little variety and done!