Quindia Studios Guide to Modular Terrain Boards, Part Eight

Here's the first of several articles on painting the boards. Not only are we going to paint the roads and river, but we are going to add some paint in areas of the grass to keep it from looking too much like a golf course!

The paints I used came from doing smaller projects with Games Workshops' jars. Rather than buying a dozen jars for each color, I paint small swatches on paper and took (another) trip to my local DIY store to get a quart of each color. The brand doesn't matter as long as you get matt acrylics. The colors I used are out of production, but I've included the new names in the text below:

Starting with Scorched Brown (Rhinox Hide), I painted all of the exposed areas except the river. I also lightly drybrushed some small areas of the grass and blended the road and river banks out into the grass. I tried to leave the areas of rubble and the rocks I added gray, but don't worry if you get some paint on them because we're going to fix that later.

After letting the first color dry overnight (last time I'll say that - I let every color dry overnight - it is important to bring out the textures to let each color dry completely), I moved on to the Dark Flesh (Doombull Brown) tone. I applied this heavily, not quite drybrushing. Some of the darker color still shows, but it is fine to cover it completely in areas. I again blend the color out into the grass, extending the color slightly beyond the darker tone. It still looks clunky at this stage, but as we go on, the layers will really start to blend in with the grass.

A lot of the blending is done by "stippling" or dabbing the color onto the grass areas. Start with a fairly dry brush and go over sections multiple times to build it up until it looks right to you. Writing about painting is like dancing about carpentry, but hopefully the photos help to illustrate the point.

On to step three... Bestial Brown (Mournfang Brown)! Now we are getting more into drybrushing. You will begin to see the textured paint pay off and as you drybrush and stipple the color onto the edge where the earth and grass meet, the areas will start to blend more.

Part two of the painting will be up on Thursday and we will have finished the earth tones!