In the second progress post for Armies on Parade 2017, I focus on the Imperial Knight Bases for my Questoris Household, it’s something I’ve actually put off for quite a while as I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do.
Armies on Parade Board
I’ve covered this a little more in-depth in a couple of previous posts, but for my Armies on Parade entry I’ve chosen to one of the Forge World Realm of Battle Generatorum Sector boards. This board has a distinctive road section and a number of tiled and raised sections. Although nowhere near as impressive as some Armies on Parade boards that I’ve seen, I feel it’s an improvement over a regular Realm of Battle board section and provides a bit of variety and detail without having to use lots of scenery or build something custom – which potentially will never be used again and will be difficult to store.
Imperial Knight Bases
So, I knew that I had three bases to sort for my Imperial Knight and an extra one if I fancied putting my Dunecrawler in (which it made sense to). My original plan of making them match 100% the board wasn’t going to work – it would be far too time consuming and would look pretty weird when I move the model from their designated spot. So I decided to go for a fairly basic style that should roughly match the road section of the board.
After marking out exactly where the Knights would stand on each base, I applied a thin layer of wall filler with an old credit card, making sure that I got a bit of texture into it. I then used a wet sponge to “dapple” a light texture onto the wet filler and went back in with the credit card to blend it in. The result is an uneven surface similar to the board. This took almost 48 hours to dry properly, after which I covered the whole thing in watered down PVA (not too watered) which soaked into the filler and sealed it without losing any of the texture.
Blitzing through my bits box, I extracted a number of items that would look appropriate as discarded items on a battlefield, so pouches, couple of crates and similar. Copious amounts of PVA, ballast and those items have resulted in little debris piles in a similar fashion to the ones you got on the board. The crates were superglued into place first though most of the other bits are simply secured using PVA.
I felt this was a pretty decent effort, I just need to paint them the same as the road (Skavenblight Dinge, drybrush and some weathering pigments) and jobs a good one! However part of me niggled that they were a little lack lustre, especially to be entered into Armies on Parade. I think part of this was that the ballast I used was overall much finer than the debris on the Realm of Battle board. Then for some odd reason I remembered that somewhere in a cupboard I had a bag of 2mm Talus – very similar in size to the board, so last night I got back out with the PVA and added some of this to the piles of ballast. Much happier with the overall result (wish I’d remembered it earlier)!
Hi, it’s quite a few steps but not too tricky. Black the parchment out firstly, then give it a few thin coats of Rakarth Flesh. Add some Pallid Wych Flesh to Rakarth and block the parchment out (leaving pure Rakarth showing in the shadowy areas). Add some more Pallid Wych Flesh to the mix and do a broad highlight, then add some more Pallid Wych Flesh and do a smaller one. Finally an edge highlight of pure Pallid Wych Flesh. If you’re going to add any letters do so now. The last step is to apply several thinned washes of Drakenhof Nightshade, pulling into the shadows. You want these fairly thin, but they’ll quickly enrich the beige colour.
Hey, nice work.
How did you do the parchment color on the knight armor?