Dark Sun Terrain: Table Lands

[kirksmithicus]

I've been working on a couple of different types of rock outcroppings. These are made from pink foam and painted (unprimed) with a single coat of raw sienna. If you compare both pictures you'll see that several pieces were designed as stand alone pieces, or to add height and extra dimension to the larger pieces. I'm really fond of the angular and irregular look. I will be working on more of these over the next few weeks and hopefully when I am done these pieces will give the game board that haphazard, jumbled badlands look I was going for.

I was thinking to give each player a number (set, or randomly rolled, I haven't decided yet) of terrain pieces that they can draw from the box at the start of an encounter and let them place them on the board. Then we we'll roll initiative, the winner get to choose their start location on the board.


The smaller 1" cairn-like pieces, are pink foam based on 1" metal washers. They represent unstable rock formations that can be pushed over onto characters or monsters.

The black monolith is a vortex of primal power.

[Skunkape]

Looking good so far. You going to dry brush any other colors on the pieces? Going from a darker color to a lighter color, dry brushed on to the model will usually make the pieces even better looking, concentrate the dry brushing on the edges to bring out their intensity.

[mrken]

An ink wash also helps the final results.

[Skunkape]

An ink wash also helps the final results.

Doh, I forgot to mention that!

[kirksmithicus]

I usually try to do at least 3 colors, low-tone, mid-tone and highlight on my terrain and especially on stone. I've decided these look fairly decent without dry brushing or doing a wash, they look better in person (as always seems to be the case with pics of miniatures). I have another set of these that I did a little while back and I tried doing both a wash and some highlights on them. It didn't work out that great, for one, I don't think black was a good color for the wash, and I didn't really like the highlight color either. I've been trying to figure out some better colors to use. In the meantime, it seems that I've come to like the monotone coloring, kinda adds to the bleakness. I was thinking that a really dark rust-red might be good for the low tones, but still nothing comes to mind for a decent highlight. Well, other than mixing in some white with the raw sienna, but I wanted to keep things easy and consistent, as I never seems to be capable of recreating a mixed color, even when I write it down.

I Was also thinking to do some dry brushing with black, or really dark brown for weathered spots.

[Skunkape]

Have you heard of Hirst Arts? I mention this not for the molds he sells but for the color tutorials he has for painting the terrain you make with his molds. If you haven't heard of his website, check it out because he has quite a few tutorials for painting the terrain that might help inspire you.

Painting Instructions

The above link is to his painting instructions page, but at the bottom, there's a home button, so you might want to check out the rest of the site for other tutorials about painting. I'm thinking his Egyptian Tombs painting info my be something that you'll find interesting considering where you're going with your Dark Sun terrain!

Like I said before, it does look good as it is!

[kirksmithicus]

Awesome stuff, thanks for pointing that out. I actually have some Hirst Art molds but never looked at the paint guides. Wish I had two years ago! But I have had a lot of fun reinventing the wheel it seems LOL. I think I've used techniques similar to almost everyone of these on something.

I picked up some new paints and will be trying a new paint scheme on some of the pieces to see if I like it better, but it might take a while to get to. Did I ever mention I have ADHD, so I bounce all over the place with building stuff. I think I currently have 50 projects going! but I love it.

[kirksmithicus]

Well, of course you were absolutely right about doing highlights and such. I finally got around to doing that, went with a yellow, then did the flat portions with a dark brown. They look way better this way. I'll try and get some pictures up soon.

[Mead]

Looking great so far!