In case you're only just joining us in this series of my work towards Armies on Parade this year, make sure you get all caught up by reading the previous five installments HERE.
Now that all the priming and dry brushing for the rock had been completed, the structure was starting to look more and more how I envisioned it when starting to plan the idea at the start of the year. Looking from above, it was clearly representing the symbol of Tzeentch, and so I was feeling somewhat proud of my work, given I have literally no experience with anything quite like this. I realise, upon looking at this picture, that the aqualith should have been placed a little more centered, but if that's the biggest mistake made so far, I think I'll manage to still sleep at night.
The next step was to start working on the ground cover for the board. Luckily, I knew exactly what this needed to look like and how to create it, as it would be the exact same as all the basing work I have done for the Tzeentch miniatures thus far. The recipe for the Tzeentch bases were an initial covering of AK's Daemon Earth Interactive Terrain. It would then be drybrushed with Citadel's Etherium Blue Dry paint, followed by a wash of Citadel's Carroburg Crimson. After adding some Gamer's Grass alien tufts, as well as a mixture of blue sand, and cobalt and purple rocks, the bases look pretty and Tzeentch-y.
This process works wonders for the small bases of the miniatures, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn't work the same way for covering such a large area for the board. Firstly, I don't have enough of the terrain paint (as well as it being too expensive to use in such a way) so going back to using plaster made the most sense. I would be able to cover most of the board with the plaster, neatening things up once it had dried. My only concern with this was being able to match the same colour without the aid of the colour terrain paint.
So after covering the base with a mixture of plaster and some neutral texture paint to neaten up, I primed and dry brushed using the same method as the rocks. I realised that a huge portion of the ground will be covered by sand and stones, so it didn't really matter how messy and somewhat unfinished it looked. That realisation certainly provided me some relief, given that the submission deadline is just over two weeks away...yikes.
Whilst this notion is a little overwhelming, seeing as this board still feels a million miles away from completion, there really isn't too many more steps to go. I also realise that Armies on Parade is really just about the specific army painted up, so spending all of this time on the board is a potential mistake. However, I've had most of the army painted throughout the year, and with only a few more models to finish, the army itself is almost complete.
These blog articles in this series have all been written in advance, so have mostly been writing in past tense. However, they have now caught up with my actual progress. As of writing this right now, the board looks exactly like the above picture. My next update should hopefully see the board almost completely finished, with the terrain and little details all painted up. Let's see what happens in these super fun, final crunch time weeks...
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