Painting Dwarven Forge Cavern Pieces – 8

Ok.

Dry brushed the stone.

I attempted a crackle effect with PVA glue, but it didn’t do what I wanted. Happily, I was able to wash it all off before it set.

Instead, I varnished the lava with a bit more gloss medium. Some tiles look better than others, bit overall, its ok.

Tried to do the black on the shoreline texture, as per the various videos, but it didn’t work with the surrounding stone. So instead I painted solid yellow over the thin bits. This created a solid lemon yellow border around the lava, which I didn’t like, so I miked up some yellow-white and put some dabs in.

Not the result I was expecting, but it doesn’t look totally crap, which is a win if you ask me. Looks quite a bit better IRL than in this photo. There are some bits that aren’t blended well, and the result looks a ittle sqare – but that’s inevitable.

Job done, I think.

Next, I will just do a f-ton more standard pieces as per my previous posts.

Painting Dwarven Forge Cavern Pieces – 7

Well. This is what we have.

I used a lot of medium. 2:1 . I’m hoping that the colours will bleed into each other, and that it will reduce in bulk as it dries.

Gave up on the idea of brushing a texture into it, obviously. Dabbed it with a finger to blend the colours, the main thing being to be mindful of which colour is on which finger. The masking tape was so that I could handle the pieces without getting lava all over the rock.

The paint is thick enough that there is no point touching it again until tomorrow.

Painting Dwarven Forge Cavern Pieces – 6

LAVA!

I am going to attempt the lava. I feel puckish, I feel overconfident, and if I fuck it up then that’s a thing, because I didn’t pay for these things all by myself.

Couple of YouTube videos later, and these are some experiments.

The two on the right seem to work. The rightmost used a much thinner wash for the final red.

First step is the base coat on the floor, and a primer coat on the lava.

The floor is not the charred black basaltic look, but is coloured to match the other tiles.

The primer is straight yellow with some gloss medium. Absolutely necessary. One of the things my experiment uncovered is that paint won’t stick to flat dwarvenite without a little encouragement. Main thing is to stipple at least some primer into the little pools beside the river bank.

(I’ll have to water it down for the wash, hope doing that doesn’t run the gloss effect).

Note the third example in the first picture above. Because the final colours go on runny, brush-marks matter. Which is great, because you can give the lava some texture. So I am using a pattern that – hopefully – creates a roiling sea. Maybe. This undercoat probably won’t affect the final result, but I may as well start as I mean to continue.

The next step will be to ink wash the bank. Slopping a little lava onto the bank is fine: getting muddy brown-black onto the lava will not work.