Alright! Room is booked, Grandma is booked, we are going to Reapercon!!! Whoohoo!!

So, what am I going to do?!

The setting is Dreadmere, so I’m thinking nasty, dirty swamp. I found a lot of reference material, but I’m not a strong baser. That means I need to figure out how to do that. That brings us to The Plan.

I’m going to make a medium, large, huge, and gargantuan swamp base. This should help me figure out how big I want to make it, and give me a few chances at learning the pitfalls of this type of base. I want to end up with resin somewhere, so I need to practice that too.

These are the materials I anticipate using.

Balsa wood, basing mats, and stuff!

so, don’t judge me…. I have a LOT of bases. These will be my practice runs! I don’t think I’m going to do the oval one, but the other 5 are fair game.

I only had about 30 minutes until I had to get ready for work, so there’s not a ton of progress. But I decided for this first round, I would use my modeling paste. I already have it, and it’s worth a shot. Most people use air dry clay and foam. And that may be the route I end up going but not today. When we moved I threw out my sheet of blue foam, and I only have oven dry clay.

here we go! There’s a dip, there’s a rise, and the whole bottom is covered.

I added a broken piece of wood for interest. This one is little, so most of the actual detail will be smaller stuff.

Apparently I forgot to take pictures of the other ones as I did them. Fail.

Large has a few more broken pieces and a channel under them to look bridge-esque.

Huge is just paste because I ran out of time. I figure I’ll try and carve it once it’s dry.

I want to do a little bit different on each one of the first attempts so I can see what I like and what I hate before I invest in anything specific.

I’m making a pinterest board with inspiration and reference photos and whatnot.

Yay! As soon as I have more to share, I will! Let me know what you think! And if you’re coming to Reapercon!

-marinealRose