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Friday Quick Tip: Cork Basing
By: grey_death



After realgenius' great Advanced Basing article, I thought it was high time to start delving into different basing mediums myself! So I hit up the shops and found a few things I plan to try out. This time around, we're working with cork!

I've seen cork used many times around the web by a bunch of different people. Most notibly at the front of my mind is Lemmingspawn's lava based Iron Warriors. While Lemmy has taken the medium to a hieght I'm not going to go to here, you have to start somewhere folks!



I went to Hobby Lobby and snagged this little 4 pack of tiles for a modest $4.99. It's a wonderful amount of material for the price and would likely base an entire army with this single pack! There are larger tiles as well if you're really looking to go nuts on your projects.


To start us off you're going to need to open up the pack, get your base ready, and break up some of the cork into a few large and small chunks.


When choosing the chunks you want to use, try and pick out a few that set together well and add good variation. You don't want too much to hang over the edge of the base, but a little bit helps give it more of a scenic feel.


You may have noticed in the last step just how brittle the cork really is. I decided immediately that the base would need a wash of PVA to help keep the base from breaking away as it is handled. You'll need to let this dry completely before you move on with the base, this is where doing the whole army's basing at once helps!


To add a bit more detail, I've gone ahead with some fine sand to add a bit more texture and help ground the base a bit more in 'reality'. Use it sparingly on top of the cork, but try and fill out any areas on the base proper. Once this is dry, get to painting!


I've gone with an arid theme on this one, but you could easily go with a number of different theaters. To get this color I started with Bestial Brown, drybrushed with Snakebite Leather, drybrushed again with Bleached Bone, and final drybrush along edges and sand with 50/50 Bleached Bone/Skull White. You can see I've also added some static grass for effect.

Cork requires a little bit more time and effort, but nets great results. Give it a try and you might find the basing theme for your next project!

If you've used cork or a similar material, we'd love to see/hear about your results!

I used the exact same cork. although I did find 4 1'x1' sections for about the same price at Walmart.

here was my first attempt at using it.

Wine bottle corks are an excellent source of cork for bases. As the pieces are thicker they offer more possibilities than the cork tiles and it is possible to get more varied shapes.