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I Just did a two part tutorial on my website http://w-hpaintingstudio.blogspot.com.au/ so I thought I'd repost it here for you guys. These bases are designed for eldar and so I kind of adapted the Urban aspect a bit to make it look like it was over grown, hence the use of grass as I thought that would blend with the eldar aesthetic more but I think the whole concept would be easy enough to develop into a more destroyed city enviroment if you were going for a Cities of Death theme say. Sp here it is, hope you like it and I would appreciate any comments or criticisms.

When I think of urban bases I imagine piles or rubble with detritus everywhere, and in that is the major problem: finding a balance between detail, ease of creation, finding a place for the models feet in all the rubble and cost. Whilst there are some great resin bases they are quite expensive and so for a lot of people the only option left are either:

a) boring bases
b)make them your self.

Now there is already some great tutorials out there but none of them really fill my most important criteria of "piles of rubble," so I thought I'd make my own. I actually got a bit lucky as I found the right ratios first time around so saved my self a bit of time with trial and error, but on with the tutorial!

Materials:

Some Plaster of Paris (I got a 1kg bag that's never going to run out for a measly $5)
Fine Sand (preferably have some coarse sand available to)
Water
Cheap brush and plastic spoon (unless you want to cover your eating cutlery with sand)
PVA Glue (also known as white glue)
Pieces of chopped up spruce (pieces from your bits box can also come in handy)
Disposable plastic plate (included as something to mix on and also not to wreck my pallet)


Method:

Before starting you need to prepare the base, for this I'd recommend using a knife to cross hatch lines into the base to give the glue a chance of attaching. (note. I also applied this straight onto plain sand glued down with PVA and this worked well)

Black lines being where you would cut.

For a flying bases worth I used a about a spoon's worth of plaster combined with about half a spoon of sand. To this I added some water mixed with PVA and a couple of drops of pure PVA.


When this was the consistency of whipped cream I slathered it on to the base. Then I pushed in little rocks, and pieces of rubble, sprinkled some coarse sand on and the covered any gaps with more fine sand.




If you end up making to much you can smooth it out on a plate, wait for it to dry and then break it up and uses it as rocks next time.

Painting the bases:

First I primed the base with Vallejo black primer (brilliant stuff by the way I'll be doing a review of sorts of a lot of the stuff I used today tomorrow) masking off the flying stem with tape.
Then I sprayed the entire thing with Chardon Granite.
Using a zenithal like highlighting motion I used the airbrush to apply a thin layer of scorched brown over the dirt and codex grey over the rocks, making sure you could see the first layer showing through.
I then dry brushed all the dirt with snakebite leather before making a wash that was about 1:1:3 catachan green, devlan mud and water and blasting it through the airbrush covering the whole thing. This toned all the paint down and gave it a more natural tinge, blending the separate parts together and making the overall appearance more interesting.
Time for another round of dry brushing, this time I gave the dirt a pass of commando khaki and the rocks a 1:1 codex grey and skull white before hitting the entire thing with the wash again, moving it into the cracks of the rocks and off the smooth areas to avoid pooling and achieve a more realistic effect.
To do the metal I just painted it bolt gun metal, hit it with the green wash then badab black, quickly dry brushed it bolt gun again and then washed the cracks with thinned bestial brown to simulate brown.

Static grass:

This was the first time I had properly used static grass on a base but I had no difficulty what so ever and I think it really made the base. To apply it I just painted on a blob of static grass, then using tweezers a pushed on a huge clump of the stuff before tipping the whole thing upside down and tapping the excess off.

All in all it didn't take me too long, and I could have sped up the process in parts, I just really wanted to use the airbrush. I think the whole thing looks really good though the rocks could be improved on, but I guess that's just practise.

Cool tut, but the bases look a bit more like a rocky grassland, like the lower parts of a mountain. If you want an urban theme, they need more flat surfaces. For your application, you could add chunks of concrete (plaster and sand ball cut in half so you have a flat part) or chunks of tile (plaster, greenstuff, you can even use plasticard with sand flock and a nice paintjob) also, bricks could be a posibility.

Yeah, thanks for your advice, that do look a little more urbany in real life but you are correct. I have already cast up some plater to use as concrete for next time and I'll try making them more flat as well.

I don't know about this one.
They are great bases, but nothing about them is urban. Maybe it's because of the grass?

I see what you mean, Far Seer. I guess the idea is that this is some REALLY ruined city and has been for a while so some grass is starting to grow between the bits of debris and such.

Good tutorial and good looking base but the name might be a little misleading. If you painted the whole thing a sandy colour it could pass as a desert base, red for "martian sands" and so on.