Final Cobblestone?
Yet another view of the final cobblestone
Well, after some more messing around with the cobblestone I think we pretty much have the method figured out. While I really liked the last piece from the last post I felt like there was something missing. At the suggestion of my girlfriend I decided to try mixing in some blue and that seemed to do the trick. A little bit of blue mixed in with the gray gave it that extra nudge away from simple grayscale and made it look really nice.
I’ve been testing out various methods with the blue to see which one works best. I’ve found that washes on the cobblestone don’t seem to work all that well, probably because the imprint isn’t all that deep. The trick seems to be drybrushing, lots and lots of drybrushing. It also helps to rough up the surface a little bit first to give it more texture and make the drybrushing work better. I’ll do a short “how-to” on the methods I used for the final cobblestone if you want to try this on your own.
UPDATE: I should probably note that the colors are done, but we’ll probably be adding bits of grass/weeds in the grout and other small details later as well.
Various Tests
First, I messed around with some ideas on the old block from before. I tried out a few more grayscale methods and then added some blue over top of them.The top left was drybrushed with blue. The top middle and right middle have blue washed over them with a thick wash.
Some blue testing
This was the other side of the previous block. We based it black, drybrushed a bunch of various blues, and then tried some washes and other things on top of it.
Black Base
Before doing any painting I stamped the foam with our stamps. Then I went over the pattern with a marker to solidify the imprints. Any thin object can be used to press down the foam and fix up messed up sections. I use a marker because it makes it easier to remember what pieces I’ve done already. There’s more on that here. After the pattern is ready, it’s time to paint the base black. This gives it a good dark base to build on.
Blue-Gray Wash
The next step is to do a thick wash with a dark blue-gray. This gives a good solid base for the rocks that doesn’t feel so bland as pure gray. Using blue works well for a cool color scheme. If you want a warmer color scheme you could probably use a brownish base instead.
Begin Drybrushing
After the wash is dried it’s time to start drybrushing. I started with a medium gray here, and then added a slightly lighter gray on top of that.
More drybrushing
After doing a couple different shades of gray, it helps to top it off with a light pure white drybrush.
Second Attempt
The last method worked pretty well for a nice uniform looking set of rocks. However, it also helps to have variety. In the middle section here I started by using a medium gray to drybrush over the full section to paint.
Random drybrushing
I mixed up some lighter gray and drybrushed over a few random pieces of this section.
More random drybrushing
To add some variety I did the same random drybrushing but with a light shade of blue.
White drybrushing
After a couple sets of drybrushing random sections with various colors I topped the whole thing off with a white again. It’s hard to see in these pictures because everything is so bright, but the middle section looks a let more random and less uniform. There are rocks ranging from pure gray to a solid blue-gray.
Adding in marker for the grout
Finally, I use marker to trace over the grout to darken it up some and make it more distinguished from the stones themselves. It also lets me push on the imprint some again to ensure a nice deep, lasting imprint. In the pic above I only markered the bottom pieces of the painted sections so you can see the difference. I’ve put several more pictures of the final cobblestone below because I had some trouble getting the lighting right to really show off the middle section.
Another final view
Yet another view of the final cobblestone
And one more for comparison
Well, I think that just about wraps up the cobblestone saga. We have a good solid base for all of our blocks now. It’s time to start planning out specific blocks and building actual terrain pieces. We have a lot of cool ideas to try out for terrain pieces, so check back soon for buildings, details, and finished blocks. I’m also going to be converting some miniatures for my Possessed army using various Warhammer and 40k models, so I’ll post up pictures of those as well.
Tags: cobblestone, finished, How-To, painted, Terrain
