Concrete Bases and OSL

Hello there!

Yesterday I finally decided on an approximate color scheme for my Pig Iron Kolony Militia troops, from pig iron. I wanted to use them as the lawful evil power in a post-apocalyptic world: much better-equipped than the scavengers, but not as elite as the Rambo-style mercs. Something like the armored troops in Jin Roh.

The point was: a really dark color scheme implies some kind of contrast in the base, unless you want to have a black miniature on the tabletop. Since it wasn’t my plan, I was thinking about a desert ground, or a colorful mechanical mess. Then I had an idea: why don’t I just keep with the dark base, but with some really visible points of light? Something like glow sticks?

I’ve never tried OSL before, but I found a really simple article, which is great to start. It is nothing brilliant, just a good suggestion on the way for making a good halo.

I started with a square piece of Eulithe (look at this article for a short review!). I used a scrap piece, with a size of 4×4 cm.

With a metal brush I textured the surface. I wanted to give a “concrete” look, trying to achieve a better accuracy than what I did with my MDF technique.

With a generic carving tool I made some cracks on the surface. It was like carving a piece of cake. A really soft one.

Meanwhile I prepared some glow sticks: those are simple pieces of styrene rods, 5mm long

Then primed with black acrylic.

Note: Eulithe has no problems with can sprays, so you can also use a standard spray primer rather than using the brush.

Then, painting with some sponge. Starting with a Shadow grey layer, really thin, then an even thinner one with a bit of bleached bone.

It works quite well, but the final look is really nighty! It looks perfect for a diorama, but unless you want to paint a whole table with that tonality, you should add more light on the ground.

Anyway, that’s the way I did it, and so I continued, painting the glow sticks. Starting with dark angel green, then snot green, then scorpion with a tip of bleached bone. As explained in the tutorial linked at the beginning of this article.

Finally, the OSL: it was unexpectedly simple to paint, probably because of the flat surface and the bright color chosen. After just some passages, with really thinned paints, the result was convincing.

Conclusions:

Probably for the Kolony bases I will go with a lighter ground tone, and maybe I will not use the foam for the concrete. Overall, I’m really happy with the result, and I will probably make more experiments with the OSL in the future!

Cheers,

The Lazy Forger