 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby-cheating video today. We're going to talk all about making a magical forest base a little fey forest This one's gonna be a lot of fun. Let's get into it The strict techno man sir that is Vinci V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci V So I recently finished up this piece from Miniac You might have seen me paint the black hair Sometime ago on the channel, but I wanted to give it a base that's appropriate And this guy's clearly in the woods and comes with a nice basing element But I have this underglow in it because I wanted the place where this elf is to be magical to not just be some normal forest He's stalking through but somewhere with this witch light also emanating from the the very Flora of the place he stalks through innate magic in there So today we're gonna make that base. We're gonna take a look at exactly how we go about Building up a really cool magical-looking glowing forest base This one's gonna be really exciting. So let's head over the desk. Let's get it done All right, let's begin with some of the things I'm gonna use today first off. We've got some good Vallejo ground paste got some tufts from huge miniatures nice different colored grasses some more tiny tufts from gamers grass We're gonna use some flowers of course some flower tufts And then also here we've got some summer undergrowth which ironically I don't end up using I don't love this stuff But it can be useful sometimes and then we've got some 3d printed like logs and twigs Our first step is To basically get dirt down on this thing and connect to the big log That is the base that the figure standing on to the rest of the sort of plinth that I'm working on here Now you could use all these same tricks on a base Don't let the fact that I'm working on a plinth in any way change what you're doing It's the exact same tactics regardless of whether you're working on a base or whether you're working on a Display plane Now when I put this down, I'm gonna go ahead and you know, I'm using a decent amount of it I want to make sure it gets up on the wood notice. That's already like base coat painted But it doesn't matter. I'm gonna spray over some of this later and stuff and it's really not important I just put some colors into it so I could understand exactly how the whole figure was gonna work earlier I'm also not covering the whole base I leave those open spots where I know later I want to put some water because I want this twisted log to be over this enchanted mystic pool With these trees, these are like little 3d printed trees. Thank you to Ninjon for gifting these to me I'm not gonna use the whole tree. They're way too big But the fun thing about trees is that they're made of branches and branches are just Logs and if you don't have little 3d printed trees or whatever, it's no problem You could just go out in your yard get little sticks bake them in the oven On a low heat for a long time after they dry out and boom jobs are good You can you can then you have more sticks and they're free But my goal with these is to place them around the base and I want them in different positions So notice how I have them overlapping each other. I have them sticking up and out Variance is the key and that's going to be true for the entire rest of this video Once they're all down. I just sprayed black I didn't zenith a letter anything because I didn't want to spray white where I was gonna mess up the tree a little bit of black Won't matter any that'll just act like natural shadow But you want all of these elements you're gonna be doing overlapping nature stacks on itself It stacks on stacks on stacks with nature, you know There's dirt that then gets covered by grass which then gets covered by leave flowers and then gets covered by weeds and then leaves and so on and so forth and So throughout this entire thing It's really gonna be an exploration of just layering effects on top of each other and Our first step in that journey is just to bring out the wood this The base of this from For this miniature has some really nice threading and stuff in the wood So we're just gonna slowly infuse some gray and I'm making this a little more gray Because I want the wood to feel a little older. It's collapsed It's kind of not an actively growing tree So I don't want it to feel as alive that we will build back in a little bit of life later And as I'm working through this The the grayness is coming from the fact that I'm using a purple infused brown with a light green highlight Now the specific paints I'm using here do not matter. I want to restate that Just in case there's questions. They don't matter. What am I using here a brown plus some kind of gray? That's all that really matters You can use any paints you have and replicate these effects in any similar colors There's nothing magical special or unique about these paints But what I am doing that's important here is I'm focusing up Distriations and the highlights of the wood toward the areas that I want to be catching the most light I'm not equally highlighting all elements of the wood. This is a mistake. I see people make a lot They just trace every little line and make a bunch of lines all equally around the tree ignoring all value contrast whatsoever And that's not what we want to do here I want the center of this directly underneath him I know that's going to be bright and it's going to be blue because it's right over the mystic pool Which is this glowing thing And so as a result I'm focusing in the highlights on the wood into those areas and I didn't touch The other parts as much so on those curves on those areas that focus and on the center. That's where I'm focusing in Then I do just some quick wet brushing slash dry brushing across the the dirt to just bring out some of that detail This is the first of many layers. I end up spending like far too much time on this dirt Here's a good note for you If you're going to end up covering up all of your dirt With grass as I do in this later in later steps Probably not that important to spend as much time on the dirt here But hey, I guess you get a full dirt tutorial as well just in case that's what you're tuned in for so good times I wash it down just to make sure that uh, we pick out not only the highlights with that dry brush But also re-instantiate some of the shadows now I do want to build a little bit of life into the wood So that's a little serif and sepia wash going over some places And this is the first of many glazes that will be going over this wood I then take a little bit of brighter brown and start just kind of stippling it around the dirt Just to again add some more color some tonal variation Nature is random and it has lots of randomness to it One of the most important things you can do when working on stuff like this is just keep painting Keep adding layers keep adding colors keep adding variation of hue and value As from that you will more closely replicate nature And to that point I've now gone to sort of dry pigment I'm working that in just continuing this ongoing mistake of overemphasizing the dirt I'm going to cover up I then get out some yellow brown pigment to just kind of again create more variation But I'm not using it equally everywhere I'm focusing in that yellow toward the front and toward the center Where again the viewer is going to be focused because of the light I then take a just bone dry flat brush and kind of work some of that pigment in I don't ever actually seal this pigment down I'm just working it into the paint but there will be like tough sitting on top of it and other Washes that go on top of it and stuff like that which will do the equivalent of sealing the pigment for me But when you sort of just work the paint in like this not only do you Or sorry work the pigment in not only do you remove sort of the excess pigment But it also will really stay and sit in place Barring some really unusual handling Now because that's going to end up being water the edge of mud that butts water is darker Because it is wet wet things are naturally darker than what's around them So it'll be wet mud So I'm around the very edge of the water I'm working in some nice wet more brownie mud color And then I'm bridging the gap between the sort of dry pigment and the wet mud With just a little Sarah from sepia that once it dries Will give that impression that the water has kind of lapped up and over here in there But it's now dried up The next glaze we're going to get onto the wood to again make it feel a little more alive And connected to nature is this nice green glaze This is just some classic Athonian camo shade And you can use any kind of green But it's a great idea when you're working on wood You want lots of colors in there greens purples browns reds You can work lots of things in a tree So here we don't put many glazes on it Now because a lot of it's going to be dominated by the blue I don't have to go quite as far Just in case you're curious because this is actually a somewhat unique paint This is cobalt teal from gold and so flat I do really love this color It's super intense It's super bright whenever I'm doing like cyan magical effects This is one of my go-to paints Because it is just so kick you in the face intense I really love it And I work the water first And then I'm going to start manually placing the most intense glow A lot of times I see people use the airbrush alone to do their glow That always looks fake Because you have to be more intentional Light doesn't just go not existing BAM Not existing That's not what happens So instead what I'm doing is I'm using the brush To instantiate the most potent and powerful areas of value And highlights of the glow And then I'm going to use the airbrush later to smooth it down Now along that same line The moss here I wanted to do something really fun and interesting with And show you that you can really have fun when you're painting Regardless of how well you blend Or how smooth your brush control is or any of that nonsense So notice how rough and stipply and wild I'm being with my brush here I'm just letting it move around Letting it tell the story for me But I want this to be like some bioluminescent moss Like it's been infused by the magical mystic water And it's now glowing as well And so I just start integrating the blue That cobalt teal Into the dark green And then eventually I'll start integrating some of the Bright gray into that To like white it out and make it even brighter And I just start stippling around going nuts on there Now on the parts of the moss that aren't near the water I instead go directly from the green Up into a sort of green gray color To make something that's showing more nature And the more natural value transitions Where the moss isn't infused by this mystical stuff Just another opportunity to show some interesting contrast Over the piece But most importantly I can then dull it down As you see me doing here with the darker green as well So I still have that value transition But it will be much weaker And much less drawing to the eye Directing the viewer's eye is really important When you're working on a piece like this And I'm focusing so much light in the center I want to make sure that I don't then accidentally put some Ridiculously bright thing Over on that dangly log bit That's hanging way out over the side And have the viewer looking nowhere near the focal point I want them Which is eventually the elf who's standing on top of this log So I continue as I have all that highlighted I see that the rest of it didn't go bright enough And I just continue building it up And then I just glaze around and back down And we'll touch that a few more times To bring all of it in line But I still want that rough texture That simply texture to feel like natural As you can see You can feel free to use a wide variety of different things When you're building this So don't feel like you've got to have the exact tools Or any of these things that I'm using The particulars of the rocks and the stones And the plants and the tufts All of those None of that stuff really matters The key to this forest is layering And having lots of different elements in it You can use whatever things you find compelling In your own forest bases Go nuts This is a great chance to experiment Okay Now let's go ahead and undo some of my mistake Or maybe bring my mistake into focus I don't know But we're going to use some Loctite gel glue My favorite glue for attaching stuff like this Because it just sits in place It doesn't run anywhere And we're going to get some of these tufts I like huge miniature's tufts I think they're really cool You can check them out online This isn't a sponsored video or anything I just think they're a really nice company And they make nice tufts So there you go But I'm going to scatter them around Now I want to talk about tuft placement As we go into sped up video here When you place your tufts It's really important that with your tweezers You force them to conform to the shape So notice how much I'm pushing on them Squeezing them down Getting those edges so they're not poking up anywhere I'm also mixing them up I end up using multiple different colors of tufts Over this whole thing And again Nature is random But there is a logic to it at the same time But in this kind of case You're going to see grasses of all different colors growing here You know, lots of variation in the hue Of the individual grass So I continually just vary it out Using some light green Some dark green It's not all next to each other Sometimes there's lighter green patches mixed in Because that area happens to be slightly better Soil or richer or whatever And then once I have the big tufts down I'm going to come in with my tiny tufts One of my favorite little products I love tiny tufts As I said, this is from Gamer's Grass And I'm going to sort of bridge those things Just like we glaze with our paint layers To bring disparate layers together Same here with our tiny tufts All of our little tiny tufts are just in there They're another third color of tuft Which is great But they also can help make it feel more random More natural Because we have this variance in the size of the grass And I really really can't sell hard enough How important something like this is It doesn't mean you need to go out and spend $100 on tufts It just means when you use them You want to make sure you vary them Between a couple different colors And placement and size And stuff like that around And have them all mixed up So it feels more natural Now I want a few little flower bits on here This is supposed to be an enchanted magical forest So there should be flowers and things like that And why am I using white flowers? The most boring color I'm using white flowers Because we're going to paint these tufts We're going to paint these flowers We're going to paint all this The story of this base is paint everything So once I've got my tufts in place I then take a pretty wet brush Some pretty layery thin layer type paint And I'm just going to swipe it over all of that Now a quick word of warning Do please make sure that your glue on all your tufts Is completely dry when you're doing this Or use a crappy brush or something like that Please don't ruin a nice brush By getting paint into it Or glue into it I'm sorry But yeah, I just kind of whip around Hit the highlights Think of this like dry brushing your tufts It helps bring more life and light to them And more value contrast And because they're painted They'll feel more in line With the rest of the piece Because everything else is painted So when you just have flat Sort of monoculory tufts They just don't sell In that same regard I'm using a wash here I'm washing around every tuft Hitting the wood more Pushing it down in the tuft To integrate them more in Because some of the green in scale The moss and growth and life Wouldn't really be visible as a specific size thing It would just be look like color From a distance So by getting that green around the tuft We're then able to integrate That thing into nature Now I want this little pool This little mystic pool to glow That's what we're gonna do here That's what we were doing with Painting up on the wood Some of that blue And you'll see how we reinforce that in just a moment But the advantage to also putting that ivory color Over the tufts To highlight them is not only does it feel more Like light is being caught in them But then it makes them easier And they'll pick up this blue color more But just in the high little highlights Of the tops of the tufts Making it feel more like A natural reflection At the same time The flowers I just kind of jam that wet paint over top of it Making sure that I'm not turning the whole tuft blue So I'm going to be a blue flower But it kind of integrates it Next up I go back to the airbrush Now this is how we integrate And sell the blue effect This is very thin, thin, thin, thin ink And I'm just going to lay down Multiple passes of this over everything Smoothing out my sort of rough lines But also creating a gradient of intensity I can hit the grass I can hit the ground around the edge I can blast the little flower tufts And I can hit the wood and that But I'm being very careful working very small I'm not hitting the whole area and just Spraying it down with blue paint That's not how glow works All right Light is intense in an area And then cast a deep shadow Hence why I left like those areas In between the logs quite dark Speaking of dark The other problem that I always see When people use the airbrush to OSL Something is that they just blast the light color And stop But light isn't just light When you strike, when you create light You also create shadows And it's important to bridge Between your light source And whatever your normal colors are With some kind of occlusion shadow And so for me This is just increasing thin layers Of Payne's gray into the blue To then create that occlusion shadow That darkness That would be in between the cast light And the normal light that's happening On the rest of the piece I can also at the same time Use this nice Payne's gray To create some environmental shadows Over the rest of the piece Hitting the back sides of logs That are facing away from the light The lower areas of the moss I can sort of smooth things down Now one of the things I love about this base Is it's got mushrooms And nothing is more magical than mushrooms Of course And I wanted them to be interesting But not eye catching I wanted them to be something That's more of a discovery element Not something super bright And this is important When I see a lot of people do mushrooms like this They'll just make them like bright red With white spots And it's like okay Well there's no other red in the piece And that's going to completely distract From anybody looking at the actual figure So instead I went for this very soft lilac color Which I thought integrated really well With the blues and the greens It's noticeable It's different But it's not overwhelmingly powerful And hence it can fade Sort of into the background I am doing the spots on the mushrooms here But we're going to then integrate some of that blue Because I'm assuming the mushrooms themselves Are also magical And are infused with the same Mystic fay energy That the rest of this thing is integrated with And so I just After laying down the white circles I touched them with some of the thin blue To then put them in color This will also help to kind of relax How eye catching they are While still maintaining the overall pattern And visual interest I do go back and touch the center Of each of those little blue dots With a little bit of blue white As you can see there Just to pop them out And make that feel a little glowy too Next up we got to put some water effects Into our water So this is realistic water With some ink mixed into it As you can see there Just two drops of ink Into two full pipette loads Of the realistic water A piece of advice would be Always mix more than you think you need of this stuff It's okay to dump a little extra Because it's going to shrink It's going to settle In the case of this thing Where that resin piece of the two logs Some of it will flow underneath Since that's not air tight there Against the wood So I need to pour a bunch of extra in Once it's all settled We're going to do a really fun thing I love this So Lowly bright water Where it hits the edge And it's shiny There is a gloss line That occurs Where water meets another surface A solid surface Now you can see that kind of glow for a second When I turn the camera But we're going to actually paint it And reinforce it And make it a little more Instantiate it a little stronger So I take some of that white And then I slowly mix in some of the blue And create this sort of Glow line This reflection line This glossy element Where there's some amount of the actual magic And this light Hitting and reacting with the edge of the solid That it's touching I just think it looks so unbelievably cool And it's so easy to do Then I sweep some more panes gray Into the shadows of the water To show where that water's hitting the actual Earth to create the full contrast between the two And with that We're basically done We've got our magical glowing Woods ready to go And don't worry Although I can't paint a base from black I can paint the sides of the display base black And boy oh boy It's just as rewarding At the end of a long project Like this Let me tell you what This is my classic Abaddon Black The only use for this paint So there you go The base is all done Let's take a look at the final figure He's all together All cleaned up All finished Ready to rock and roll Our little hunter Stalking through this magical forest Seeking out his unsuspecting prey This piece was a lot of fun to do I really liked this I hope you enjoyed it too We're going to do a lot more really cool Really unique pieces here in the coming weeks And I hope you'll come along on the journey with me If you liked this give it a like Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future If you want to take your next step on your hobby journey And support the channel at the same time Why there's a Patreon down below You can click that link That's focused on review And feedback As always, thank you so much for watching this one I really appreciate it And we'll see you next time