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Making Dynamic Water Effect Bases For Miniatures

By Barclay Montgomery | June 26th, 2019 | Categories: Basing, Hobby Hacks, How To Tutorial, Videos

Sploosh! Don’t miss how to make these dynamic water effects bases for your army from a new channel on YouTube!  Get ready for the Age of Squidmar!

Idoneth Deepkin fans rejoice! Squidmar Miniatures is a newer YouTube channel that produces painting tutorials and hobby tips and tricks.

Their focus today is water effects on miniature bases, and they look stunning! Water effects may seem difficult, but with these simple step, you can achieve the impossible as well.

Dynamic Water Effects

Squidmar

To start off, grab a base and add some scenery. Next, use some white pumice, which is a texture paint with acrylic mixed with sand. This is a great way to achieve your beach sand effects for your water bases. Any areas that you don’t cover with the pumice will be your water, so little water texture will be added later.

Prime your base and get ready to start painting. You can paint your base with whatever colors you like, but Squidmar uses a spectrum of browns and tan colors for the ruins and sand, and some blues for the water under it all.

Squidmar

To create the structure of the waves, start with some cotton swabs. Vallejo Water Texture and the cotton swabs are combined on a flat surface, mixing them together thoroughly to start our water effect. Once the water texture has dried, start adding it to your base.

Squidmar

You don’t need to use glue to stick your water to your base, just use a base of water texture and another layer to seal it onto the base. After adding your watery cotton swabs and water textures, let your base dry for at least 24 hours.

Squidmar

The finishing touch to make your water look even more realistic is to add tiny glass beads to your water texture. Simply add a little more water texture to your water, and then add your glass beads.

To bring it full circle, get small pieces of fishing line to recreate water droplets. Insert your fishing line pieces into the still wet water texture and add your beads with a wet paintbrush. Less is more with the glass beads!

Squidmar

And there you have it! Water bases can be secretly easy! Don’t forget to check out more on the Squidmar Miniatures YouTube channel for more tutorials.

If you are currently publishing hobby content and would like a shot at getting featured on the site, or getting on our publishing schedule, we would like to hear from you! Please email Rob at spikeybits.com with examples of your work or channel!

About the Author: Barclay Montgomery

I’m a weird guy wargamer and hobby enthusiast. I’m like the Thing, I can take many forms. I could be a bounty hunter looking for Rebel prey, a commander of an Imperial fleet, or the Hive Mind of the Great Devourer of Worlds.