Tutorial – Deadzone Terrain Part 2

Continuing on from the other days post on the Deadzone terrain; Part 1, I’m going to continue to show you how I painted up my set of terrain.

We left off with the salt still on the model, but the main colours laid down. Removing the salt is a fairly easy process, all you need is a mug of hot water and a light brush. The first step is to paint a coat of water over the whole of the model very gently and leave to soak in for a few minutes. Following this it’s a case of wetting the brush and lightly going over the areas where you can see salt. It should start to lift off fairly easily. For some more pronounced areas of chipping you can use a harder brush, such as a drybrush, to brush away the paint rather than just relying on the salt to give the effect. Most of the larger areas you’ll see on my terrain were created by doing this.

Once you have the desired areas taken away it’s worth leaving the model to cool and then give it a quick rinse under the tap. This helps clear away any residue left over by the process.

Once all that was done I ended up with something that looks like this:

Terrain-guide-6The next stage is to make it look a little nicer with some highlights. Using Ceramite white I gave it a fine edge highlight along the top of all the hard edges. Also to give a 3d effect to the paint chips I added a highlight to the bottom edge of each wee bit. This can take a wee while, but the effect you get from it is definitely worthwhile, and if your doing salt masking I would say essential. This is how it turned out:

Terrain-guide-7As you can see it really enhances the whole look 🙂

The next stage was all of the metals. To start them off I gave them a good basecoat of Warplock Bronze:

Terrain-Guide-8Which was followed by a drybrush of Leadbelcher:

Terrain-guide-9To finish this off and tone it back a little it was then given a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

At this stage the bulk of the work is done and the terrain looks pretty good, but to really make it pop there was a few bits of detailing still to add. The first of these was a little bit more airbrushing, although drybrushing would certainly work just as well for them. I started by giving them a light dusting of Mechanicus Standard Grey along any section that would be touching the ground, this was to represent general dust and dirt kicked up around the buildings. The second was a dusting of XV-88 mixed with a little Dryad Bark sporadically over the terrain to add to the grimy, used nature of the buildings:

Terrain-guide-10A also used the same colours and effect on the tops of some of the terrain and the walkways to try and show the areas in which troops would have been moving about and the dirt and grime from there boots has dirtied the ground:

Terrain-guide-16Another touch I wanted to add was some weapon fire effects/burning. I used the same brown as previously to set down a base, adding small dots for laser fire markings and a larger area on some of the vents:

Terrain-guide-11 Terrain-guide-14I then added some black to the mix and added a smaller amount in the centre to finish off the effect.

Next up was blood splatter. Gotta have some blood splatter 🙂

I used the GW technical paint BLood for the Blood God for this, and have to say it is fantastic. Straight out the pot it looks great. The main difficult thing about it is just getting the shape and consistency of the splatter looking like it actually would. I would recommend taking it slow and steady, but also looking at some resources to see how real blood splatters. It sounds grim, but it helps. You also want to remember gravity, the blood will inevitably drip downwards if there’s any great amount so keep that in mind. Here’s a few examples of the effect I got:

Terrain-guide-12 Terrain-guide-13 Terrain-guide-15The final thing I wanted to add was broken windows. I can’t remember where I first saw this being used with the Deadzone terrain, but the idea just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.

I used some clear plastic packaging I had lying about cut up with a pair of scissors. It’s fairly simple to do, just cutting at angles and making sure it all is fairly straight and jagged. Before gluing always check to make sure you have a good fit, and it looks good in place. Once checked I just used a small dab of super glue to fix them in place. Honestly it can look a little haphazard from the back, which is why I’ve stuck with adding it to terrain pieces you can’t really see inside. Here’s an example of one of the set’s I put together:

Terrain-guide-17And that, my friends, is how I did my Deadzone terrain. If there is anything you think I may have missed or if you would like me to expand on anything just let me know in the comments.

Look out later in the week for some pictures of the whole lot together 🙂

4 thoughts on “Tutorial – Deadzone Terrain Part 2

  1. That all looks great and pretty achievable too… except for highlighting the chips. The chipping looks far better as a result, but surely took an age to paint, right?

    Even as I type this I know that now that I have seen the highlighted chips that I will have to try it… but it looks so tedious.

    Fantastic work and many thanks for the step by step tutorial too.

    • Thanks, as always, for your kind comments 🙂

      The chipping did take an age to highlight, and can turn into a bit of a slog, I just put Star Trek on and got on with it though(really helps to have something on in the background). I was almost tempted not to, as you don’t really notice it until you get close but felt it was necessary in the end. No point in doing the technique if your not gonna follow it through to the end 🙂

      • Im still smarting a bit from how long my recent jungle terrain took to get finished I think. I also tend to look for ways to shave time off projects and beautiful as that effect is, I dare say that it would be the first thong to go if I tried your method. Im impatient.

        Im a big believer in Trek as a soundtrack to my painting 🙂 A lot of the DreadBall stuff that I painted last year was done during Enterprise 🙂

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