Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle Board - the highlight of my day

When you left me last I was debating just how cool my Realm of Battle Board was without any further highlights... well I think the first picture alone illustrates just how much they add. It's far from perfect and I know I foolishly rushed it in some places, which for a board I'm going to be using for a long time is madness. But I think it's as good as I hoped for. 

I think I managed to make it textured enough, add definition with the highlights where appropriate. The cracked slabs leading up the hill are more worn through traffic, therefore more highlights. I'll go back in with some Army Painter Washes to pick out the cracks a bit more but overall I'm really chuffed.

      

 I probably should have done step-by-step shots but there's nothing different here than what I do on a normal base. I mixed Vermilion craft Acrylic and PVA [once again for added stickiness and perceived durability] did quite a few drybrush coats with that because the Vermilion goes on like a polish. This means you're only ever getting a semi-opaque coat, so multiple coats will build up the colour which is more hard work but you do get to control how much tone you're adding to the board.

One concern is that I had the hill in this configuration as I highlighted, obviously you try not to highlight the edges of each board because that emphasises each board piece, not the terrain but I still have to see how the terrain highlights interact in a different configuration. I had seen a blog a while back that had diagrams of how to do it but I couldn't find it for this.

Following on from the Vermilion I added a small amount of Pumpkin Craft Acrylic and did more highlights. In particular I felt that you have to make sure not to brush too hard in straight lines or else it'll look unnatural. That's not say I didn't, you just have to be very careful and when you do pick up too much paint or lay down obvious streaks it's all about working the paint with circular motions to defuse the 'shape'. Of course there are now areas that look like faded spots but I think they're more natural looking at least.

Finally I went straight to a Pumpkin highlight which was quite a step. With my Crashed Aquila Lander [which I just noticed I've not done any pics of, so I'll have to rectify that] I got a bit excited with the highlights on the Red Planet Basing and it's very orange. So what I did here was do more coats of Vermilion, a 3:1 [or even 4:1] Vermilion:Pumpkin and then extremely light Pumpkin on edges. That way it remained Red Planet and not orange.

So I was well chuffed, after about 2-3 hours I had pretty much done my board, now to do some Bonewhite flecks and then pick out the skulls and add in some shading in the cracks.