What's On My Desk: Custom Bases

This week I'm kicking off a new feature that shines a bit of light on what crosses my desk on a weekly basis. As a professional commission painter, I see a wide variety of projects, week in and week out, and have the fantastic opportunity to try new hobby techniques and styles.  "What's On My Desk" is a glimpse of projects and a look at work in progress pieces, skipping lengthy tutorials, and looking at the models before completion.  Through this feature I'm excited to be giving you a glimpse at what I'm doing on a weekly basis and share those experiences with you! 

This week, I've been hard at work basing a number of Freeblades models.  For the necromancer above, I wanted to give him an imposing base, where he was placed looming above some jagged rocks.  There is going to be a heavy glow effect coming from the rocks, radiating up to create a sinister under-light on the necromaner.

This Celtic warrior-seer held a ton of opportunities for a really cool basing.  In the end, I decided upon an open book and a couple of potion jars, surrounding him with the baubles a wizard might need while slinging spells.

Another of my favorite projects of late is this Arabian merchant.  I wanted to go outside of the box for this one, and instead of basing with rocks, grass, and the like, I went with what a desert city dweller might be walking over on a daily basis.  For this guy it's a Persian rug draped over a sandstone floor.

For this Grush, described as a porcupine-bear in the Freeblades universe, I wanted to put him on a mountainous base, reminiscent of a dry slate creek bed.  To do this I scoured a... of all things, a dry creek bed for slate rock.  I found these rocks during a harvest expedition (a rather lofty name for roaming around with a hammer and plastic bags while banging on rocks) and broke them into smaller pieces before applying them to the base.  I'll go through the process of finding and shaping rocks in a later post.

The rest of what's on my desk this week is less of what's on it, and more of where it is.  This last weekend my girlfriend and I completed our new work studio!

Now I have a space for completed models and WIP's.  As you can see I have a lot of work cut out for me, but the customer comes first and since I have a full commission schedule these guys are going to have to wait a bit longer..

We even have a small communal space for playing games, eating, and hanging out.  Note the Star Trek Generations movie poster on the back wall.  I uncovered this gem while cleaning an old room.  It's about 17 years old and still in great condition!  It had to go in the new room, as a child I was a huge fan of the Next Generation TV show, and I still remember being pumped to go see the movie in theaters.  What's cooler than a movie with your favorite captain, Picard?  One with both Kirk and Picard!

That's it for this week and what's on/where my desk is, stop by and check out what I'm working on next time!