Making a Standard Base

Today's post is the result of a mini painting 'face-palm' moment when I realise I have missed an opportunity and messed something up as a result. A couple of weeks ago I got all my North Africa models out to photograph and realised pretty quickly that there was a significant variation in the bases from one unit to another. Its not the end of the world, but it does look rather odd and slightly ruins the look of the whole army when presented together like this.

Way back when I started this project I made a point of deciding in advance how I wanted my bases to look. I decided on the graininess of the sand mixture I would use and the exact colour palette I would employ to paint them. I took several pictures and noted down the particulars in my painting notebook, with the idea that this alone would help me to maintain consistency between my units. The problem is that although I am sticking to the same colour formula for painting my bases there is still a lot of variation from one platoon to another.

I pulled out several bases to compare and it was quickly clear that this variation is probably just down to how hard I dry brush the highlights. So although the base colouring is consistent if I am heavy handed with the Ivory highlights I get significantly lighter bases. Obvious really but its an inconsistency I haven't noticed until now (stupid, stupid, stupid!).

The solution of course is pretty obvious, I need to make a 'reference base' that I can keep aside and use as a Standard to compare against when I do new bases in future. I should have done this at the beginning, but its a lesson learned and a mistake I won't make again.