Bit of a mini-tutorial on how I went about making the base for a small figure vignette. This will be the edge of a desert highway with a crash barrier.
The core of this is 40mm insulation foam, cut to size with my Proxxon Thermocut. A piece of cork, cut from an Ikea dinner place mat, is roughly torn by hand to create the tarmac edge, then fixed firmly to the top of the foam using white glue.
I like my bases to have a clean look, almost like they are carved from the scenery. So, when fully dry, the base sides were clad with 1mm plasticard, again fixed with white glue, creating a smooth surround. It does take quite a while to do this, as you have to do one side at a time and leave it to dry overnight. It is also important to keep everything square and clean and fill the plasticard joints to ensure they don't show. You can use a little Tamiya extra-thin to glue the cladding corners together, but be careful, this can affect some types of foam.
Personally, I find the texture a bit too subtle for my taste, so I added some more fine sand just to bulk it out a bit. I also added some AK Gen3 Ash Grey acrylic paint (11024) just to lighten up the colour. I'll be painting it anyway, but the colour is very dark out of the tub.
This was then smoothed out with a wet spatula to try and get a smooth-ish surface. It is a good idea to distress it slightly with a sponge, then go over it again with the spatula. This creates minor surface imperfections and adds a little more texture.
The ground part of the base has a small triangle of self-adhesive plastering joint tape applied to act as a key for the mud paste.
VMS Smartmud was then applied to the corner, ensuring it is pushed firmly into the mesh below. Again, I made sure to cover the top of the plasticard sides.
The texture was then enhanced slightly using a rolled up piece of kitchen foil to create some random imperfections. You can also press a suitable small rock into the surface to achieve this. Just depends on the look you want.
Whilst still wet, fine soil and small stones were sprinkled over the mud and moved around to where they looked the most pleasing.
You can see here, I also placed the crash barrier support in position, to make sure it blended into its' surroundings.
When happy with the layout, the ground area was then soaked with Mr.Colour Levelling Thinner (to break down the surface tension), then VMS Sand and Ballast Freeze was dripped over to fix everything in place.
The crash barrier support was removed at this stage, so it didn't get fixed into the ground just yet; we can always blend this in later.
All that remains is to let everything dry thoroughly - usually 12-24 hours - and we can move on to the painting.
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