I wanted to quick share with you a very easy technique I recently discovered for doing street basing. For most of my Batman Miniatures Game models I have opted to put them on street bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures. These bases are super cool and I highly recommend them. However, with the recent bikes and a few other base sizes that Secret Weapon doesn’t have that I need for the game I had to look elsewhere for techniques.

I will note, this is my take on a technique that was shared to me by someone else. The key to the technique was a can of spray Krylon Stone Fine Texture Granite Paint. With very little effort, you can really turn out a large number of very custom looking bases. You will need a few other materials though to complete the look.

  • Krylon Stone Fine Texture Granite Spray Paint
  • Masking Tape
  • A few bases you want to be street themed
  • An Off White like 09090 Reaper Misty Gray
  • A Vibrant Yellow like 29808 Reaper Golden Yellow
  • Optional: Pigments (to dirty up the pavement)
  • Optional: Street trash (let’s face it, city streets are never clean)

First thing you want to do is to prep your base for painting. I recommend using your standard primer on the base, but for my first one I skipped this and it worked just fine. You do not want to mount the model to the base until after you paint the base, which may be a problem for some of you. Next, you want to tape off the outside of the base with masking tape, effectively covering any surface area you do not want the stone spray to go (such as the beveled edges).

Once prepped, go ahead and spray the base with the Krylon Granite Spray Paint. Coat it well enough that no base or primer shows though. It’s really important to use the fine texture here, as it will give you a very nice texture similar to stone roads and the granite has a nice color to it in my opinion that makes it look a lot like concrete pavement. Then set it aside to dry.

Once dry, remove the tape. The results should look something similar to above.

At this point, go ahead and paint on any street markings you want on the base. For my first one, I painted on lines like the model would be at a crosswalk for pedestrians. You can do whatever you might want. Yellow and white are the most common for street lines, but I find that using a bright white here doesn’t look natural and a grayish white is much better. In my test I hand brushed the lines on using a straight edge, but if I had a large number of bases to do I would definitely look at making a few quick templates for my airbrush and using those to great effect.

It’s useful to use a straight edge to help ensure the lines are straight. Alternatively, I could have taped the lines off and airbrushed these easily enough.

Now that is done, it’s a good time to dress it up so that the base has a little more going on then just concrete. I use pigments to weather my bases and dirty them up. The key with using pigments in this way is to go look at what the dirt looks like from where you are trying to depict. As a default, I go with the following for streets, all three are from Secret Weapon: Dark Earth, Green Earth, and Dark Yellow. I layer these up typically with Dark Earth going in deep cracks or just lightly getting brushed onto a project like this. A little pigment will go a long way here, so do be careful. Less is more.

The final step to really making these bases pop will be to add a little character like street trash. A little street trash, like a newspaper clipping or a beer bottle, will really help break up the flat space of the concrete while at the same time help give the model that will sit on the base a greater feel that it is in the game world you are playing on whether that is a modern setting or something in a sci-fi future.

If you try this out, let us know on the WiscoDice Facebook group. We love hearing about your hobby just like we share ours with you.