For my ongoing Cartel/bank robbery guys projekt for Spectre Operations I decidet to do something new for the bases.

I wanted to give them the intention of standing inside a bank (or possibly the hacienda of an enemy cartel, who knows;). The bases will get a nice marble floor scattered with some fitting things like shells and bank notes.

For those of you who want to replicate the effect I tried to achieve I wrote a step by step guide on how I achieved it.  So lets start.

step 1:

Actually thats alredy step 2, but I forgot to take a picture. At first I filled the bases with Milliput and sanded them down to get an even surface. Priming them black is an importand step as this technique dont work with bright primers. The black primer will later be visible through the layers.

step 2:

Now on to the first layer of paint. I used a mixture of Skintone, VMC Iraqui Sand and white. The colour should be thinned down really well, you dont want it to be opaque. I used a big brush and painted on big strokes which flow in the same direction. Its important that the brush strokes are visible after the colour dries out since that will give you the marble effect in the end. I repeated this step 2 times with even more thinned down paint and sometimes did not covered the whole base. Experiment a bit and consult reference images.

step 3:

I added black to the base colour and used that mixture to paint on lightning strike like lines. Painting them ad the border of bright and dark parts of the paint below gives a nice marble grain effect. After that I just refined it with even thinner and brighter lines.

step 4:

At this stage I painted the edge of the bases and some parts of the dark lines.

step 5:

Now the marble part is complete. I cleaned up the edge of the bases with black and sealed the bases of with a varnish.  To indicate the arc of vision of the miniatures I painted a 45degree red arc on the front. The  base rim then got a varnish with AK ultra matte and the marble part got a gloss coat (gw ardcoat).

step 6:

Well that part was fun. I printed out some really small dollar notes and cut a 0,5 mm steelwire to small pieces representing bullet shells. After gluing them to the bases I used yellow ochre and white to paint the shells giving them metal like look.

And thats it. I think there is much room to improve but for my first try with marble I‘am really happy with the result.

I hope you enjoy cheers.