Friday Quick Tip: Mix Oil and Water

A little late, but here's this week's Quick Tip. I've been working on terrain for BoLSCon, so my garage and dining room is full of all sorts of 40k buildings. Since I'm producing so many, I'm doing just a basic sand texture on the 12" x 12" building bases. The sand has a decent variety of texture, but still goes on pretty uniform and I wanted a little something to break it up. But since I've got about 25 in this batch, I wanted a technique that would still be quick to do and paint.

The solution came to me by accident: using oil in the watered down glue. Here's how it starts, with a basic foot-square hardboard covered in watered down Wood Glue. Make sure you thin it with some water since that will make it easier to brush on and add to the oil effect.



Now once you've got a nice layer of glue, spray on the oil. I used WD-40, but any spray oil should do.


By varying the distance you spray and the thinness of the glue, you get different results in the final product. Now douse the board with sand.



The sand not only sticks to the glue for texture, but does not stick to the places with the oil. And since a whole bunch of sand is really absorbent and drying, it wicks away the oil as well. If you've ever use kitty litter or oil dri on a motor oil spill, you're familiar with how this works.



The top pictures was thicker glue, which gave a more cratered and pitted surface. The bottom picture was of thinner glue and you can see the oil completely displaced the glue in some places. Use this technique to create small craters (airbursting fragmentation projector anyone?) or with additional paint for small lava or disease pools.

Anyone have quick tips for working with sand? By the way, is anyone going to BoLSCon?