Easy basing?

Can any of my fellow denizens of lustria give me any tips/tricks or even full guides on how to make simple but effective and awesome looking bases? Currently I just paint them, but I really want to make them pop!

 

On normal units I just put some liquid school glue and cover the entire base, thickness about 0.5-1mm / 0.0196850394 - 0.0393700787 inches (ayeah go metric system!)

The i dip the base in sand I've collected at the beach, let it dry, paint the side and the sand with Dryad Bark.

When the paint is dry I smear some patches with glue and sprinkle flock-grass over them and maybe add some tufts.

That's what I do and I think this is pretty standard, though it looks rather bland. (I'm lazy and you were asking for simple)

Glue -> Sand -> Paint -> Add flock and/or tuft -> Done!

Exhibit A:




There's heaps of ways to make bases more interesting, green stuff, cork from coasters that you rip and real branches and stones. If you google/altavista/yahoo/bing I know there's a bunch of good guides and inspiration.

 

Wow, the model and base looks awesome! Will definitely try that out with my old blood on cold one!

 

What he said, except I would recommend you go for the higher grade white glue,
go for the wood glue or the better grade white glue, the "Skool glue" version
is a little too water soluble and has gotten me in trouble a few times,
then I later applied a wash to the base.

Ps. I think I have some basing tutorials in my blog somewhere ..?
PPs. it was on page 31 of my blog.

 

If you want "fast", I recommend texture paints. You just apply them really thick (around 1mm thick if not more), let them mostly dry, but before they completely dry, attack them with a toothpick or a needle and just stir them up on the base to add a bit more depth.

Then you can just wash, drybrush and apply some grass and it looks pretty good and is super fast.

GW texture paints are massively overpriced. Because you use it so thick, you'll go through several pots to do an army (I used GW ones for my Orcs and Goblins and I think I'd only get about 1 or 2 regiments per pot). However other people sell texture paints a lot cheaper, like Vallejo.

 

I'm not sure about spray on texture paint, never used that myself, but the brush on texture paint is a lot faster than sand + glue IMO, and can look reasonably good if you do it the way I said above (lay down a 1mm thick layer, allow it to partially dry, then stir with a needle or toothpick to create more texture). Using brush on texture paint I based an Orc and Goblin army in a weekend (could have done it in a day, but figured I'd give it a night to dry before drybrushing )

Somewhere I wrote a review of texture paints which I can't find anymore, but here's some examples of using texture paint (this was grey texture paint, black wash, drybrush light grey). Use a thick brush to apply (I use a 1cm wide flat tip usually) and it only takes a few seconds per model to apply, one it's dry, it's a few seconds to apply a wash, once that's dry, a few seconds to drybrush and apply and static grass.