Getting Terrain Done Fast - Hobby Cheating 287

In this Hobby Cheating Tutorial, I take you through my methods for getting good looking terrain done fast. Strap in, as this one is a whirlwind of techniques, but in the end, terrain makes a good project to relax and just sling some paint around. Hope you enjoy!

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Social Media
Twitter: @warhammerweekly
Instagram: VincentVenturella

[sodaaddict]

Vince is dressed nicer to go outside and prime than I've dressed since March 2020

[jordivermeulen]

"I have lots of videos on doing streaking." Vince Venturella, 2021.

[ProbablyZach]

The burnt umber joke happened so fast and was an absolute belter! I just wanted to give appreciation to that! Great video too :)

[RockSplitter]

This radiates "So anyway, I started blasting."

[FirstLast-ksvm]

You know things are serious when Vince busts out the "Look, fam..."

[proxytag]

I'm such a massive fan of painting terrain as a way to refresh my creative juices and just into a flow state. I tend to do my metallics before the oil wash and use far brighter colours than I would on models that I want it to go with and that ties them all together. I've got two old gw pots with oil washes of paynes grey and a mix of browns just for when I need to do terrain

[alfyb]

8:20: “we could stop here, but we won’t”.
By now, I’m looking for these!

[scottytedrow]

I’ve referenced this video about 15 times over the past couple of years. Thanks so much for all of your valuable lessons. 🙏

[ellebea]

Fantastic as always Vince! I'd be interested in seeing what you could do with some AOS / fantasy / medieval type terrain, a different beast indeed!

[dekai]

I loooove your results! Definitely helped me finally decide on how to tackle my own terrain.
As a side note: I realised that the name of a certain manufacturer of oil paints seems to pose a challenge to my non-German-speaking fellow hobbyists. Instead of "AB-telong" I seem to hear frequently, it's pronounced "ab-TAI-lung" instead. And that's the end of this service announcement.

[rakonc]

Hey! I'm from Hungary, i don't own a drybrush, i don't have the living space to set up a booth, i don't have a yard to use rattlecans, i paint exclusively with brushes. I also don't have access to craft stores, there are some rather expensive artist stores for canvas painting and regular hardware stores where any kind of gardening type material comes in 20kg bags. Usually ordering most of these things online will double their cost due to shipping.

This is not a complaint though, just because conditions aren't ideal is no reason not do something, its more to highlight that "all these things that are around us" doesn't work in every context.

But! I do love painting terrain regardless, and i thought i would share my technique here. I started out by watching a GW guide with washes that put me off of painting any terrain for years but about half a year ago a friend of mine gave me half his garden of morr set. I didn't really know what to do with it, but i really liked how it looked, so i started looking and i found a video where a dude took a black primed wall section, put a generous amount of medium grey paint on a huge flat brush, dabbed some of it off and swirled it around the wall. He didnt dab it into all the recesses and the resut due to the not completely flat brick wall was some amazingly varied texture. He then went in with a light grey, dry brushed it and for his part he was done.


I wasn't though. I needed some big brushes so went to the artist store where they sold these black cow ear-hair brushes, they were not cheap but not GW expensive and were very soft, so i got some and i picked up a brush from the hardware store that was designed to touch up wall painting (so still a rather large brush). I dabbed it into some Abaddon Black and worked it into the recesses and everything. You might point out that GW paint is expensive, but its actually less so due to being available right here and it took less than a pot to fully paint the set. Then i applied the technique and got the same results, i kinda liked it, the metal bits, skulls, ground parts and small plants around it gave it some variety.

So i ordered an administratum building cause i mostly play 40k and did the same thing, however this time due to not painting all the trims (bleh) i didn't get so much variety. I looked at my washes and almost threw up from the thought. Instead i got out some drab green and brown paints, took the smaller cow brush, wiped it decently and dabbed on some dirt and moss, which was not enough, it kinda made it worse by removing some definition so i needed more chaos. I picked up some Skrag brown and another orange and i dabbed it all over the underlying metallic railing that i did paint a steel color. The machines on the walls i painted bronze though so i picked up some Nyhilak oxyde and smushed it all over, at this time intentionally streaking it to double as both leaked out cooland and verdigris. This was too stark though so i dabbed on some dark brown in and around them like grease which very nicely muted things down (also went back and did it a bit on the orange bits). For one final touch i dabbed Abaddon black all over the blown away parts to make them look charred.


I thought i would share this, regardless if you thought it was blasphemy, cause i strongly think that not having the best tools available should not be that strong an inhibiting factor by itself and yes, you do have to scale your expactations accordingly, but i'm fine with mine. Hope you don't mind!

[ellisowendaniel]

This is perfect timing for me as I'm just about starting a Horus Heresy board build. Thanks for taking the time to make such an informative video for what is a daunting project.

[pigeons-in-a-trench-coat]

lobbing the Agrax 'No, throw that away' the comedic timing!

[gorrbaczow]

Your terrain videos are just the best. So much good advise. Keep it up!

[lordbravura]

Love the video! Helped me paint my Warcry pretty quickly. Also i found out that orange contrast, direct from the pot make for a great rust effect.

[stephenspackman]

The one place I thought perhaps you could have listened more to your own advice—fighting the impulse to regularity—is that the lower floor seems to follow the pattern of the upper floor, when I think my sense of ruined buildings is that I expect more damage—and perhaps more adventurous greenery?—at the top, but more staining and streaking at the bottom, especially in and across that stone area immediately below the upper floor.
That said, utterly inspirational as always! Thanks for not stopping in those places where, well, you could stop, but…! :)

[Fagerlund_]

Great tips! One way to potentially skip the airbrush step that I find very useful for terrain is to use two differently coloured rattle cans; one that you spray on from below (preferably darker) and one from above (preferably lighter). I find that depending on what colours you chose you'll get a pretty nice transition going that way which is way good enough for terrain once you've drybrushed and washed it.

[buzzedaldrin]

I had to do a ton of these really quickly and felt similar about picking out all the metal bits and came up with this method.

I primed with brown and then used a dry brush to pick out all the metal bits, sacrificing accuracy for speed at this stage. I then applied some chipping medium to all the metal parts and also randomly to other sections of the buildings. Then I sprayed a coat of dark grey over the entire building, applied another layer of chipping medium, and then some lighter grey to the intended grey sections. I then used a bit of wet sponge to re-expose the metal and some of the brown and darker grey and then finished by applying some washes and some final scratches/rust.

The end result is obviously not as nice as using Vince's method but gives a reasonable result in exchange for minimal brushwork which might be handy to you if you have to mass produce a bunch of these at short notice.

[tobiaskrause]

Really like the look of the finished building!
Could you provide a rough list of the colors used (I saw Ice Yellow, Shadow Brown, some pigments, Vallejo Steel).
Many thanks in advance and maybe some more terrain videos.

[matthewwerner]

I have been sitting on my original Kill Team starter box terrain like this for years due to decision paralysis. I have painted a few walls to test schemes - never been happy. Then Vince comes along, apron waiving in the wind like a cape to save the ever loving day out of this terrain.