Sandbags

                                                                                                                                                                                                      


The following pictures show my self made sandbags for my 28 mm Miniatures. I sculpted every singel sandbag individual out of the modelling clay ProCreate. This method is very time consumy, but I think it was worth the work.
I did 8 pieces in total. They could be combinated in many ways to built different sandbag enplacements. The shown Miniatures are German Late War Grenadiers from Artizan (28 mm). A friend of mine, Stefan Niehues (Masquarade miniatures) has built a silicon mould for me and so I can cast copies in resin.

Work in Progrss - just sculpted:

the painted pieces:

the painted pieces combinated to some different enplacements:

and some quick shots showing them as a defence in my cabinet:

Step-by-Step painting tutorial

I painted a second set of sandbags recently and took the chance to take some step-by-step pictures in the process. There are only a few simple steps affordable to paint the sandbags to look good and realistic.


The sandbags are cast in a high quality light beige resin. After washing the models and letting them dry the first step was to prime them. I used a sprycan and gave the models a thin coat of white primer (GW Skull White).







In a second step the whole model got a heavy dark brown wash. Because I sculpted and textured each sandbag individually this simple and fast step brings the structure and the details out very well. 

The next picture shows two pieces after a wash with Devlan Mud (Games Workshop)




The next models got a wash with heaviely thinned brown acrylic paints. This works best when you add a little drop of dishwasher to the mix because this reduces the tenson of the water and the wash will better flow.




In the next picture you can compare the different different results done by the two washes. The left one was done with the thinned acrylic colour, the right got a wash with Devlan Mud. As a basis for the next steps the results of one washe is as good as the other.

You could even end the painting process at this stage and the models would look o.k. on the gaming board.






Then I carefully drybrushed the models with a mix of beige and white. The wooden part got a coat of dark brown before this step and looked good after the drybrushing too.






I intended to give the models a bit more deep and gave them again a wash. This time I used a thinned down Devlan Mud (1 paint : 2 water).





The final step was to paint the sculpted sand where the sacks are damaged with some sand coloured dry pigments. I used the pigmentfixer from MIG and applied the wet mix with an old brush. After drying the result look very realistic.