Time for the final part of the build! In the previous entry, I described building the cross and coating everything with Monster Mud. One thing left: painting! At the time of writing, only the cross is finished. As I said before, I'm working on five tombstones. When they're all finished, I'm gonna take them outside for a series of decent photos.
Painting
The base color for all tombstones is dark gray. I painted them all in a single color. Of course, this looks dull, so I didn't stop there. I mixed a bit of purple with the gray base color and painted large areas in this grayish-blue color. This already broke up the monotone gray quite nicely.
Next up: the text. In retrospect, I should have done this first, so with my other tombstones I'll start with the text. At first, I wanted to paint the letters gold, but I think the text would have been a bit difficult to read in a dark environment. Instead, I painted them black.
Since the letters are carved quite deep (too deep, actually, a few millimeters would have been better) I diluted some black paint to the consistency of cream, so it would be easier to reach every single spot inside them. Of course, working the paint inside the letters made lots of it end up around them, that's why I should have started with the letters in the first place. When the paint was dry, I took out my gray once more and cleaned up around the text. That's one of the best things about acrylic paint: you can overpaint it easily when mess up.
Finishing
At this point, the surface was gray with blueish-gray spots. It didn't really look like stone, though, so a bit more work was needed. I drybrushed some black and white all over the surface, and it makes a very big difference. Drybrushing is done by taking a little bit of paint on your brush, and then wiping most of it off again on a piece of paper. Next, you use the almost-dry brush to paint. It works especially well on a rough surface, because the raised parts get most paint, giving it a stone-like texture.
I drybrushed some white around the text, so it would stand out better. Next, all raised edges got some black. All other surfaces got a bit of black and white, giving the entire tombstone a nice texture. Even though you only put a tiny bit of paint on it, it makes a huge difference! The following two pictures demonstrate this nicely.
One more thing was needed to finish it. It still looked too clean! Tombstones that have been outside for a while collect a lot of dirt. I mixed equal parts of green and brown, and drybrushed this on spots where dirt and moss would be most likely to collect (corners, horizontal edges, ...). The result was quite impressive!
So that's it for my tombstones tutorial. I'm still working on the other four stones, and when everything is finished, I'm gonna take a series of photos for my gallery.
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