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FOUNDATION / STONE
Traditional stone
A forgiving introduction to recess shading and raised stone textures.
Miniature painting simulator
A little pigment. A different possibility. Explore what happens between the first coat and the final highlight.
Choose a specimen. Build a recipe. See exactly where the story changes.
Saved recipes stay on this device. Shared links carry the recipe, without an account.
The order is the experiment. Your current recipe sits beside an alternate timeline, with wash and drybrush swapped.
↔ Rotate the workbench model to compare both from the same angle.
Look beneath the surface. Every technique leaves a different kind of mark.
A primer establishes the foundation. The basecoat blends over it; a wash concentrates in cavities; drybrushing catches exposed facets. Moving a wash after a highlight can darken that highlight again.
Start an experiment ↗Flood the model with wash, observe the lost contrast, then restore your previous recipe. On a real miniature, wick away wet pools with a clean brush; once dry, carefully rebuild the base color.
Three starting points. Make them your own.
A forgiving introduction to recess shading and raised stone textures.
A dark-to-light foundation under a translucent blue basecoat.
A bright value sketch beneath a light jade glaze.
A few useful principles, made tangible at the workbench.
Black keeps recesses dark; white makes transparent colors brighter. Zenithal is a dark foundation with a lighter upper surface. Opaque basecoats conceal much of this underpainting. Try the Zenithal blue recipe.
Start an experiment ↗A wash increases recess shading but may also tint raised surfaces. Drybrushing after a wash restores bright texture. Reverse the order in the timeline to see why highlights can become muted.
Start an experiment ↗Start with dark primer, drybrush a light value sketch, then apply a translucent color. Keep the basecoat opacity low enough for the sketch to show through. Use the Slapchop jade recipe as a starting point.
Start an experiment ↗Plan a batch before the brushes come out. This is a simple estimate; drying and setup time are additional.
No. Pigment chemistry, drying, dilution and brush handling vary. Test a spare miniature before committing to an army.
Save stores the experiment locally. Export downloads a JSON recipe. Share puts the recipe in the URL fragment; anyone receiving that link can reproduce it.
Yes. Try the workbench without an account. The models are original procedural forms designed to explain layers, rather than scanned commercial miniatures.