WARGAME COLOR SET. STONE AND ROCK EFFECTS.

Rock and stone on a diorama

The gray of stone has a surprisingly wide spread, and a single universal tone turns a boulder into a flat mass with no depth. The four shades in this package solve the problem with a range from graphite through a dark gray and a stone gray to an off-white, so that on one piece of rock you show shadow, surface and sunlit edge at once.

The order of the steps tends to be the reverse of the one used on figures. First comes the dark tone over the whole area, after drying a thinned wash into the crevices, and only then the two lighter shades with a dry brush across the grain. The dry brush matters more here than precision, because the edges are meant to be lightened at random; regularity gives away immediately that this is a casting.

Besides rockwork and bases, these tones suit paving, concrete obstacles, the ruins of walls and the stone parts of statues. The off-white also works as a quick coat of dust on the underside of vehicles, if you thin it enough.

Technical summary: four jars, each holding 17 ml, a water-thinnable acrylic that dries matte, suitable for brush and airbrush. Loose materials for building terrain are not included; the paints serve to color them and tie them together.

The grain of the surface decides more than a precisely mixed shade. On a smooth casting even the best chosen gray looks like plastic. A fine texture made with sand, sifted earth or just a stippled brush gives the light something to catch on, and only then do the lighter tones begin to read as real stone. Do not skimp on preparing the surface, then, because it decides the result before the first coat of paint.