The first photo on this page shows the base coated with Gesso and ready for some groundwork texture. It's sitting in a plastic tray that some sandwiches or snacks came in. This makes a good, disposable platform to paint and sprinkle texture over.
You can speed up the drying of the Gesso with a hair dryer if you want but I sprinkled some powdered concrete patch into it while it was still wet. I "spritzed" some water onto the powder to make it set and added more powder until I got a good variation in texture. I used the hair dryer at this point and the process took only a few minutes.
I like using the concrete patch because the powder is not consistently fine and it dries hard very quickly. Like the other components to this project it's cheap and easy to find.
The third photo shows the line up of aerosol paints I used to finish the base. These paints have a slight satin sheen to them so I added a final coat of clear matte Krylon after they had dried for about 20 minutes.
I sprayed the two highlight colors at an angle to create a shadow side to the small rocks. It gives the texture a lot more depth. I used the shadow color along the lower edge of the base to give it a little more interest than a solid color.
This process took about 5 minutes.
The fourth photo shows the completed base mounted on a wood plaque. I sprayed the wood with the same colors and then scrubbed some black shoe polish into the finish to give it a little depth and a slight sheen. This step only took about 10 minutes.
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