One of the most prolific creators of free downloadable mini designs is Miguel Zavala. He’s the guy who’s famous for 3d modeling every single creature in the 5th Edition Monster Manual, along with many of the entries in Volo’s guide, individual adventures, and more. He makes all his work available for free via his Thingiverse account and other sites, but he also has a Patreon which I highly recommend for anyone into printing minis for D&D. Five bucks a month helps keep him making models and gets you access to all his creations alphabetized and searchable on a Google drive.

I recently printed one of Miguel’s black dragon models, and I decided that instead of a generic rocky bases like I made for my blue dragons, I wanted to depict this one in its natural habitat. For a black dragon, that’s a swamp or a jungle.

Building the base

The dragon is an adult, which in D&D means size “huge” and a 3 inch base. The mini itself has a front paw raised, so I thought I’d build a rock or soil formation up to that to give the impression the creature was striding along.

To start, I grabbed a 3″ wooden disc and broke up some bits of cork board. I stacked the cork a few different ways, test fitting with the dragon in place, and when I found a layout I liked, I drew rough outlines around where the dragon’s paws would rest – I wanted to avoid getting material there so the mini would be glued directly to the surface.

I glued the cork into place…

… and when dry, I painted on some white glue. I didn’t cover every surface, but rather did most of the lower part of the base and a scattering of spots on the raised areas where I thought debris would naturally accumulate.

A dip into a mix of sand, grout, and mixed size gravel…

… followed by a few drops of about a 50/50 water/isopropyl mix to activate & set the grout, and I had a workable base ready to decorate.

At this point I could have proceeded but I decided I didn’t like the abrupt transitions between the layers of the cork. On a larger terrain scale it wouldn’t bother me because it would allow lots of area for positioning minis, but as a bit of raised land in a swampy area, I felt it looked too artificial.

Though I’ve used spackle successfully on a few projects, I’m leery of relying on it because I’ve heard a fair amount lately about how brittle it can become. However, I had some on hand left over from when I used vast quantities of it on my Wild Sheep Chase hut/yurt topper things. So I mixed it with PVA to hopefully add some strength and durability, then took an old brush and started smearing it on around the layered areas.

While the goo was still wet I sprinkled a little more gravel around it to add some texture to the newly spackled areas. After drying, I gave it a coat of black spray primer.

Swamping it up

I gave the whole piece heavy dry-brushings of dark grey and dark brown, followed by a dark brown wash. Then light dry-brushes of tan and light gray, followed lastly by a watered-down dark green (I think it was Army Painter Commando Green, but I’ve lost my scribbled notes) dabbled in the low-lying areas.

Next it was time to add some green. I brushed on some white glue again where I wanted there to be grassy growth and sprinkled on some dark grass flocking and a piece or two of clump foliage. A couple of bits of pre-made grass and flower tufts were glued in place as well, along with a skull I’d lopped off of a dollar-store toy skeleton.

I also wanted to create some tall reeds. I’ve seen these made by cutting hairs off an old brush and standing them in a dab of glue; once it dries, they can be painted and glued into place. So armed with some PVA, a sheet of parchment paper, and a few clumps cut off of an old scrub brush, I set out to make my own swamp-reed tufts.

Well, uh… let’s just say that the poor photo quality is not the only or even primary reason that the above doesn’t look much like tufts of reeds. Still, I was able to salvage a little of the above mess and make a couple of tall green-and-brown stalks.

When all this was done and the dragon itself fixed into place, I paused to take a few pictures before I potentially damaged it by trying to add water.

Draining the swamp (by accident!)

For a while now I’ve been wanting to mess around with doing some water scenery, and this seemed like a good place for it. I toyed with the idea of just layering on some gloss varnish to create a swamp water effect, and thought about using epoxy or clear glue, but in the end I decided to try out some Vallejo Still Water.

I wanted to try for a standing water effect all around the lower areas of the base, to give the appearance that the beast was wading through shallow swamp. I ran masking tape all around the rim of the base to have a closed-off area to hold the liquid in place, intending to gradually pour in several thin layers to build up to maybe a 1/4″ depth at most. I mixed a very small amount of dark green paint into a little plastic cup with a small amount of the Vallejo liquid, poured it into my tape-lined bowl, and walked away to have dinner while it dried.

I returned to find most of the “water” leaked around or through the tape, coating the paper underneath. I re-taped, added a little bead of hot glue around where the tape met the base on the underside, and poured in some more… to achieve the same result.

It was getting late and I decided the wet look from the bit of liquid which had adhered to the base actually looked pretty good. So my swamp was a little more shallow than I’d planned, but in retrospect I think maybe having a side view of standing water might look unnatural anyway, so I’m happy with the final results.