This is a pretty short tutorial that shows how to make a dry lake bed for a miniature base. You will need a few supplies, but they are pretty cheap.

The first step is to make the underlying lake bed. Cover your base with aluminum foil and put drop some Sculpey on top. Make a flat area and, if the figure is near the bank of he lake, a small rise. The lake bed should be smooth. Remove the foil with the Sculpey and bake to cure.

The next step is to make a thin, flat piece of Sculpey to cover the lake bed. Cure this in the oven and lay it on top of the lake bed with some sculpey in between. Use the sculping tool to crack the top layer and make jagged pieces that are stuck to the bottom with Sculpey "glue". Bake in the oven again to cure the whole thing. When done, test the pieces and add super glue to bond loose chunks.

The color of the clay depends on the region. For the example below, I chose a desert area with tan clay with little iron content. This was painted with a thin wash of a burnt sienna and raw sienna mix (GW scorched brown and Snakebite Leather alternatively). This was then drybrushed with a mixture of the siennas with white. The whole thing can then be glued to your base plate (Fig.1).

Figure 1. Razheem on a dry lake bed.