Basing for desert

I suddenly remembered that I had one sample mini from Foundry that could be used in my upcoming posse of Wild West Show for In Her Majesty's Name. I slapped in some paint, but started working on creating a basing theme for the posse. As their numbers stay lowish, I thought I'd go on and do a bit extra, and try new stuff out.

In the first picture you can see how well Fimo sculpey cracks to imitate rocks. The leftmost rock is a test, I have plaster moulds to make stones, and seems baked sculpey can be used as well. I also made a cow skull from greenstuff.

Woodland Scenic rock moulds

Here is is the first stage, sculpey is glued to the base and some sand is added to stop the monotony in the base edges. The sand is then soaked with PVA + water mixture.

And here is the finished base in the middle. The leftmost is still in progress, I need to add some lighter colours to it. The rightmost one is a testbench, I wanted to create a fast way to make these, so I needed to try few different methods out.

 ...and here is the dude attached to his base. I just noticed that Army Painter antishine dulls the colours terribly and removes contrast. I have been struggling with NMM, and this seems to be one reason. I have been pretty satisfied with some miniatures, but they seem bland after a while which I have been wondering. I need to try Testor's dullcoat if it preserves the contrast better, damn..
The cow skull is a bit big, but not disturbingly.