I started by drawing out the terrain with pencil. This is for the large land and water masses. The bigger details of the world. You may want to just do this freely or you may want to do some sketches on paper first.
Now seal and start the main colors with something. You can use a white paint, or mod podge. I used a product called Gesso. It is an artist material. It will seal the globe and it takes color, paint and clay very well.
I painted the whole globe in the basic colors that it would end up. I did this by mixing small amounts of color to the gesso. This is only an initial painting so we can see how everything looks and the various terrain features like oceans, forest, desert, glaciers and more. We will eventually cover most of this up.
Once the paint has dried we are going to use something called Paperclay to make the three dimensinional terrain on the globe. It is a soft and workable clay that air dries. And it holds detail reasonably well.
I applied a layer of clay to all of the land masses. The oceans and waters will get no clay.
At this point it becomes a whole lot of fun. Adding mountains and other terrain features. Notice the river. Having clay right up to the banks of the river gives it a great look.
Use a variety of tools to get some nice terrain variance. Here I am using a paint brush with firm bristles to poke at the clay and cause a tundra like look composed of lots of little dots.
And here I added thick sections of clay then cut away the edges to form a glacier.
Let' Paint it!
The type of terrain that you want will dictate the colors that you use but I have a few really good tips for you. Start with the lighter areas and paint them first. This will give you a more natural look.
If you paint the dark colors first and then try to add the light colors it is difficult to achieve a realistic look.
Here you can see I started with the glaciers at the northern pole. They are white with just a little bit of very light blue. And there is a light blue ice melt around them.
Here you can see I have made a lot of progress. After the whites I moved on to the yellows then light browns of the deserts. Then I added the light greens and finally the dark greens that are around the water and riverways.
Okay, this next picture shows the painting almost done. I still have detail work to do but there is a couple of things I wanted to show you. First off in this picture you can see the peak of a mountain way off to the left. Remember that high mountains are snow peaked so put a dab of white right on the top! And I also have a volcano that I have tipped in red. And the other line shows an important technique. Notice how the greens and light browns slowly blend together. It isn't an area of green right next to an area of brown. They slowly fade into each other. Try to use this technique. It makes for more realistic looking terrain.
 Ok, We are done with the globe. Let's finish off this project!
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