Hobby Thoughts: How to enjoy painting miniatures.

I don’t claim to be a great painter. In fact I am perpetually reminded I'm not given the award-winning abilities of my roommate Byron. His basic line troops wipe the floor with my fanciest character models.

A phoenix guard model from my roommate on the left. A warpriest character I slaved over on the right.

Talk about a slice of humble pie right? Yet I have, over the course of the past year, come to truly enjoying painting as my favorite aspect of the hobby. This is something that was absolutely not the case for many many years, and I thought writing article about the changes in equipment, technique, and attitude I've undergone to reach this point this would be a great idea for anyone else looking to enjoy their time with the brush a little more.

From "I hate this shit" in 2010 to "I'm having a blast!" in 2015.

This article assumes that painting is a priority for you to some capacity within the hobby. Whether it’s painting a high-quality force or just hitting a “three colours and based” minimum for a tournament you may find something of interest here.

Equipment

1. Know what type of paints your buying and whether they align with your painting goals. There is no such thing as brand loyalty when it comes to paints due to the variance across each range. Experiment with different brands and see what you like, check out what others recommend. Of relevance to this is a personal revelation I've had recently in the difference between what I will call "tabletop" paint designed to have good coverage and go on as a basecoat easily with a harder protective finish, versus what I'll call "advanced" paints that might have a high pigment count but are not designed to be very opaque or cover effectively. 
• Examples of "tabletop" paints include Vallejo Game Color, Army Painter, and most Games Workshop paints, all of these are designed to basecoat smoothly and stand up to the rigors of handling produced by typical gaming. Of particular note here are Games Workshop's "Base" range and Vallejo's "Extra Opaque", both of which are formulated for maximum coverage.
• Examples of "advanced" paints include Vallejo Model Color and Scale 75 paints. Both tend to cover poorly despite their vibrant colors, but because they are not very opaque they produce beautiful blends far more easily then having to really thin out a paint that wants to cover everything.
2. If you are painting anything bigger than a skirmish-game sized force then do yourself a favor and buy an airbrush. Even if it’s a cheap set up you will get back hours of your life through simple techniques like colored base coats and/or blocking out colors on basic line troops. I can't see myself painting anything without one.
3. Get a good traditional brush. I haven’t really implemented this myself yet as I've  not yet tried the much-idolized Windsor and Newton series 7. But I have gradually progressed from using Games Workshop, Army Painter, and currently Kolinsky sable hair brushes from Element Games. The improvement in control of the paint coming off the brush has been noticeable each time.
4. Use a florescent or daylight lamp to illuminate your painting. Any cheap articulated lamp will do, and it helps even more than you think.
5. Don’t buy things you don’t want to paint. If you want to have a good time painting, then paint something you find beautiful. With the glut of skirmish games in the market right now there are many companies with extremely poorly designed, or downright ugly miniatures. I'm not inclined to care how great a system rule-set is, how beautiful people may claim the miniatures are, or if a particular model is really strong on the tabletop. If you don’t like them, don’t spend hours of your life on them.
6. Don’t buy more miniatures then you can paint. Trust me, I know how hard this is. But having a legion of things that need painting is going to hurt your enjoyment more than anything, and turn an otherwise enjoyable painting session into a small part of a massive slog towards completion. Unless you’re doing big batches with simple techniques like airbrushing/washes where you can see progress being made extremely quickly, be conservative with your painting goals. One unit at a time, reward yourself with a character between them , put away any miniatures that need painting so they’re not out in the open guilting you. Don't assemble things you won't be able to paint right away. Don’t spend loads of money in one go, regardless of how good the price is. A personal rule of thumb for me is to buy, assemble, and paint only one box at a time, be it a character, vehicle, or unit. You get to enjoy your painting more and you save money, it's win-win!

Technique

Given that I'm not an expert painter this section is quite basic, but I hope still applicable to everyone getting a bit more joy out of their painting. However feel free to skip it if you're already a strong painter!

1. Spend time on assembly, clean all mould lines, pin things that need pinning. With modular options think about natural-looking yet dynamic poses. Add some details to your bases like rocks, etc. There is no point beautifully painting a miniature that was slapped together in a few minutes. Conversely, a clean and well posed/assembled miniature will make even a basic paint job looks miles better. This is the reason I stopped buying second-hand figures. 90% of people are not thoughtful in their assembly, and the effort and time to salvage their careless work is not worth the reduction in cost.
2. Choose a primer colour that will help you paint your chosen colour scheme. Using a black primer for a brightly coloured force that has a lot of yellow (for example) is just adding hours to your painting, whereas its a great decision if your painting lot of metallics since they cover nicely over black. Conversely using a light primer with darker colours will make more work for you, as any mistakes will stand out much more and you'll need to basecoat and shade more extensively. Grey is a nice middle ground if you have a mix of dark/light colours. For other colours outside of these three I recommend using an airbrush basecoat over one of them rather than a colour primer.
3. Using a little plinth of some kind for painting is often quite useful. It isn't always strictly necessary but having a magnet on the bottom of your figures and sticking them on a wine cork with a penny glued on top can help with accessing hard to reach points. Alternatively if you are pinning your model to their base, consider painting the base and figure separately and just sticking the figure into a wine cork while painting it. This is a must for metal or resin figures since paint layers can easily rub off on your hands.
4. Thin your paints. People always say this but you have no idea how true it is until you do it. Just water is fine for most applications and it won’t affect coverage if you’re using a good basecoat paint. How much you need to thin depends on application, but for basecoating you should need to do two coats for good coverage of anything that isn't extra-opaque like the Vallejo line or GW base paints.  Glaze medium is an exceptional thinner for when you want to reduce how opaque paint is in order to have it pool in the recesses like a wash, enhance how easy it is to blend a paint, or just washing over a series of layers to tie them together.
5. Basecoat carefully. Unless you are doing advanced shading and highlighting the need to put down a clean basecoat of a single colour over your primer before doing anything else is really important. If your basecoat is neatly done then everything else is gravy and the model will still look good almost regardless of what follows. It should all feel downhill after a good basecoat.
6. Washes are your friend. Most people already know it, but for the sake of any truly new painters, washes go a long way to adding depth to your models. Bonus points if you use a bit of glaze medium to make their colour go on smoother. A careful and clean basecoat with a wash or two is probably the best place to start for a beginner painter on your average line-trooper. Keep it neat and keep it simple. Once your comfortable with that you can step it up to the magical formula of basecoat, wash, basecoat on raised areas, higlight/basecoat mix for highlights, which is more than adequate for the majority of hobbyists out there.
7. Less is more when it comes to paint. Keep things simple with a handful of colors and only 1-3 pots of paint for each. Repeat simple techniques and shade down or higlight up by mixing rather than introducing tons of different paints. Remember that black is not a color and doesn't clash with any scheme, so if a figure has a lot extraneous details like equipment hanging all over it consider just painting the extra stuff black to keep the visuals clean.
8. Paint your bases last. If you mess up the colour and get it on the miniature's feet it’s a lot less noticeable than the reverse scenario.
9. Varnish your paint-job. With plastic miniatures this is only necessary at the end, but with metal or resin I would suggest at least three coats of varnish: one after your primer, one after your basecoat, and one when its finished. There's nothing worse than having your hard work get rubbed off when you are painting or playing.

Mindset

1. Plan your painting in advance and use test models if you want to try a new color scheme. Think carefully about how your colours will look and check out how they relate on a colour wheel. Consider in advance how you will base your figure and what its visual interaction with your colour-scheme will be. Also be sure to write down your paint scheme as it develops so that if you come back to a particular scheme down the road you can retain consistency.
2. With each miniature, know what quality of painting you’re aiming for from the outset. Don't try to paint line troops like your character models and vice versa. Make sure your expectations align with your skillset. Knowing when to put down the brush is just as important as being able to paint like a golden demon winner. When it comes to line troops remember that quantity is its own form of quality, so most of us can keep it simple.
3. Keep pushing yourself to make painting interesting. If you are not enjoying your painting try employing a new technique. Try painting a different model in some new colours, or a one-off figure from a totally different system or army. Always try to incorporate something into what you are doing that challenges you. Try a bit of weathering on your vehicles or armor, or try some blending on a character model.
4. Take the advice of people who are good painters. This doesn't mean you have to do everything they say. But really try to absorb it and think about how you can apply it to your next project. I despise coming back to a model I feel is “finished” so I never implement any criticism I get immediately, but I will always internalize any feedback I receive and keep it in mind for the next figure.
5. Know when to step away from the painting desk. If you are ever frustrated or finding you are not enjoying yourself just stop and do something else for at least 15 minutes. Stretch, go for a walk, talk to some friends. Its just not worth harming your mental state to finish a miniature, and if you push yourself like this its only going to reinforce whatever you dislike about the process. Additionally, if you are frustrated with a paint job just step away and don't look at it for a day. Coming back with a fresh pair of eyes is far better than going back and forth and agonizing over things.
6. Don’t play if it’s not painted. Another tough rule to follow that goes hand in hand with “don’t buy too much”, as the less models you have awaiting painting the less likely you are to try and field them. The payoff, however, is absolutely worth it in my mind. Being able to put a fully-painted army on the tabletop gives a cathartic pleasure in and of itself, and contributes immeasurably to the enjoyment and visual immersion one gets out of the game. If both armies are painted then you get a beautiful, immersive and far more characterful game out of your chosen system. Alternatively if you’re playing against an opponent with an unpainted force then you have already won, dice rolls be damned.

I hope this wasn't too pedantic from someone whose clearly only an average (if that) painter. Then again I think its precisely because i'm average that my words might be a bit more relevant to most of the hobbyists out there.

Happy painting all, and thank you for reading!