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!

Painting Experiment: Orange/Yellow Orks Part 2

I'm planning to run a Warhammer 40k escalation campaign with a narrative focus next February. To that end I have to decide on a army to build and paint for it and, because i'm a masochist, I've elected to go for Orks rather than the using the Grey Knights I've already completed. While I love the Grey Knight models the fluff and character of the Ork army is vastly preferable to me. I love custom armies with a great backstory and a focus on having fun rather than winning games, and the Orks are all of these things to a tee!

After the (relatively) successful experiment with orange skin I spent a lot of time agonizing over a color scheme to accompany it. I settled on a bright turquoise produced by Scale 75 and tested it on my original model here.

Turquoise is exactly opposite bright orange on the color wheel and compliments it very nicely. So I quickly moved to get some actual 40k orks to test the scheme on. Thankfully a mate of surgical fame had a partially-used pack of stormboyz he gave me to test my scheme on.

Initially things went great and I loved the way they looked with my orange skin.

The grot inside this rocket is probably my single favorite miniature of all time. I'm dead serious.

However after this it got a little complicated. 40k Orks have tons of different components slapped all over theme, especially these stormboyz figures, and it was tough trying to decide where the turquoise needed to be. I eventually added a secondary color and did the majority of their armor in black as its an absolutely neutral tone, and actually compliments the turquoise and orange quite nicely.

My plan now was to paint turquoise on the clothing and black on the armor with just a few small turquoise accents here and there. But unfortunately even this simple arrangement ended up looking a little too garish given how bright the turquoise i'd chosen was.

The jumpsuits are too much in that color.

To this end I decided to use a burnt umber over a good portion of the clothing to tone things down, and it ended up looking alright. This guy (exempting the red on the rocket) is probably the best indicator of where i'll go with things. Burnt umber clothing, black armor, and turquoise accents here and there in both areas.

Naturally I did some sponge weathering on their armor to give them that properly battered orky look. The black looks lovely with a bit of metallic sponged over it. I also liked the idea of them slapping turquoise paint over the black, which I managed to convey a bit with this guy's eye. I'm going to experiment with adding this sort of "handpainted" turquoise to the armor some more I think.

Unfortunately I messed up the bases after experimenting with different washes on each one. I'm going with a desert theme to accompany the orange/yellow skin tone since they are fungus after all! I'll be getting some new pigments to use on them and further dirty them up. I may also chose a different turquoise color that's slightly less in-your-face about things in order to tone down the palette a bit and make the orange stand out more.

Working with these guys definitely  hammered home how important it is to test your colour-scheme out on some miniatures before starting to paint your force properly. These guys haven't been washed or highlighted yet, or had their details picked out, but even going this far has given be a great understanding of what to do with my chosen scheme. Next up, an Ork battleforce! (And painting a GK librarian when I get bored of assembling things)

Thanks for looking guys!

Completed Project: Grey Knights Terminator Squad

So at long last I have finished my unit of Grey Knight terminators after about a month and a half of fiddling around with them at a very casual pace. I was definitely slowed down by using so many unfamiliar techniques but I'm quite pleased with the finished result! Here they are as a unit:

Some quick thoughts on the painting aspects that were new for me here and that I didn't cover previously. Firstly, oil washes. I was deeply impressed by the effect that oils gave and they were wonderful to work with. After gloss varnishing the models I washed the cream armor with a straightforward mix of burnt umber thinned with low odor mineral spirits. I immediately noticed that the oil wash pooled in the recesses far more neatly and the finish over larger patches of of the model was extremely smooth and there was no "blotchiness" or tidemarks that usually accompany an acrylic wash over a large section of mini.

This is after the oil wash dried. The lighting is poor but it gives you a rough idea of how natural it looks.

Furthermore, because the oil wash takes so long to dry (about twelve hours to be completely dry) you can push it around as much as you like and wash off sections with straight white spirit, which I did to make sure not to darken the models too much. You can even do this after its totally dry as well! The control you have over the wash is unparalleled and combined with what is already a smooth coloring the result is strong yet subtle. I have simply never experienced such a realistic-looking wash.

I will absolutely be returning to work with oils in the future, especially considering that its relatively quick to move into and out of them, a coat of gloss varnish, apply the oils, and once its try a coat of matt, and your done!

The final new technique I experimented with was the use of resin bases. I decided to keep it very simple and ensure the bases were relatively dark in order to draw the eye to the cream armor, and by extension how mangled it is! This follows from roomie Byron's excellent tutorial on basing either for contrast (as in this instance) and cohesion. I decided to use a few simple drybrush layers on the stone and some burnt umber pigments from Vallejo to keep the "dirtiness" consistent with whats on the terminator's armor. The resin bases from micro arts studios were a dream to work with and the texture is exquisite!

Bases as they appear in natural light.

Bases under fluorescent light that shows more detail.

The last thing I want to show is my attempt to hand-blend an intense blue into the eyes and nemesis force weapons. The eyes came out nicely but the swords were much more of a challenge. However with enough glaze medium and time I was able to bang out something reasonable. The final edge higlight of white along the edge of the blade was rather messy, but a blue ink glaze tied everything together nicely. I know the quality would have been far better and the process easier had I just used my airbrush to do it, which I did for the force hammer, but I wanted to set a challenge for myself as blending has always felt rather elusive to me, like something only pros do. The fact I can even blend like this though, (poor as it is) is a sign of just how far I’ve come, as this stuff seemed downright impossible to me even six or eight months ago.

The best of my hand blends.

The blend produced by the airbrush.

Anyways thanks for reading guys! Here's a few more pictures in different light. Looking forward to my next project!

The squad under natural light.

Single model under natural light.

Single model under fluorescent light.