Right then...
While we all agree that the factory pre paints by FFG are simply awesome and dont *need* repainting many players like to add a splash of paint to their ships for a variety of reason.
You might want to mark out a special character or elite pilot, you might have too many of a distinctive ship (say the YT1300) and want to make your extra ones stand out or you might want to 'theme' your army/squadron (say an all red emperors royal guard force).
Post painting is easy.
For a start its not neccesary to strip the existing coat off the model or undercoat the ship as in most cases the model will have a decent light base colour.
So first off wash the model in warm soapy water and allow to dry. This removes any grease or gunk from production and mold release agents.
Then if you're painting your ship a very bright colour like red or yellow you may wish to prime the miniature with white primer matt spray. Normally as said this isnt needed as most colours go well over light grey.
If you do decide to prime your model you may at this point wish to 'mask' any parts you want to stay the original colour (a prime example would be the large gloss windscreen/cockpit on the firespray 31). To do this put a thin layer of 'blu tack' or any other gum that holds up posters over the bits you dont want painted.
For actual painting the ship I recommend using water based acrylic paints from a company like coat de arms, citadel or wargames foundry. Dont use oils or enamels.. they take ages to dry and wreck your brushes. Acrylic is water soluable til dry so if you have a spillage you can get it out of the carpet or your shirt if you act quick.
On the subject of brushes... your paint job will only be as good as your brushes, cheap brushes will get stray hairs quickly and you'll lose neatness.
Anyway , assuming your mini is ready to paint.
Choose the base colour. Lets say we're going with a repaint of an X wing to make it dark grey rather than light grey.
Choose a dark grey paint and lightly cover the minature avoiding bits you dont want painted and havent masked.
Then add a little white to the paint on an old tile as a palette (unless you've got an art pallet) and mix it up a few shades lighter. Once you have, get a larger old brush (or a largr new one if you're just starting) and cover it libberally with the lighter shade.
Use toiliet/tissue paper to then wipe the paint lightly off the brush. the aim is to take the lighter shade mostly off the brush but to leave some paint in btween the bristles.
Lightly brush this wiped larger brush over the dark grey xwing. The light grey will stick to the raisd areas and create highlights, artificially making the object look as if its catching light the way a large fighter plane would. This is called 'drybrushing' you probably want to look up a tutorial on youtube before attempting it.
Now you have a highlighted xwing. Paint in any detals once you've given the acrylic a good bit of time to dry (say 30 mins, you can usually see if any paint is still wet).
Its better to have thing paint and do three coats of say a 'side stripe' than one thick coat... the latter looks messy and will clump.
If you want *really* straight lines you can use masking tape and some care to mask off the sides of the stripe before painting them in.
Again you want brush of no bigger than 000 size and watering down your paint is a good idea, not too much, justa drop of water.
Now you'll have a highlighted model with a painted cockpit, stripes, maybe you've painted the astromech, put some pink in the engine recesses etc.
But it probably looks 'too clean' , all the FFG models have that 'used future' look.
No worries you can fix this easy.
First if you want to put on 'battle damage' or paint chips put *very* smalls flecks of 'gunmetal' coloured paint on exposed edges, dont overdo it... the same goes for small 'carbon score' lines... the two together can look epic.
Then and this is the cool bit, we put on the 'grime' wash.
Get your acrylic black paint and add water to it in a small pot until its about the consistancy of semi skimmed milk.
Assuming your xwing is totally dry (and if it isnt in any part you find out the hard way now) get a *big* brush and liberally daub it all over your model, then before it dries pull it all off with kitchen towel.
Only the recesses will retain the black and the overall tone of themodel and the 'damage' will be muted... your ship should have the same matt grimy tone as the factory paints.
The last thing you want to put on is 'engine glow'
there are two ways to do this. Either put on the base colour of say bright orange (firespray) or mid blue (lambda) and then add white to the centre. Or you can paint the whole engine area white and do the 'wash' (like we did with the grime) of the engine colour.
It will depend largely on the model. I used the wash technique on my YT2400 and the painting up technuque on my HWK.
Anyway i hope that helps anyone thinking of adding a personal touch to a ship
