So, I hadn't painted a mini for about 20 years; I used to do a bit of Blood Bowl, 40K, and Man O War. Then IA came out of nowhere; I didn't realise people had been working on plastic minis like they were for the cure for cancer; they're so much better than the plastic sprues you used to get back in my day (yeah, get off my lawn).

Not wanting to fall back into Games-Workshop-mortgage, I grabbed a Vallejo game colour starter set, another set of metallics and a third of washes. Plus Liquitex gesso for priming, and their matt and high gloss varnishes for finishing, and I got to work.

Now, my wife just gave birth to our first child, so I may have to accept that I won't be doing much (any?) more painting. The Trandoshans are sitting primed but I don't have the energy or time. So I thought I'd present my paintjob as it stands.

Tip of the hat, of course, to Sorastro; I didn't really follow his guides but they were inspirational. I have not developed the patience necessary to properly thin paints and do multiple passes, so most of what you see here is one base coat, a shade, a highlight, and then some detail work. They look good on the table, is the main thing.

Stormies: very pleased with these guys even if they suffered a bit for my impatience.

Probes and E-Webs: these were the first pieces I painted, and it shows

Guards and Champion: Vallejo's Red is actually not a great colour; should have waited until I'd bought their Scarlet or maybe dipped into Citadel for this. Goes again for Vader's saber.

Vader and officers: meh.

Weiss and AT-ST: I hate Weiss peeking out the top so I went for the porthole cover. I painted him first and decided I'd gone too low-contrast, so the regular AT-ST pops a bit more.

The lesser heroes, at least as far as their paint jobs go:

These guys I'm much more pleased with:

The real heroes: Han and Chewie are such great sculpts; super easy to make them look good.

Sabs: good models, if a bit fiddly. Pleased with the skintone and the minor clothing variations. For some reason they've come out really shiny; maybe I overdid the (matt) varnish.



Troopers: oh, I *hated* painting these guys. They look like they'll be as easy as Han but then turn out to be a nightmare. The crook between neck and right shoulder is awful. They did turn out looking good though.



Odds and ends: I enjoyed the Nexu very much (stayed quite close to Sorastro here) but IG-88 is singularly uninspiring.



And, as previously mentioned, no Trandos. Anyway; I hope people enjoy these and happy to answer questions if there are any.

Solid work, man. I especially like your Rebel Troopers. It seems the ones you struggle through painting turn out to be some of the best. I have the same issue!

Turns out I was lying and they're Vallejo model colour, not game colour.

Thanks, they did turn out really good for being horribly fiddly. =)

Have found some painting time on paternity leave so may have the Trandoshans finished in a couple of days.

Aaaand... Trandoshans. Not a great picture but it's kind of a relief to be finished, at least until Boba etc get released =)

These are my favourite painted minis I've seen so far! I hope that I do as well as you did! Truly epic!

Thanks so much. That's high praise around here; there are quite a few really great paint jobs floating around.

Fantastic work ibsh! Congratulations on your newborn too! Getting ANYTHING achieved with a newborn around is an achievement in itself

Thank you very much man; I'm learning that... she is a handful.

Your videos are so good, by the way; top production values and your painting technique is essentially beyond critique. I look forward especially to seeing what you do with Fett and the droids. Keep it up.

awesome stormies!!!

I'm between jobs this week so I finally broke out the paintbrush again. Here's the pedal bin and his tinfoil pal (excellent strong language at link)

And another shot of Artoo since I can't take a decent photo today:

Very nice.

Saska is not my favourite sculpt, but she came out OK.

Biv, on the other hand, is probably my best work; very pleased with how he came out.

The sculpt is amazing but even so, I think you'll agree I freehanded the F out of his shoulder.

Can you go over the steps again that you used to do this? These are the steps in my mind- very basic

White/Grey Primer

Main color

Gloss Varnish

What exactly are you doing for the shade? What are you using? I have never attempted these, so wondering if these is a cheap entry point for me to start. And i'll have to google what dry brushing is. Seems to be what everyone does in the process.

(Congrats on the kid btw. My first child is one month old tomorrow, so i know about the lack of time. Thinking i can do some painting late at night and when the wife is feeding the child)

Stunning. Well done fella, and tnanks for the skirmish maps.

Cheers boss, no worries.

Can you go over the steps again that you used to do this? These are the steps in my mind- very basic

White/Grey Primer

Main color

Gloss Varnish

What exactly are you doing for the shade? What are you using? I have never attempted these, so wondering if these is a cheap entry point for me to start. And i'll have to google what dry brushing is. Seems to be what everyone does in the process.

(Congrats on the kid btw. My first child is one month old tomorrow, so i know about the lack of time. Thinking i can do some painting late at night and when the wife is feeding the child)

White primer (Liquitex gesso)

Base colour (I have to do a lot of colour mixing, given the paints I have)

Drybrush any metallic parts

Wash for shade (usually mixed)

Highlights (again mixed, usually applied with a wet brush but occasionally drybrushed)

Details: face, logos etc

Usually a matt varnish; but high gloss sections for stormtroopers / Vader's helmet / rebel troopers boots / whatever

Crikey, congratulations to you too.

Sorry, and dry brushing is super easy. Take for example the metal bits of Biv's gun: those were painted full black, then I got a gunmetal grey/silver mix ready.

You load up the brush as though to paint, but then paint onto a bit of scrap paper instead of the mini. Once there's very little paint being left by each stroke, you can use the brush (which is now, essentially, dry) to leave sparse particles of the metallic pigment on the raised areas of the gun, just by drawing the brush across the black section. You can see the results; there's nothing to it once you've figured out how much paint to leave on the brush (very little but not none at all).

Beautiful work! Well done!

Vallejo model color will always give you much more muted (some wold say realistic) results than GW. They are just designed that way since they were mainly used for military figures and models. They also have an amazing fine art range for example you can use thier texture paste and add some paint to it for very affordable textured bases. The game color was in resposne to GW's bright paints. They also have GameAir and model air. which are thinner than GW layer paints but cover like the base paints. I like the Red!

Oh, absolutely. And I think their colours have served me great for the rebels and scum, who have a more "used-universe" palette. It's just unrealistically vibrant things like lightsabers and the royal guard that have been hard to execute.

I hadn't painted anything in months so these two are not great, but they are, at least, table ready!

HK's! HK's! HK's!

Threat: If pathetic meat-bag artisan cannot apply fresh aesthetic details to HK47, HK47 will be forced to (Insert Atrocity Here)

I know. I can't wait to do them either. Wampas next, then HKs =)

The other product of my Christmas holiday.