So I've started my first attempt to paint miniatures ever (my prior experience being limited to spray painting primer on miniature starships from Star Fleet Battles and Shapeways). I bought a pre-painted core set from eBay so I've decided to try to paint my expansions (Twin Shadows and Return to Hoth, plus some individual packs), or at least to paint the stormtroopers from Shadows and Hoth.

I tried to follow Sorastro's guides, although I'm using Vallejo paints, Krylon primer, and inferior brushes.

Here are my stormtroopers all primed, with one already through the black wash stage.

I went light-ish on the primer because I didn't want to over do it, so they don't look as good as Sorastro's do after priming.

The black wash step is amazing. It's awesome how much it covers up. I thought I had done a simply terrible job on painting the black details (in dark grey) but they look decent after the wash.

I realize now that I didn't watch his heavy stormtrooper video very carefully because he did a lighter wash making the highlighting step easier. I will probably pick up some medium to mix with my wash for the other three troopers when I get there.

The stormtroopers certainly came out very dark. I suppose Vallejo's equivalent of Nuln Oil is much darker. So, when using that, I recommend diluting it more with Lahmian Medium than 50/50 ratio.

When you highlight those, maybe leave some of the dark patches as they are. You can then further darken them with black-brown paint mix for some battle damage.

White is also the trickiest to highlight along with yellow. The good thing is that any painted figure will look a lot better when painted than the gray/brown plastic. And I'm confident your stormtroopers will come out fine.

Good luck and welcome to the hobby!

Yes, I think Vallejo's black wash is darker than the Nuln oil, so the highlighting step will be a bit harder.

I will be diluting it from now on for stormtroopers and snowtroopers. And I think you're right -- probably more than the 50/50 he suggests in the heavy stormtrooper video.

The second phase of my painting.

Today I did the highlighting for the heavy stormtrooper. It did not turn out as well as I hoped, but he doesn't look bad. I am fairly dissatisfied with my painting of the face and the feet. Hopefully if I use a much lighter wash with the next group of troopers, I won't have to do that much highlighting.

I also repainted my blue imperial officers. The set that I purchased was painted, but the painter had selected blue uniforms for the officers, for whatever reason. I think the repaint turned out better than my trooper, although again I'm wondering if I used too heavy of a wash to get some shading back in.

Pics of the the trooper and a few photos of the process for the officers follow.

I thought snowtroopers would be a lot easier and, in many ways, they are. But mine, once again, turned out too dirty and I'm not good enough at highlighting to attempt to fix it. So my troopers will be a bit dark.

Still at least one of them turned out very well.

That stormtrooper commander is, by far, my best work. For whatever reason, the wash did just enough to provide some shading without making him look too dirty.

Stormtrooper eyes are the most evil things in the world.

I did a much better job on my next three snowtroopers. In fact, one is almost perfect.

I'm very much considering not doing a wash on these three and just considering them done. I'm worried about overdoing it.

I did decide to put a light wash on my snowtroopers. Here are my latest efforts, including my Wampas, which I think turned out quite well.

This includes my finished General Sorin, stormtrooper commander, and repainted Diala (just the lightsaber from a weird yellow to blue).

This is going better than I thought it would, to the point that I'm tempted to strip my heavy stormtrooper (the first thing I painted) and try again.

I'm stuck on what color to paint the HK droids and how to tackle a vehicle.

Looks good.

The tank that came with the Hoth expansion you can paint much the same way as Sorastro painted the AT-ST . Maybe skip some of the rust effects and paint the underside of the tank dark gray or metallic dark gray. And to make that easier, glue the tank to the base after painting the tank and the base.

I painted the Hoth vehicle recently. I painted it white and used a thinned nuln oil wash to shade it. It only needed very minor highlighting because the "dirty" look that so infuriates me every time I apply wash to a stormtrooper doesn't look bad on the tank

I did one complete wash of the vehicle and one targeted was on the panel gaps, etc.

Also I highly recommend the snow texture paint. I had a very light grey base initially and it looks 10x better on the textured snow base.

2 hours ago, udat said:

Also I highly recommend the snow texture paint. I had a very light grey base initially and it looks 10x better on the textured snow base.

Snowbase looks cool. I painted mine with Mechanicus Standard Gray (it's a midtone-gray) which looks...ok but snowbase does look better. I guess it depends whether you see the tank as part of a Hoth campaign or as multiuse vehicle. Though with a snowtrooper driving it, it still feels unlikely. Oh and I purposely left the tank really grimy from the wash and just focused on the edges highlighting them and I painted some chips to the paint with gray and silver paints to make it seem more worn down. But as a comparison shot, here's the tank with (boring) gray base:

Very well done.

Your work on Sorin's collar and rank pips is amazing too.

When I painted Sorin I didn't realise that was a collar until I looked at the mini with my glasses on... after I'd painted it flesh coloured XD

Wasn't hard to correct luckily

Very well done.

Mine turned out ok, but it was hard to get the proper grey paint in there to distinguish that from his flesh and his armor.

You've done a really good job with the face. Faces are my nemesis. Don't think I've ever painted one I've been happy with

Here are some better pictures of the sum total of my painting efforts so far.

I've completed 5 snowtroopers, 1 heavy stormtrooper, 2 Wampas, General Sorin, and the stormtooper commander.

I repainted three imperial officers (almost from scratch) because they were painted blue. And I repainted Diala's lightsaber blue from a yellow color.

I'm in the process of redoing one snowtrooper and I've primed 2 HKs and the tank from the Hoth set.

Looking good!

My next attempt will be Han Solo, along with that 6th snowtrooper.

My tank turned out pretty well. I will try to get some pictures up. The only small problem is that I can't really highlight it because the gray that I was going to use turned to mush (still not sure how) and I have nothing to match the base coat. I think the wash, though, isn't that heavy and a slightly dirty look is probably appropriate.

Top tip for Han (might seem obvious, but I didn't think of it) - for the red stitching on his trousers, don't try to paint a "dashed" red line - - - -

Paint a thin solid red line down the length of the leg over the blue base coat, then once that dries, paint over it in blue to create the dashes.

That is a good tip. I wondered how to do that line and am having second thoughts about it.

I might skip the line and the obviously blue pants to be honest. I know it's accurate, but I've seen Star Wars: ANH hundreds of times and I hardly ever notice his pants are even blue because of how dark they appear. And I've only ever picked up on the stripe from publicity shots.

I was thinking more of a blue-grey for pants and no line. That certainly would be easier on my limited abilities.

You could give it a go. It's easy to paint over it with the base colour if you aren't happy with the results

Han is flipping hard.

It's almost frustrating to watch Sorasto effortlessly paint in the small bits of pants around his gun belt. I'm really counting on a wash to, um, wash away my mistakes and the little bits of white and such.

Needless to say, I didn't bother with the three or four shades of hair.

Han has a nice open stance (so many IA minis have arms crossed in front of their chests!) but I found him hard to paint mostly because I cared more about doing a good job with him than with basically any other figure!

Looks good so far

My final Han Solo.

He turned out much better than I thought he would as I was doing it.