I found a guy trying to offload his painting supplies and ended up buying the lot for $30. I got 64 bottles of Army Painter colors. Some have been used, but most are at least half full. I also got a few cans of spray primer (rustoleum black, rustoleum white, army painter necrotic flesh), 3 cans of anti-shine matte varnish, around 30 different brushes, wet palette supplies, and a lamp!

Anyway, my excitement for the deal aside, anyone have good tutorials for someone who has never painted before? I'm probably gonna do the army painter method with production line painting, but even general painting tutorials like advice on thinning paints, mixing colors, how to actually use a wet palette, etc would be great!

Thanks in advance! And I apologize if I'm not the first to ask for this type of thing. I cursory search didn't turn up much, but I might have missed it!

That is a super duper good deal.

Didn't army painter or FFG post up some tutorials? Also Sorastro's on youtube.

@Sorastro made videos on rune golem and lancer, but also all of his videos are great references for new painters or old painters wanting to increase their skill set. And as @Mep said there is an army painter guide for each faction with a few color schemes in them, those are in the player resources on the Runewars Product page.

The best advice I can give you is get paint on the brush and then on the miniature. This will get you asking specific questions, which you can then look up and learn about, followed ny increasing your tool set.

For the most part Armypainter is fine as is for consistency, i find myself almost never thinning it out more unless im doing some sort of wash effect i dont want to use their actual washes for.

Armypainter is a translucent paint to a degree. Some colors not so much (black, brown, white oddly enough) but majority of the time they will show through the paint underneath it faintly. This is why people like Sorastro suggest using two primers, one black for the main coat and one white for the "upturn" parts that will be brighter by default. It gives it a natural shade effect with just 1-2 coats of the armypainter paints depending on the color you used.

Thanks guys. I don't really need color scheme ideas or anything like that. The guides amount to "paint the mini! You are done!" I understand the prime, paint, dip, spray method. I was aware of sorastro, so I watched most of his stormtrooper vid today. I'll probably just continue along that series. I think it will reassure any doubts or address any questions I'm having.

16 minutes ago, rowdyoctopus said:

Thanks guys. I don't really need color scheme ideas or anything like that. The guides amount to "paint the mini! You are done!" I understand the prime, paint, dip, spray method. I was aware of sorastro, so I watched most of his stormtrooper vid today. I'll probably just continue along that series. I think it will reassure any doubts or address any questions I'm having.

Sorastro is good for an overview of sorts, but I have always found that if you actually want to develop tools/skills not just be walked through his process it is not terribly valuable. His target audience is more skilled beginner with some knowledge/intermediate I'd say. You need the base level to start with prior to the paint by numbers explanation.

Color schemes are primarily a derivative of the color wheel.
If you are trying to come up with your own theme, look at a color wheel. Colors opposite from each other in the wheel work wonders, and usually you can shift 2-3 colors to the side as well (keyword, usually). For instance, my Tau scheme in 40k is primarily purple, but i didnt want yellow. Green is slightly offset from being purple's contrast, so i went with that for the secondary color. It would look odd if i was primarily green though.

This is why Red and Green go so well together, they contrast each other. Or blue and orange. If you ever look at the old 8bit NES games you'll notice they do this a LOT since its the only way to really make things pop with such limitations.

For fantasy figures this primarily matters for banners or insignias since usually the armor (leather or metal) is stock color (brown/black or metallic steel/bronze respectively). You can get fancy with it if you want but starting out i'd get more practice with color contrasts, proper use of washes, and brush technique over perfect color mixing, wet blending, or some other crazy advanced trick.

Just now, Darthain said:

Sorastro is good for an overview of sorts, but I have always found that if you actually want to develop tools/skills not just be walked through his process it is not terribly valuable. His target audience is more skilled beginner with some knowledge/intermediate I'd say. You need the base level to start with prior to the paint by numbers explanation.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's how I was feeling. Developing the tools and skills is the type of stuff I'm looking for. The advice of putting paint on the mini and going from there hadn't occurred to me.

Thanks everyone!

You mentioned wet palettes. I highly recommend making one. All you need is to put a paper towel in a tray, soak it with water, and cover it with greaseproof paper (aka baking parchment paper). As for mixing paints, how much to thin, etc, it's mostly just trial and error. You'll get a feel for it with time.

41 minutes ago, rowdyoctopus said:

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's how I was feeling. Developing the tools and skills is the type of stuff I'm looking for. The advice of putting paint on the mini and going from there hadn't occurred to me.

Thanks everyone!

I've learned everything piecemeal (all how can I improve X, only started last August, if you check out my Armada thread you can see the journey).

I like Ghool's painting tips when I have specific questions as he does a bit of a blurb then a whole lot of painting the technique to drove the thing home. They are also generally shorter, which is a bonus I feel.

6 hours ago, rowdyoctopus said:

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's how I was feeling. Developing the tools and skills is the type of stuff I'm looking for. The advice of putting paint on the mini and going from there hadn't occurred to me.

Thanks everyone!

Ultimately, you learn by doing. The nice thing about Sorastro and imperial assault is you start off with stromtroopers (black and white) and can advance to simple metallics (probe droid) and even monocolor (imperial guard). If you went to art school you would start off with drawing, just white paper and black charcoal before moving on to something more complicated, like simple color studies using a couple of contrasting colors.

My advise would be to pick up a pack of the imperial assault stromtroopers and some citadel nuln oil and follow Sorastro's guide on them. Do them one at a time, not all at once, and try to learn from each model. All you want to do at this point is get use to putting paint on the model. How the brushes feel, how the wash works, building up muscle memory for the painting. The also nice thing about stromtroopers is they are bound to look at least okay, so you don't get frustrated and discouraged after the first few. If you go straight to the Rune wars models, you'll end up disappointed. They are too complicated to cut anyone's teeth on.

The other thing to remember is stripping acryllics is really easy. So don't sweat the first few, you can always strip and start over if you are truly unhappy. Simple green, Dettol (although I've had an adverse once with dettol melting the bottom detail off my gladiator star destroyer), and various others will all take the paint off with time and a bit of scrubbing.

Totally Awesome is another paint stripper that works wonders (piss yellow liquid and the bottles have no art on it, just words) but i havnt tested it with PVC models yet, just GW's models.

I've found the painting tutorials on warhammer tv very useful.

intesting point about dettol damaging the model when you use it for paint stripping, I had been advised to use it but a little worried about the impact now as the Runewars miniatures seem a little delicate.

I started 100% from scratch on this game. My undead ended up looking great on the table, but are certainly not display window worthy. The few tidbits I found most valuable:

-Paint deepest first and go up. By that, I mean hit the bit of cloth above the belt of the reanimates first. Then the belt and armor, etc. work out.

-Don't worry too much about getting colors on extra spots when you start. You can go back and touch up later.

-Using a small number of colors with no shading can still look fantastic. All the blending, shading, and drybrush can make a model amazing but aren't critical for play-worthy minis.

2 hours ago, Warpedstorm said:

I've found the painting tutorials on warhammer tv very useful.

intesting point about dettol damaging the model when you use it for paint stripping, I had been advised to use it but a little worried about the impact now as the Runewars miniatures seem a little delicate.

It has never damaged the fighters of the similar plastic, but it was also in there for 3 days as I got side tracked (go life!). I found 3 hours +toothbrush with soap (no water until everything is scrubbed) was optimal for Dettol.

On 2017-6-6 at 1:34 AM, rowdyoctopus said:

I found a guy trying to offload his painting supplies and ended up buying the lot for $30. I got 64 bottles of Army Painter colors. Some have been used, but most are at least half full. I also got a few cans of spray primer (rustoleum black, rustoleum white, army painter necrotic flesh), 3 cans of anti-shine matte varnish, around 30 different brushes, wet palette supplies, and a lamp!

Anyway, my excitement for the deal aside, anyone have good tutorials for someone who has never painted before? I'm probably gonna do the army painter method with production line painting, but even general painting tutorials like advice on thinning paints, mixing colors, how to actually use a wet palette, etc would be great!

Thanks in advance! And I apologize if I'm not the first to ask for this type of thing. I cursory search didn't turn up much, but I might have missed it!

See here. I recommend Miniwargamerjay's mini painting 101. Each video deals with a specific step of the painting process.

Now the question becomes, what do I paint first? The surface area of the Carrion Lancer looks appealing, but I'm guessing mistakes will be more visible. I'll probably go with lowly reanimates... Haha

42 minutes ago, rowdyoctopus said:

Now the question becomes, what do I paint first? The surface area of the Carrion Lancer looks appealing, but I'm guessing mistakes will be more visible. I'll probably go with lowly reanimates... Haha

Switch it up. Do a tray of reanimates, tray of archers, then Ardus, some reanimates, worm etc. Painting 16 samey reanimates all at once gets annoying real quick.

I did assembly line painting a couple colours on reanimates then switched up as Polska states. But now I have everything 90% done and nothing finished