Gotta say, there is a lot of wisdom in this thread in regards to painting. Makes me excited to go home and paint after work.

I also wonder what you might learn when using cheaper paints. They are more frustrating to work with and the results will be worse. I'm certain starting painters would be better of with less colors, but easier to work with and getting better results. Otherwise they might just end up being frustrated. Is paying 40 bucks for 12 colors that bad if you have quality products? Would you rather pay 40 bucks for 48 different colors (and using only 40% of them of the first number of minis) and have crappy results? If my first miniatures would look like crap after hours of work, I know I would stop painting right away, making that 40 bucks investment a terrible idea.

26 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Gotta say, there is a lot of wisdom in this thread in regards to painting. Makes me excited to go home and paint after work.

Hopefully after you pick up a pot of GW, Army Painter or Vallejo.

49 minutes ago, Skyguard said:

I think if you look at the early Sorastro IA video's they are geared to a more basic level, (The Stormtrooper, Royal Guards and Probe Droids ones are great starters for dry brushing and the idea of basecoat+wash+highlight) he has added more techniques as he continued to make the videos building off the basics he teaches in the early videos. The biggest downside of Sorastro for a true beginner is that he uses a lot of colors which can be daunting when your just starting out, it's ok to mix colors if you don't want to drop as much money to get started.

Once we get a painting sub-board I'll make a thread about it, but in the meantime...

I have a tracker that I used as a shopping list / planner for Imperial Assault painting based on @Sorastro 's tutorials.

I've just made a similar one for Legion .

Column A is paint color "heatmap." As he adds tutorials, I add columns. As paints get used more and more, the highlighting changes so you can see which paints get used most often. There isn't a ton of Legion content out yet, so everything's red. That said I assume that the IA color frequency will be a decent barometer for Legion since they're both Star Wars. If you're going to roll Citadel, investing in Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade, Leadbelcher, Abbadon Black, Ceramite White / White Scar, and Mephiston Red is a great place to start for the Empire, and gives you some nice foundations for Rebel accessories and guns, too. From there your mileage may vary depending on the scheme you're using for the Rebels.

Other columns should be self explanatory, with the exception of D. Some folks on the IA forum kept a local copy of the tracker. As Sorastro added guides, I added paints and episodes, but since I sort my paint list alphabetically, it was hard for people to add "new colors" since they'd show up in column A based on name, and not on recency. If you download and sort by column D, you can find "new" paints pretty easily.

Anyway, no idea if people will find this useful here, but I'll probably update it anyway. And as I said, I'll make a separate thread for this and once the inevitable painting subforum gets made.

I used Ceramcoat paints from hobby lobby on my first paint job(runewars waiqar) and I didn't notice any of the resolution issues you guys are bringing up.

42 minutes ago, Amanal said:

Hopefully after you pick up a pot of GW, Army Painter or Vallejo.

Nope. Still using my old **** paints because I'm cheap. And I'm painting terrain.

2 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

Nope. Still using my old **** paints because I'm cheap. And I'm painting terrain.

Painting terrain is a very different use case .

Painting Stormtroopers tabletop quality...

paint white. black wash. play game.

anyone can paint.

32 minutes ago, Deadshane said:

Painting Stormtroopers tabletop quality...

paint white. black wash. play game.

anyone can paint.

I use even an easier method. And I'm no fan of drybrushing anything, except if it has fur. Spray white, paint black parts in very dark grey, wash in 1/5 nuln, 4/5 lahmian medium. Done.

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

I use even an easier method. And I'm no fan of drybrushing anything, except if it has fur. Spray white, paint black parts in very dark grey, wash in 1/5 nuln, 4/5 lahmian medium. Done.

This

3 hours ago, Eddie said:

I use even an easier method. And I'm no fan of drybrushing anything, except if it has fur. Spray white, paint black parts in very dark grey, wash in 1/5 nuln, 4/5 lahmian medium. Done.

Does this decrease the darkness on the Stormies vs the 100% nuln?

Very much so. Better, you can just target the wash diluted like that into the recesses.

43 minutes ago, Cusm said:

Does this decrease the darkness on the Stormies vs the 100% nuln?

Took a quick picture of some Imperial assault troopers painted this way. I know they are not going to win any painting prizes. But they don't take a lot of time to do at all (quicker than from the youtube video) and are decent enough to play with (imho). On top of that, any one can paint them to this level as there is almost no work involved.

those troopers look great.

@Eddie did you hit those with any sort of varnish before the nuln/lahmian blend? they look great and that method sounds really easy

....loving on the STORMIES!!!....

Color scheme:

looks like a grey shirt

forest green camouflage poncho/duster/coat

forest green camouflage pants

brown boots

brown backpack/bandoleer

forest green metal band on a tan hat (brim and cap).

Any alternate paint schemes planned?

40 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Any alternate paint schemes planned?

Yep...

Details in the linked thread.

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

Color scheme:

looks like a grey shirt

forest green camouflage poncho/duster/coat

forest green camouflage pants

brown boots

brown backpack/bandoleer

forest green metal band on a tan hat (brim and cap).

Any alternate paint schemes planned?

Yh, a blue urban camo scheme from sorastro’s vid

7 hours ago, OMGBRICK said:

@Eddie did you hit those with any sort of varnish before the nuln/lahmian blend? they look great and that method sounds really easy

No, simply used it on the primed trooper (after painting the black parts). Did use testor dullcote afterwards as I do for all my miniatures. Not sure how they would look when using a glossy varnish.

On 2/19/2018 at 9:56 PM, Caimheul1313 said:

A quick and "dirty" way of highlighting is to drybrush the miniature. Basically, with very little paint on a flat brush, you gently apply paint the the miniature. This deposits a little bit of paint on the raised areas fairly quickly and easily. The effect is not as stunning as careful highlighting, but it has served me well.

EDIT: I also just remembered a VERY important part of Preparation that is often overlooked and can cause issues if not completed: Washing your miniatures. The plastic has a mold release on it to help get them out of the molds at the factory, if not removed this can cause issues with your primer/paint falling off because of the trace amounts of mold release agent on the miniatures. A quick wash with some hand dish soap in lukewarm water using an old/cheap soft toothbrush, rinse, and dry and you're good to go.

Personally I use Comet for washing my minis.

Just as a side note I've never had a problem with an IA mini, the factory they come from does a good job getting the mold lube off. However the MoM minis are just the worst and I got my first case of "orange peeling" off of them.