Painting 101:

Painting is often looked upon as being too difficult, I have found that it is often times a learned process that most people can do well. If you are starting out in this endeavour here are some ideas to get started.

Tools:

If you are getting started then I would assume you have nothing and want to get the bare minimum of tools to keep the costs of starting up low. So what would I recommend?

2 Brushes of good quality, I believe these are worth a trip to the store to ensure you get ones that form a point and don’t splay out or have visible damage. I like a good size 1-2 and a 00.

A cheaper brush that will do for removing paint from pots, a good hobby knife or sharp blade that will remove mold lines, some PVA glue and super glue too, I get a good brand name of superglue in the supermarket. I find that the cheep stuff dries out and you end up holding two parts for 3 minutes only to get a better bond between your fingers and the model. Around here I buy Selley's brand, and they make normal and gel, which will fill gaps, so it may be good to get a few small tubes of each. You can get big pots of superglue where you get you hobby stuff but I have found it too deteriorates in time and becomes very frustrating to work with.

Add in a palette of some description, you can use an artist’s palette, a white tile or a piece of plastic. If clear plastic put it over a piece of white paper.

Get a spray can of Matt Varnish for when you are done. I like Dull Coat myself but GW or Army Painter do good cans of spray matt varnish too.

If you are going to use a knife around a desk you don’t want to mark a cutting board, which could be a cheap kitchen cutting board or an off-cut of ply or MDF. You’ll also need to protect your work area from paint spills if you don’t want to add bits of colour to your desk or table.

Add some kitchen variety paper towels, an old cup or jar for water maybe a second as to have clean water and dirty water.

Optionally: Throw in a desk lamp too as you will probably need some extra lighting and something to store it away if you don’t have a permanent space.

Get a notepad for tracking the steps you take. Then make a note of each step you use, and even go so far as paint a little patch of the colour you use.

Model assembly:

If you want to do a reasonable job dry fit everything and make sure that you understand how it fits together and trim away any plastic that prevents a good fit. Some folks like to glue everything before they paint, the idea being that if you are unable to get behind the arms or what not it will be shaded and thus not be painted as well as if it was in the light. You may also consider how long you think you’ll take and if you plan to play with partially painted models as having an armless hoard could be rather odd to look at.

Or perhaps you like the idea of getting to those hard to reach places and will leave the parts only partially assembled as to get to those hard to reach places. In which case you may find a packet of blu-tack on your list of tools.

Before you glue things together it may be advisable to wash things in warm soapy water. This will remove any mold release agent from the model and anything else that may affect the paint staying where you want it.

Finally take that hobby knife to the mold lines and remove what you can. Optionally get a file or fine emery stick to remove any fine lines and imperfections. Take care and time here, a single mold line that you miss will stand out once painted. If you have larger mold lines you can in a pinch use some PVA to hide the join or mold line.

Paints:

If you have been to a hobby store you will have seen that Games Workshop paints display with a huge number of colours and paint types. Holy bad budgeting Batman do I have to buy all of that? No, thankfully, in fact if you are just starting I would suggest that you just get some primer, base colours and some shading inks. Maybe 8-10 pots to begin with.

I'll go over selecting paints latter, or what colours to purchase when I cover the painting of models.

Prime:

I would recommend a white primer at first, I feel that getting clean colours off a white is easier and if you need a black you can just paint it on. When you use the primer I would highly recommend that you read up on the instructions on the can or hit YouTube.

I like to blu-tack my models onto a cheap rules to prime and do 4-5 at a time.

Getting ready to paint:

Once primed if not before many of us like to blu-tack our models to an old paint pot, dowel or bottle cap (the screw on variety) as to minimise the handling of the model itself. Now this may not apply but here you want to limit yourself to painting a number of models at a time as to take no more than 20-20 minutes doing the same step. Now because of “reasons” I’ll be painting about 80+ of the core set troopers, so 80+ Rebel Troopers and 80+ stormtroopers. So I’ll paint about 21 at a time, otherwise you get board of each step and your painting suffers.

Selecting your paints:

In general there are two main steps in painting a model to tabletop quality. You want to get a base coat on the model and then a shadow.

Now in terms of inks, which we use to paint the shadows, I would recommend GW Agrax Earthsade and Nuln Oil.

These will a lot of the time be sufficient for most shading, however, if you get to a colour that can be shaded well with either then you may find you need to buy one of those other pots. But wait until you get there.

For your paints you will need to plan out your colours, black for the shoes, brown for the pants, black belt, tan jacket and khaki shirt, flesh for the face, brown for the main part of the helmet, then khaki for the cloth top part and a dark gun metal for the gun. So you want to buy black, dark grey, brown, tan, khaki, flesh and gun metal. Now, you just want to search those hundreds of pots and find the colours you want. In general go for a little lighter than you think as a shade will darken up things. Which is why I opted for a dark grey rather than a black. I would also add, a black and white pot of paint.

In terms of brands there are quite a few options. GW, Army Painter, P3, Vallejo and many more. I think if you asked around you would get a different response for everyone you asked. I like Vallejo for 15mm stuff, GW for layering and Army Painter for Base Coats. Try one of each colour and get a feel for what you like at first.

Now, the reason why we use these paints is they have a good amount of pigment and a good medium to hold the pigment and get it from your pot, to your brush and then to your model. Many craft paints are light in pigment and have a medium that keeps the brush strokes and textures of the painting process.

Whew! All that and we are only about to grab a brush:

But first practice using the paint and the brush. So take a piece of paper and get ready!

Grab that cheap brush you bought yourself. Take a small dab of a colour and put that on your palette. Then add a few dabs of water and mix it in. You are looking for the consistency of milk here. Once you have the paint on you paletteand about right wash off the rubbish brush.

Never use you paint out of the pot and never use it neat.

Now take your good brush and get some paint on it. To do this just dip the tip in the paint and twist the handel just a little while the brush is on you palette as to open up the bristles a little. Avoid getting paint on the metal part (the ferrule) as this will damage the brush. If you get paint in the ferrule it will dry and spread out the bristles, this is bad and will see a brush become unusable very fast.

Now, drag the brush across your piece of paper and return the tip to the brush. Rotate the brush as you do this. Once you have done this you’ll have paint on the inside of the brush and not much on the outside. The paint at this time will flow through the bristles and onto your model in nice even and accurate lines. Practice on a clean bit of paper, draw thin lines, paint your name, little stars or rebel icons.

When the paint starts to run out give it a shake in your water and then reload the paint. This will help avoid any paint left behind drying out on the brush. You can if you use two water pots get the paint off in the dirty water then just shake the brush into the clean water as to avoid contaminating your paint with the “blech” coloured water.

Now clean off that brush and use the other good one, so if you went and used the 00 first try your size 1-2. You should find that the large brush holds more paint and doesn’t need loading up so often, but if it has a nice point can produce almost the same degree of fine lines as the 00.

Got the hang of all that? Good, wash your brush off and grab a mini. For the basecoat you are aiming to just paint in between the lines as best you can, if you make a small mistake keep going, it will get hidden in the shading step. In general here I like to work from the inside of the model out. Shirt, Jacket, Pants, Shoes and Belt, Face Hat and cloth bit on the hat then the gun. Thus any paint from one area will be covered in the next.

Now my advice here, is basecoat as fast as you can without rushing, the idea of the basecoat is to just block in the various colours and if you try too hard for accuracy it will feel labourious and it shouldn’t. Also, paint many models at the same time, that way you can paint 14 shirts, 14 faces and so on. Just remember to do as many as you can before you feel bored with a step.

Also, don’t forget to write down each step in your notebook and put a dab of the colours next to the description of that step.

Now for the shading. For the lighter colours you may want the Agrax Earthshade on the face for example and Nuln Oil on the darker parts like the gun. On other parts you can even mix a bit of Nuln Oil with Agrax, if you aren’t sure try the lighter colour first on a small area and go up if you don’t like what you get. In general here I would work in stages of each colour.

Again write down the colours, mixes and steps and apply the colours.

Applying ink is often done by just swamping the model and leaving it to dry. Sometimes this will work OK, but often you’ll end up with ink where you don’t want it. I like to get the ink on my brush and dab it onto the model aiming for where I want the ink to go, while the ink is wet I can move it about and target it with some accuracy. If I get it where I don’t want it and can’t move it I can use a clean brush to draw it up or a cotton bud.

At this point you have a good tabletop quality model. You can stop there or go on and add more details and colours to the model via highlights. A good place to start would be to add a little white to your flesh and then apply this tone to the areas you imagine would be hit by the light, the forehead, nose, cheeks and chin. Perhaps do the fingers too. Then add a small amount of white to that mix and apply to the same places but decrease the area you apply tis paint to. Aim for many progressively smaller and lighter highlights rather than one big one as to avoid being able to see the changes.

You can spend a lot of time and effort highlighting, but start small and work up.

Bases:

You may want to work up some paint and texture to your basing. Google up some videos on how to do this. What you are wanting to do is get your hard surface done, and flocking or grass clumps will be applied after a varnish. There are thousands of products for the basing of models, flock, rocks, grass clump flowers, water effects and snow to name a few. So if you aren’t sure do some test pieces.

In general I would consider 2-3 different textures. For tantoonie you may glue and paint some sand, followed by a rock here and there and maybe a small tuft of dry grass here and there. For a Hoth style base you could glue down some rocks here and there and apply snow flocks to the tops of the rocks and avoid the sides.

Any of the flocks and such should be applied after the varnish though.

Varnish:

If you have spent some time and effort on your models protect them, a good spray of matt varnish will take the shine off the inks and protect your paintjob from wear and tear wile you game.

Read the instructions carefully, and again.

Two light coats will be better than a single thick coat and may of us have learned that spraying in high humidity or low humidity can be a problem. In high humidity you may find that the spray picks up water from the air and when it dries on the model will cause it to dry with white patches. In low humidity the paint may dry while in the air and cause the finish to be somewhat “grainy”.

If you live in a place that is never good consider a brush on varnish.

Storage:

After all that time and effort make a little more for considering how, if at all, you want to store your efforts. Take away food containers, tackle boxes and storage boxes all the way through to bags designed for miniatures transport. You’ll have to be the judge as to the worth of the cost of the solution, but I think you should consider the solution you want to go with.

Anything I have missed, got wrong or you do different?

I appreciate what you are doing for the community but you are killing me with the word "pallet." A pallet is a wooden platform for shipping goods. Artists mix paint on a "palette."

Seriously though, not trying to be pedantic but seeing the same error over and over just makes my skin crawl.

Thanks for posting all the advice! I'm sure lots of folks will find it helpful.

4 minutes ago, Dr Lucky said:

I appreciate what you are doing for the community but you are killing me with the word "pallet." A pallet is a wooden platform for shipping goods. Artists mix paint on a "palette."

Seriously though, not trying to be pedantic but seeing the same error over and over just makes my skin crawl.

Thanks for posting all the advice! I'm sure lots of folks will find it helpful.

Thanks for the correction.

You forgot the most important part!

Have fun painting!

dont worry about ruining your models. Any paint job is better than none and if you ever feel the need to start over some simple green will strip your miniatures and you can try again.

paint with friends, try out a hobby night at your game store.

Lots of manufacturers offer learn to paint sets and most of them are good.

If I used dropper bottles I would be extremely tempted by the reaper learn to paint kits as they come in wonderful cases inserts that make your hobby kit very portable.

Great guide.

One point about the glue: I'm sure I read that the rules recommend superglue (rather than plastic glues).

Good stuff!

The one thing i noticed that I might do differently is the white undercoat. I find black works nicely because that way, if you miss a spot, it isn't that noticeable. With white, it is SO noticeable, you know?

7 minutes ago, Lord Ashram said:

Good stuff!

The one thing i noticed that I might do differently is the white undercoat. I find black works nicely because that way, if you miss a spot, it isn't that noticeable. With white, it is SO noticeable, you know?

I agree with that, but I find that a medium grey primer works best.

4 hours ago, Lord Ashram said:

Good stuff!

The one thing i noticed that I might do differently is the white undercoat. I find black works nicely because that way, if you miss a spot, it isn't that noticeable. With white, it is SO noticeable, you know?

if you are painting Stormtroopers I think your're going to want white primer or grey depending. I wouldn't want to try and paint white up from black.

Other thoughts you didn't cover dry brushing that I saw. I found when beginning it was a easy way to add some simple highlights, and is a great way to highlight metal parts. Buy good matt varnish it is so worth it, you don't want to put all this work into a mini only to have to get chipped. I like Testors dull coat as well, it's a small can but it will go a long way and I've never had it frost on me.

12 hours ago, Amanal said:

Anything I have missed, got wrong or you do different?

One additional step that I always include is to Wash the pieces prior to assembly. In order to facilitate removal of the finished model from the mold, some form of chemical "mold release" agent is applied, similar to spraying a muffin tin with oil and spreading flour prior to baking. This chemical stays on the plastic, and can cause the paint to flake off, or otherwise have difficulties sticking. I put all of the sprues/parts into some lukewarm water with common hand wash dish soap in it, and let sit for a minutes. Then I brush the plastic with an old/cheap soft toothbrush, rinse, and let dry before I start painting. I know this is more of a concern with resin and metal miniatures, but I have seen issues with unwashed plastics in the past.

12 hours ago, Dr Lucky said:

I appreciate what you are doing for the community but you are killing me with the word "pallet." A pallet is a wooden platform for shipping goods. Artists mix paint on a "palette."

Want to see my pallet palette?

1 hour ago, Undeadguy said:

Want to see my pallet palette?

Can I touch it to my palate?

28 minutes ago, HaranHaste said:

Can I touch it to my palate?

After organizing my paint palettes on top of paper plates to be shipped on a pallet, I went to do pilates with a pilot only to realize my palate was bleeding and I was losing platelets.

...

Anyway as it pertains to painting, I think something really important for beginners to realize is that at tabletop distance, almost anything looks way better than bare plastic. The second group of minis I painted in adulthood was a Stormtrooper squad for IA. I’ve gotten a lot better since then, and I refer to that batch of Stormies as “Derp Squad.” They don’t look super great upon close inspection. The blacks are kinda grey, the shading is a little dodgy, and I somehow managed to paint helmeted figures in such a way that they look cross eyed. But they still look rad in combat and look MUCH better than they did out of the box. Just lean into it!

3 minutes ago, KalEl814 said:

...

Anyway as it pertains to painting, I think something really important for beginners to realize is that at tabletop distance, almost anything looks way better than bare plastic. The second group of minis I painted in adulthood was a Stormtrooper squad for IA. I’ve gotten a lot better since then, and I refer to that batch of Stormies as “Derp Squad.” They don’t look super great upon close inspection. The blacks are kinda grey, the shading is a little dodgy, and I somehow managed to paint helmeted figures in such a way that they look cross eyed. But they still look rad in combat and look MUCH better than they did out of the box. Just lean into it!

I have found that if you are only trying to get something painted to tabletop quality, which is probably what most of us are aiming for, then holding your model at arms-length to see how it looks is usually a good indicator of how it will look on the table. It's amazing the difference it makes when you look at a mini from 6 inches versus 3+ feet...

Just now, NeonWolf said:

I have found that if you are only trying to get something painted to tabletop quality, which is probably what most of us are aiming for, then holding your model at arms-length to see how it looks is usually a good indicator of how it will look on the table. It's amazing the difference it makes when you look at a mini from 6 inches versus 3+ feet...

Indeed. It’s easy to forget since I usually paint with a 2X magnifying headset that has LEDs on top of it. I’m so used to looking at minis that way while I’m painting and under those conditions every flaw and brushstroke is super visible. Then I open up the box later on and see the painted minis under normal conditions and think they look great!

34 minutes ago, KalEl814 said:

Indeed. It’s easy to forget since I usually paint with a 2X magnifying headset that has LEDs on top of it. I’m so used to looking at minis that way while I’m painting and under those conditions every flaw and brushstroke is super visible. Then I open up the box later on and see the painted minis under normal conditions and think they look great!

Any suggestions on magnifying headsets? I bought a cheap magnifying glass thing on Amazon and it's not as useful as I'd like.