Hey all,

I threw together what I hope is a helpful article that covers the fundamentals of painting for those beginning their hobby journey.

https://intelsweep.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/the-five-building-blocks-of-miniature-painting/

Quite useful, and covers all the main points. One minor thing though. It may make it easier for the new painter if you had some small solid blocks of colour to explain how highlighting works ie : .... Or a before and after comparison of the models side by side. The wash stage is hard to distinguish to the untrained eye, same for edge highlights. But other than that I think it's a great guide for people starting out. Perhaps it can be pinned?

(love the commandos' colour scheme btw)

Thanks! That’s a good idea about having it all together so people can easily see the differences. I’ll add that when I get to work.

While it's certainly a nice article that can help a beginner along, I'm not sure I entirely agree with everything you've said. Not saying you're completly wrong, but what you present is maybe 1 option of how to do things, but I would hardly call this the 5 building blocks. of mini painting. For instance I for 1 hardly ever use washes, I start with my shades, and highlight up from there. I understand that you don't want to complicate things too much but I would have presented things differently, as now it feels like you're saying this is THE way to do it, and if you're not doing it like this you're basicly doing it wrong. Rather than spefically talk about techniques like washes, something about showing how any colour to not look flat, you can do a shade, a basecolour and a highlight, then you can say an easy way to shade it is by using a wash, but another very popular way is to paint the shades first then your base colour and then a highlight (there are entire paint ranges that sell paints in triads a shade a basecoluor and a highlight).

Again not trying to sound like a **** and saying you're completly wrong, everything you've said sounds like good advice for a beginner but it's just one way to do things and what works for some may not work for others, I mean, i agree that undercoating by can is easier, but I know a lot of people that swear by undercoating by brush

3 hours ago, Mr Tough Guy said:

While it's certainly a nice article that can help a beginner along, I'm not sure I entirely agree with everything you've said. Not saying you're completly wrong, but what you present is maybe 1 option of how to do things, but I would hardly call this the 5 building blocks. of mini painting. For instance I for 1 hardly ever use washes, I start with my shades, and highlight up from there. I understand that you don't want to complicate things too much but I would have presented things differently, as now it feels like you're saying this is THE way to do it, and if you're not doing it like this you're basicly doing it wrong. Rather than spefically talk about techniques like washes, something about showing how any colour to not look flat, you can do a shade, a basecolour and a highlight, then you can say an easy way to shade it is by using a wash, but another very popular way is to paint the shades first then your base colour and then a highlight (there are entire paint ranges that sell paints in triads a shade a basecoluor and a highlight).

Again not trying to sound like a **** and saying you're completly wrong, everything you've said sounds like good advice for a beginner but it's just one way to do things and what works for some may not work for others, I mean, i agree that undercoating by can is easier, but I know a lot of people that swear by undercoating by brush

This is very much my subjective opinion, and I might incorporate a disclaimer saying there are plenty of ways to do things.

I definitely presented the article the way I did so as to keep things simple, though it was not intended to stop anyone from trying other techniques.

Please feel free to write up something about the techniques you use! The more articles out there for beginners the better I think.