I've never painted miniatures of any kind before, and wonder where to start, what kinds of paints, brushes etc… i've got a second falcon and slave 1 on the way. I also have som minis from talisman and mice and mystics which i can practice on before trying something with the falcon / slave one…

Ravncat said:

Don't attempt to learn using the X-wing miniatures. There to small and fine featured. Check out a website called The Army Painter. It is an excellent source for a beginning painter.

Yeah I learned on Warhammer 40k minis, but that was years ago so even now I wouldn't be confident on the fine detail of X-Wing minis.

Try practicing on 6 or 10mm space fighters e.g. Battletech minis.

I'm not normally a guy who is super negative towards other folks ideas, but in this specific instance, I completely agree with BigDogg- X-Wing Miniatures is not the place to learn how to paint minis. I've painted probably 10,000 points of 40k minis and I've not even attempted to paint any of my X-Wing stuff. It's just too small, and I can't imagine trying to hold a line on something that tiny.

If you're just dead set on the idea, as mentioned, there are tons of painting sites out there that can give advice on any and all aspects, but if you're considering anything but a very simple color swap or something, i'd strongly advise you picking up some larger models of the ships and practicing on those first.

Painting minis isn't so much about ideas or techniques or finding the right advice on the right website- it's very much about developing the feel for it, which to put it another, more clinical way, is developing the muscle memory necessary to paint miniatures at these small scales. Now, if you already do a similar activity, like you're a jeweler or something, you might have already developed some of that muscle memory, but assuming you don't have another small, extremely fine motor skill hobby or job, you're likely just going to either ruin a bunch of your X-Wing stuff or end up with some horribly painted models.

Again- I'm not usually this guy. I swear I'm not. I'm usually really encouraging and open to new ideas and stuff. I hate it when someone has an idea that isn't just the bog standard average and people just crap all over it, but this is probably not something you want to do.

I'm mostly just looking at a different coloring on the slave 1 and some alternate color on the falcon. Not thinking about touching the smaller ships.

If you have a Games Workshop store nearby, have a look at their Citadel paints, it's what I've been brought up on. And I would experiment on some cheap miniatures (see if GW has any) -- they can also offer you painting advice on hand (but be careful, they are skilled in the art of selling you more than you need!)

Ravncat said:

Ravncat said:

I agree with BigDog, don't learn on your prepainted minis. i learned how to paint on WW2 minis in Warhammer scale. There are plenty of equipment straps and buttons to paint on them so there was a lot of opportunity to try different things. If you only have a couple of practice minis you might want to paint, repaint, and repaint them to the point that you are comfortable with your skill level to move on to your xwing ships. If you goof up on your practice minis you can always touch up the paint after it dries but you do not have touch up paint for the xwing minis. Practice practice practice. The better you get before you paint your xwing minis the better your xwing minis will look.

I use a toothpick for fine details. It is slow going, but the slower you go the more detail you can get. Better detail makes for handsome minis.

Take your time. Patience shows.

Practice! You can do it!

no Games Workshop nearby, I'm in Japan.

My suggestion then would be to buy some primer and repaint some gashapons It'll be great for practice.

For paint, I suggest the P3 line or Vellejo. For brushesCitadel, army painter, and P3 make quality brushes. The army painter ones are probably the cheapest to get into. Windsor Newton also makes some pretty good red sable brushes.

Lastly, I really suggest striping your starwars minis if you plan to repaint, and that can be pretty painful.