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Try Something New: Paint Like A Pro!
September 3, 2015 by dracs
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Well as a recent sign up to backstage I’ve been watching alot of the back episodes of 3 colours up and I feel like my paint skills are certainly improving already. The wet palette has made such a difference and although I already thinned my paints I’ve been a bit more adventurous with the amount of dilution and mixing colours. Certainly setting a goal for painting can help its hard to get the mojo on sometimes, I’m finding little and often is working for me. I’ve not started on my infinity minis yet but feel that they may have to have the extra mile when it comes to the paint work, there such stunning sculpts and you’re not painting loads for a army so achievable I think 🙂
Excellent article! It just described my painting ‘philosophy’! For some projects I try to push the boundaries with new techniques, materials, etc where for others projects I just go for the quick methods (and experiment with those).
Trying something new with paints is also a great way to boost morale and to keep going!
I’m currently teaching myself the complete opposite of this.
Until recently I have tried to paint every single miniature to the best of my ability and while the results are great, unfortunately I end up playing games with piles of grey plastic and 2 or 3 painted miniatures.
I am now trying to get some armies at various points levels finished (I know they’re never truly finished) to a good tabletop standard. A good way to do this has been to play a slow-grow 40k league with friends where we start at 500 points and play games against each other then add 250 points. Everything must be painted so makes getting the army done more of a priority.
I have the same problem. I have tons of unpainted models. And I find myself trying for a great paint job on each one – making it painfully slow to get a full painted army on the table.
So I am trying to be satisfied with a table ready paint job – good enough, but not the best I can do.
It’s the same for me. And that needs to change.
I quite enjoy painting my Malifaux stuff up like that and it is fairly managable.
But I have a Teutonic Knight army to assemble and paint in 3 weeks for Lion Rampant. 48 models. So it’s a good time to learn how to paint to a tabletop standard.
The struggle is real! I do the exact same thing, even when starting a goblin army for Warhammer/KoW. Spent about half an hour on one goblin. He looks amazing! Then I looked up to the array of grey and metal goblins in front of me.
Oh dear.
Jup same here. I have reverte to painting my boxgame miniatures and not even cleaning the mold lines. Base colour-wash-1 highlight-glos varnis-mat varnish.
Great article!
Pop over to the “what are you painting now” thread in the hobby forums.
Really friendly thread where you will receive encouragement, get ideas and chat about what you and others are painting.
inkwash and go…..thats all a model needs , for me its the game that matters , not the paint.
try it, you might like it 🙂
But then again painting is my thing… I am struggling to paint a 40K army at the moment but keep getting stuck because I need everything to be perfect yet decided I wanted to paint yellow space marines. Probably wasn’t the best idea!
I usually work in batch to get as many miniatures done in the shortest time possible… But, lately, something changed…
The BoW team gave me a wonderful present not so long ago and one of the miniatures I received will get the best treatment I ever gave a miniature before. And I will write about my adventure in the forums, for sure. 😉
I don’t think I would have the bottle/skill for a paint contest but other people’s articles & pictures help to inspire to improve my paint skills.
I had a friend who could only paint to the best he could all the time, he was good in fact very good. The problem of course the time it took to paint his army. He suddenly withdrew upon himself and despite a lot of efforts could not get him motivated etc. I have no idea if he even still games etc.
I have always taken one special figure maybe three times a year they don’t even need to be part of a current or future army.
It is the figure and the dynamic that count, then settling down and deciding what I am going to do/how to paint, base and if I think it is called for add or subtract from the mini.
Currently though I am scraping moneys together to get some Scibor stuff, Dwarves are a must as another friend of mine has a massive army of dwarves, last counted over 14000points so I want to build an army to take him on. Ill post as I go.
personally I find that playing more skirmish size games helps me improve my painting a lot more 🙂
because I might only have 10 minis to paint for a whole army or something 🙂
but on the other hand if your playing a mass battle game, you could have dozens and dozens to paint (X , X)
so it becomes more about speed and “looks fine from a distance” methods…
… and I also buy a lot of minis that are just to make and paint, so that adds a bit of variety too 🙂
I used to find it kind of repetitive to just paint the same thing 30 times (X , X) ha ha
so I prefer a bit of variety in both the gaming and hobby side of things 🙂
I am actually a slow painter. I do not play with unpainted miniatures but I like to spend some time on trying to do something better than before. Well as you can imagine this results in a certain degree of variety, because for example one clanrat regiment looks a bit different than another one despite the use of the same colour scheme. @elromanozo and his painting tutorials are a great way to improve your skills, yet one has to practice, practice, practice… I would rather call myself an artisan when it comes to painting. I think my painting is of medium quality but not bad. I am certainly not an artist like Romain or Angel. I tend to find painting easier for some people, especially the ones with some aesthetic/artistic sense which I, sadly, do not possess. Still, I try to do my best.
Sam, you’re not saying that you need to stop focusing on just getting your army to “tabletop standard” and treat every miniature as a work of art… but I do. 🙂
Nice Article and thanks. For over 40 years I never ordered more minis until what I had on hand was painted. This was great as I didn’t accumulate unpainted figures and made good, steady, progress on what I had. I would order what I knew I could finish painting before I had cash for another order. Unfortunately over the last 3 years I have ignored my philosophy, and badly at that. I got into Infinity and for the first few months did very well, painting what I ordered then ordering more. But that went by the wayside when I made the move into 28mm WW2 skirmish. That bug bit me and though I kept ordering Infinity minis my painting time was spent on the 28mm WW2 products. Now I have about 75 Infinity models that I’m working through. I’ve painted about 25 in the last 6 weeks. I’m anal about painting so I do the best I can on each. I’m a pretty good painter and am happy with my work. I’m planning on getting back to my original philosophy, but then again…
Barely got the time to paint like crap, let alone like a pro.
Roger that deaddave; feeling the time constraints minute by minute.
Out to you Sam, what a head turning article. Everyone wants to be able to paint better, in fact seeing a well painted miniature is more than likely the reason most of us took the next 2nd and re step into gaming ect. I thought that this article was going to give me a quick fix/great results answer. You know the ones…hey fatty lose all you fat in 1 day..rubbish. Just like everything else in your zone of influence, it take practice practice practice. Your article has made me decide to take that one model and make it a piece I can be proud of.