Advice for starting Miniature Painting?

Cafe Society
1

I have some pewter miniatures for a Pathfinder game I play and I am thinking of trying to paint them.

Unfortunately the more I look into it, the steeper the learning curve seems to be.

There also seems to be a zillion things that you need to buy, just to start; for example: better lighting.

I am not a fine artist, so I am doubtful that the results, even with effort, will be worth the investment of time/money.

You can end up with something like this if you are incredibly good:

but I am afraid something like this is more likely:

Any advice on starting out, such as pitfalls to avoid, more things that you should definitely buy or good online tutorials?

An example question: how important is it to buy washes?

2

If you’re just starting out, and haven’t painted minis before, you probably don’t need washes yet. Start out by getting the paints in the right places. Techniques like washes and highlighting add quite a bit to the look of a finished mini, but are more advanced.

What you really need (IMO):

  • An X-Acto knife (or something similar), for cleaning molding flash
  • A small metal file (also for cleaning up flash)
  • Good primer (I prefer spray primer, but paint-on primer works, too)
  • A selection of basic colors, including a skin tone. You’ll probably also want a couple of metallic colors (for armor, swords, etc.) – probably a gold, a bright silver, and a darker silvery color (such as gunmetal) for starters.
  • A clear sealer / finish (to protect the paint job after you’re done)
  • A couple of good basic brushes. You don’t need to spend a fortune on these, but anything cheaper than a couple of bucks per brush is probably going to hamper you more than it helps you.

Good lighting does help a great deal. I have an inexpensive desk lamp with an adjustable neck. Might’ve cost $15 at the most.

If you’re still young :slight_smile: and have good eyesight, you probably don’t need magnifying glasses. I’m old enough that I need reading glasses now; I also need them while painting.

Also, as this is specifically about painting minis for a RPG, it might better belong in The Game Room. I’m flagging it for a possible forum change.

3

Minis painting isn’t as daunting as many make it seem.

There’s a few techniques that can really make it a lot easier and quicker if you’re not obsessed with looking “competitive” with the best painters.

When I did a lot of minis, I had a pretty straightforward technique that got me consistent good results:

  1. Assemble / clean the pieces

  2. Prime it black.

  3. Paint metal bits like swords first

  4. Paint everything else in basic colors. Start with the deepest areas, try to do each color in one shot.

  5. Apply a quick wash or drybrush to the focal points to give it a little zazz.

The only step that takes any flair is #5 – everything up to that is more or less just tiny, 3D paint-by-numbers.

If you read tutorials and whatnot, you’ll find a LOT of people talking down about washes and drybrushing, calling them lazy / imprecise techniques. Ignore this. Washing and drybrushing are the fastest, easiest, most achievable technique for adding a little interest to minis.

4

Other random tips: buy paint in flip-top pots, not dropper bottles. The amount of time you can save in loading / cleaning palettes adds up, and the flip-bottle paints are usually made specifically to be good for gaming minis. My preferred paint was P3, but Games Workshop paint is fine and easy to get.

The best primer, in my experience, is called “Duplicolor.” It’s available from auto parts stores like Napa or at Walmart. It’s cheaper and better than the stuff made for gamers. I heavily recommend black – it speeds up the process. With white primer, you have to paint every bit or it looks unfinished. With black, any bits you leave black will just look like shadow.

Good lighting is great, but a half-decent desklamp or bright ceiling light is fine. Bright white “daylight” bulbs make a big difference.

Decent brushes help a lot, but don’t buy them to start since you’ll ruin the first few brushes you buy pretty quickly. The best brushes for mini painting are usually 0, and 1 sized red sable brushes. White nylon is probably second best. Just buy a few small cheapish 0s and see what you like.

5

THIN YOUR GODDAMN PAINTS !
(sorry, old Games Workshop meme)

But really, do thin your paints. You don’t want to use paint straight out of the pot, because it’ll clog up details and indentations on the mini. Use the top of the pot as your palette. Too much water is better than too little - you can always do a second coat if the pigment ends up being too thin or correct drools later, but once that thick dollop of paint is in the eye hole, it’s not coming back out.

Keep your old brushes around, they’re handy when you want to do highlights via drybrushing. Drybrushing kills brushes quick, you don’t want to use your best on it. Besides, in my experience drybrushing works better when you use brushes with thick, rigid bristles, which old brushes usually do.

Your workspace is important. You’re going to be hunched over that bastard for long stretches of time, so make sure it’s comfortable and you can rest your elbows on it. A coffee table is too low.

If you can get your hands on an electrician’s thingamabob with the little alligator clamps or a small portable vise, then get one. You *can *paint with the brush in one hand and the mini in the other but chances are you’ll tremble when painting a detail or worse, drop the bloody thing. The laws of the Universe state that every time a mini is dropped, an opened pot of paint must materialise just under it.

Don’t skimp on the varnish. You’re going to be handling the minis a lot and you don’t want half the paint to break away after a few games. Unlike paint, you don’t care if a detail gets obstructed by transparent varnish.

Do things in batches - get a half dozen minis you think you’re going to use the same colour scheme on, and paint them colour by colour one after the other - that way, by the time you’re done applying colour 1 on the last, the first will have dried so you can get started on colour 2. You really don’t want to apply a new colour when the first isn’t completely dry, or they’ll mix and it’ll turn groddy.

Accept that your first few minis are going to suck, so don’t start on your favorite ones.

6

Manuals and articles say to assemble the minis first.

(Don’t)

OK, here’s the thing: sometimes when you assemble a figure completely first, there are parts which are horribly hard to reach. So, when I see that coming, what I do is assemble the mini first, using real stick-on-mass where it won’t create horrible angles and blu-tack where it will, file anything which needs filing, then prime it, then take off the part held with blu-tack and paint it separated from the rest. Stick it back on, this time for real, once it’s all painted.

Hey, I’m a heretic, but all those teeny weeny little itsy bits on dwarven armors can be a bitch to reach if both arms are on, damnit. Take the arms off, you’re golden.

Start with plainish figures first: foot soldiers, not generals with chests full of medals. And remember, nobody was born taught.

I found Warhammer’s “basic how-to-paint manual” (can’t remember its proper name) quite useful, except for the “assemble everything” bit.

7

This is good advice, but I think it’s better as a novice to just assemble first and do the best you can with the hard to reach bits (on most models, hard to reach is also hard to see, so). Getting fiddly is something that will naturally come with time. :wink:

8

Oh, and yeah, 100% agreed on thinning your paints. As I hear it, it’s the #1 “rookie mistake” and will make the process seem infinitely harder than it should.

The general process I use is something like this: shake the pot VIGOROUSLY to get it mixed and coat the inside of the pot lid. Flip it up. Add a few drops of water to the paint (I keep a little $1 dropper bottle handy). I generally thin to roughly 50% dilution.

Put the TIP of the brush in the paint, wipe it gently on a paper towel to bleed off excess, gently stroke the brush across the surface a few times. Repeat. Rinse the brush after every two or three repetitions to keep paint from drying on the brush.

Thinned paints will usually take 2-3 layers to cover primer, depending on the color, but the end result will be much smoother, cleaner, and show much more detail than trying to just smear on unthinned paint.

Oh, and another tip / trick / headache avoider: buy a seperate brush or two for doing the shiny metallic colors (gold, silver, bronze). Mark them somehow, and DO NOT use them for your flat colors or use your regular brushes with metallics. Metallic paints are basically just colored paint with extra fine glitter added. Using the same brushes for both flat and metallic, in my experience, means you WILL wind up with tiny glitter flecks on your manly soldiers’ faces.

9

Not that there’s anything wrong with that;)

10

I’ve heard good things about Vallejo’s paint line.

11

That’s the thing, one of my first half-dozen had a couple of chest and belt items which were horrible to reach with everything one, yet very visible - and shiny! :frowning:

The second half-dozen already had the blu-tack in the paintbbox.

12

Thanks for the info everyone!

typoink, do you know the exact name of the Dupli-Color black primer that you spoke of? They seem to have a lot of different ones.

13

I’m going to contradict a couple of folks’ advice, here.

One, don’t (necessarily) thin your paints. Consider thinning your paints, but it depends on what kind you get. If you’re buying high quality Reaper/Vallejo paints, then yes, you probably want to thin them. But play around with them first, to get a feel - thinner paints flow into cracks better, but can be harder to control for a novice. Plus they require multiple coats. So experiment. If you screw up a miniature, then soap, water, and a toothbrush will get you back to the bare metal or plastic for another try.

Second - don’t prime with black. Warhammer people do this. And it works for them. But for someone starting out, if you paint a miniature with black primer, you’ve basically just obscured all the details, making it harder for you to pick them out later. White primer results in brighter colors on the finished mini, plus you can actually see the tiny bumps and grooves. And once you do start using a wash (or thinned black paint works) over that white primer? It makes all those little details pop so you can easily spot what to paint.
Absolute basics for just starting to paint (to see if you enjoy it) :

X-Acto Knife
Pliers
Clean, stable work surface
Adhesive *
Paint **
Brushes ***
Varnish

Adhesive may not apply, some miniatures are in one piece. I think most of the Pathfinder line has, at the least, detached bases, though. You can usually twist the metal tab below the mini’s feet just a smidge (using pliers, into a faint ‘s’ shape) to make it fit snugly in the base without glue. If you have multiple parts to the actual miniature, though, you’ll need something to make them stick. If the parts are plastic (or at least one of them is) then Krazy Glue works. If it’s a bunch of metal pieces, then Krazy Glue can work, but I honestly just use epoxy.

On paint - good miniature paint seems pretty expensive. It’s worth the price, but I will tell you that I achieved pretty good results for years using ordinary acrylic craft paint. (Sold in Michael’s craft stores under the FolkArt brand, in little squeeze bottles.) It’s dirt cheap. You wouldn’t want to thin it, though. You will get better results with a miniature-specific paint line, but if cost is a factor, FolkArt’s good enough to get you started and let you practice.

White paint is a decent primer, though not the best. Again, it’d be something to let you get started more quickly and try things out.

For brushes, you’ll need two kinds. Cheapies, for drybrushing and priming (and varnish), and a slightly-less-cheapie with a small size and nice point for detail work. I don’t remember brush sizes well… I think I mainly use a 00.

Michael’s (and other craft stores) sell acrylic varnishes (Golden and Liquitex brands). I recommend that. There are different kinds - you want the regular viscosity (not medium - it’s a bit thick). There are also different finishes - matte and gloss, particularly.

Gloss is more durable, but makes things look ‘wet’.

So, here’s my process for miniatures, from beginning to end :

  • Cleanup - Remove the miniature from any sprues, cut off any bits of metal sticking out. Check the fit of pieces, if there are multiple parts. File or cut to make them fit right. I also wash the miniature to remove any lingering traces of mold release agent that can interfere with paint adhesion.

  • Assembly - Put the pieces together, using whatever adhesive is appropriate. If the parts are particularly heavy or awkward to hold in a good drying position, I will ‘pin’ them. (Drilling a small hole in each part with a hobby drill, gluing in a short length of wire.) Use putty, if necessary, to fill in gaps.

  • Prime - I’ve used white paint thus far, but I’m about to switch to a mixed primer concoction I was recommended by a pro. After priming, apply a thin wash of something dark to call out the details.

  • Paint - Well, yeah.

  • Seal - Two coats of gloss varnish, then a coat of matte.

Oh! One more thing. Holding the miniature! I know someone else mentioned this as well. You need something the mini will not fall off of, no matter which way you turn it. I recommend a small container (one of those FolkArt paint bottles is perfect) that you can grip, with either double-sided tape or poster putty on the top. Either one can be used effectively to allow you to turn the miniature upside down for hard to reach details.

14

Most everything I would have said has been said.

In addition to removing flash, look for casting lines on the model. it really sucks to be 80% done with a mini and discover a big ol’ line running across it’s head. Just get a set of small files or an emory board to file them down.

I use different primer colors depending on the intended final color scheme of the mini. Anything that’s going to be dark or mainly dark will be primed black. If it’s going to be a bright mini (eg, a guy in red armor) I prime it white. Neutral color minis like woodland-themed stuff gets primed gray.

If you have to choose, it’s easier to paint dark colors over bright than the reverse. But if you’re going to put a bright spot on a dark mini like a red ribbon on a black uniform, paint the ribbon white and then red. It will ensure a bright red. Same for yellow items. Yellow is a bitch overall. One thing about all these rules is that as you get more experience, you find out how to break them for good effect. Like the above red/black case. Sometimes you might want to put the red directly over the black to create a very dark red or some such.

Don’t be afraid to try something that you see someone else do. You might not be able to do it just like them, but you’ll never be able to do it at all if you don’t try.

And feel free to ask others for advice. Mini painters LOVE to tell you how they do their minis.

15

Lots of great info already, so of course most of the good stuff has been said. . . Still I’d like to share a couple of ideas.

There’s a lot of different ways to go about priming. Black is often recommended by the Games Workshop/Citadel guides, but it will give you a darker, grimy look. That’s great for some subjects (a lot of the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K really), but not everything. So, like Hypno-Toad, I use different primer depending on the subject.

But I haven’t seen mention of ‘pre-washing’ the model with ink. When I use white or gray primer, I will sometimes then use a thin black ink wash over it before painting. You see this done sometimes in the catalog pictures of miniatures as well. It brings out the detail very nicely and it gives you almost built-in shadows and shading. Another benefit, especially if you’re just starting out, is that you won’t take a chance on screwing up your painting with the ink wash! You could strip it off or re-prime if it doesn’t look decent. I tended to use the GW ink washes and they work well, but you can also get some ink from an art supply store and use that (thinned a bit). My technique was usually to grab a larger brush, dip it in some clean water to wet the bristles well, dab off the excess water, then dip in the ink and brush it on the mini.

I’ve had some good results from this technique. If you’re doing a very light model (like a white scheme or baby blue or something), you probably won’t want to do this as you might want a bit more control over the dark areas. Also, black washes work for most things, but not everything. If your scheme is based on yellow, a brown wash will usually work better.

One other “handy” technique for painting the details. . . When painting fine details, hand shake is often a killer. Even using a third hand vise won’t always help, because the hand holding the brush can still shake. What I will do in those situations is: Hold the mini with the first 2 or 3 fingers of my left hand (reverse this if you’re left handed, of course), the brush in the first 3 fingers of my right, lace my pinkies and ring fingers together, then rest the meat of my palms together. This way, your hand are basically locked together and will move in sync. This only works for the fine detail, because it will inhibit you from being able to move the brush very much, but it can really help quite a bit.

16

If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, I recommend it. I used to paint minis many years ago (back before I had cats, who make it kind of impractical :D) and I found this book to be full of helpful tips.

17

I’ll say this- get a few all-metal miniatures to start out with.

That way, you can paint them, decide they suck, soak them overnight in pine-sol, scrub them with a toothbrush, and start over.

Plastic parts tend to dissolve in part or in whole when having the paint removed via chemical means.

Other than that, learning how to drybrush and to a lesser extent, wash are good techniques, but I always thought color choice was a big deal; too many people use highlight colors that are too bright, IMO.

18

I’ll second this.

I am one of those Games Workshop fans. My chapter of Space Marines is the Blood Angels, who wear bright red armour. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to paint a nice looking red over a black primer coat. Yellow is even harder!

The obvious solution is to prime in white, which is what I normally do. A less obvious solution, advanced in the book Infovore mentions, is to prime black, the cover most of the raised areas with a mix of white and your chosen color. After that, then proceed to paint as normal.

This is difficult, time consuming, and, for Blood Angels, means I have to drybrush them pink. The mailed fist of The Emperor will not be going into battle in pink armour, thank you very much.

I am of two minds about thinning paints.

Obviously, if your paint is thicker, you need fewer coats and the color will be more pure. As a beginner, this might be the route to go for you. I originally chose Blood Angels for my Space Marines twenty years ago for no better reason than I had more bottles of Testors flat red enamel on hand than any other color. Some of those old marines (particularly the metal models in squads Brutus and Actaeon) still sport those half-assed paint jobs.

On the flip side, unless you thin your paints, you will never achieve the kinds of results painters like Tom Schadle or Jen Haley get - Google them if you don’t know what I’m referring to.

You can find me on coolminiornot too. All the models I have up there were painted a long time ago - after I got better, but still nowhere near as good as the professional types. If you look, you’ll see the most common piece of advice I get is that I should have thinned my paints.

Guess how I paint now? :wink:

19

I find that I get good results for red minis like the Blood Angelsif I use a darker red for the base and highlight with a bright red. Specifically, I use Macarius red (A foundation paint) for the first coat, a thin coat of Red Gore over that and highlight with Blood Red.

20

I referred to it, actually. :wink: