I know that there are a few other Mini-painters out there. And to head off the obvious joke I mean people who paint miniatures, not really small painters.
What kind of minis do you paint? What kind of paints and brushes do you use? Are there particular techniques that you favor?
Lastly, can you link to samples of your work?
Sound off like you got a pair!
I paint some, not a whole bunch. I tend more towards dabbling though I’ve got a nice queue of unpainted miniatures waiting for me to clothe them. No links to my work, nothing especially impressive really.
I paint miniatures, pewter figurines. I also know Candid Gamera does, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.
I do these little wooden plaques view one, http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/picunurse/Art%20work/plaques1.jpg
] view 2 and view 3
Julie Guthrie is my goddess.
I have a couple hundred lead minis painted, about an even mix of Fantasy PCs, monsters, and superhero figures. Come to think of it, about a quarter of the superheroes are actually monsters figures…
I did a boatload of painting back during college, when I had the time, and shortly after my son was born and I was home on paternity leave, but hardly any since. It takes me a good, solid uninterruptable couple of hours to get any painting headway done, and I’m kind of particular that once I start working on a mini, I want to keep working on it until I’ve painted as much as I can.
I use water-based paints (used to use Polly S, but they’re gone now, I think…), red sable 000 brushes, dark wash for shadows, dry brush for highlights, and I think they pass the “out on the battlemat” test–do they look good at a distance of 2 feet? I think they don’t look so good from 2", though. I’m not that kind of crazy painter.
I forgot to list my own answers!
I do fantasy and Sci-fi minis for myself and friends. I don’t care what brand of figure, as long as I like the way it looks. My current favorite brand is Reaper as I find their latest stuff remarkably innovative on so many fronts.
For paints I use Liquitex acrylics, Citadel paints and have a few colors from other brands. I use any brand of brush I can find as long as the individual brush looks good and acts properly.
For technique, I’m heavy on the drybrushing and washing. I will occasionally using blending for facial details, but that is rare.
My minis tend to be dark. This is for realism sake. I started out as a kid doing millitary models which are usually dirty and drab so I find bright colors on a mini to be “cartoony.” Now that I’m getting into 90mm napoleonic stuff, brighter colors are becoming necessary. That’s OK though since bright colors look better at the larger scales than on tiny figures.
I don’t have any mini pics online at the moment other than on Ebay. But I hope to get a gallery of my work up and running soon enough.
I was hoping to see some tips posted here, so here is mine:
One way of getting a truly matte finish is overcoating with watered down white glue. This works great but can interact badly on inked areas.
I have several hunderd miniatures, most of which are used for tabletop gaming.
Most are D&D style fantasy figures: knights, wizards, monsters of all description, and women in scant dress.
The rest are Battletech (now Mechwarrior), Star Fleet Battles (now Starfleet Command), and Warhammer minis. A subset of the Warhammers is four complete Blood Bowl teams.
I used to paint all the time, but as our gaming group has shifted to LAN gaming we do little with them anymore. I preferred water-based paints for the colors, then I applied a fixer or clear coat to protect the paint. Unfortunately for detail’s sake most of my minis look like they’ve been through a series of wars (which, in effect, they have.) One of these days I’ll build a new diorama, and paint them up again.
I have several Citadel miniatures painted, mostly from the Warhammer Undead line, but also some Warhammer Lizardmen (my Masterpiece was almost a Slaan mage-priest (link for reference only; I have nothing to do with that particular site). Unfortunately, I was admiring it before the epoxy fully dried, and the whole thing went tumbling down, bouncing off at least shelves of my bookcase, before landing in pieces. I tried to patch it up as best I could, but now it’s just a mediocre piece.
I haven’t painted anything in a long time, though, largely because my paints have all dried up. I need to get a whole new set before I can do any more painting (I have oodles of unpainted miniatures lying around, which would probably keep me occupied until Armageddon if I ever got around to painting them all).
Technique-wise, I’m typically just base / wash / drybrush. I can’t blend to save my soul.
Any suggestions on a good line of metallic paints? The ones I used to like - Dragon Colors, or something like that - aren’t being made any more. They had lots of cool colors, like metallic greens and blues and purples (which work well for Warhammer 40K Tyrannids; makes 'em nice and chitiny). Now, I only ever see “regular” metallics, like gold, silver, copper, bronze, etc.
I use to paint Warhammer Fantasy armies. Have quite a few such miniatures that never got finished. I’ve also painted Battletech stuff for a while.
I will get back to the Warhammer figures eventually, but I’ve been working on a World War Two project so I’m painting World War Two miniatures.
Despite the best advice I’ve gotten, I use oil based paints just out of habit. My stuff comes out looking ok but isn’t competition level.
A few of my miniatures get pictured in this thread:
http://www.blackclawgames.com/bcforum/viewtopic.php?t=154
As Anaamika noted, I do. Will answer the questions and stuff when I have more time…
So, yeah. I paint pewter miniatures for use with D&D. I use acrylic paints - initially I tried using Testor’s model enamel, but it was such a pain to clean up, I quickly looked for and found a substitute. I buy my paints from the local Michael’s - a chain Arts-n-crafts store. Paint quality varies a bit, but I can afford to buy many, many colors. Brushes - nothing special, really… I use one with a nice point until the point isn’t so nice anymore, then it becomes my defacto ‘big stuff’ brush and I buy a new small one.
I started to take pictures of the ones I’ve done, but the process of taking the pictures, resizing them, and posting them on the web became so tedious that I’ve put it on hiatus.
My standard procedure is : trim any flash on the figure; paint it white and let dry; give it a good coating of a thinned black paint to call out the details and let dry; then fill in the details with appropriate colors. Pretty simple, really.
Do you always prime white? and do you use a spray primer or paint it on with a brush?
I always spray prime and use white, black, or gray depending on what I’m going to paint over it. Gray is the default.
I paint mini’s but I dunno if I would qualify as a “mini-painter”, as I’m not all that great.
In fact, the only “mini” I would consider as me having given it a good paint job is a Warhammer Bloodthirster, which isn’t exactly a mini.
I am, however, pretty good at scavanging bits to transform into something else: my piece de resistance was when I bought 3 My Little Pony knockoffs for 88 cents apiece, and scavenged the butterfly hairpin to make two sets of wings apiece to transform normal Space Marines into Mutated Chaos Marines with Daemonic Flight. Hint: when you try to melt most plastic with a cigarette lighter, the difference between melting and burning is very very tiny!
I am also not a big fan of flocking the bases: after all, if you don’t know specifically which background/terrain you will be playing in/showcasing in, having a mis-flocked base is worse than just basic black, IMHO. That said, if I do start to flock I wonder if anyone has tried Fleckstone: does that give a decent flock so I don’t have to spend freakin hours on just a base?
Haven’t done any for years (was very into it when I was a wee tyke), but here’s a dweeby fact for you: the term “minature” does not derive from the word “minor” or any of its cognates, but from “minium”, which was a pigment, red lead or vermillion, which was used to rubricate in old illuminated manuscripts (i.e. the red initials), then was used to refer to ay illuminated manuscript painting, then to any very small painting, and then its current use to mean anything small. Its resemblance to the ‘minor’ root is purely coincidental.
Well, there’s my Tau, currently, my Blood Angels, too.
Before, some Battletech, some normal minis… done a few cases over time.
Brush prime. Sprays are inconvenient for me. Always white so far - why use grey? I could see a use for Black, but haven’t chosen to use it yet - since I wouldn’t be able to call out the details with a follow-up wash.
I find that gray is good for things like flesh tone where I don’t want it Too bright when I’m done but priming black is going too far the other way. Also, the gray goes under just about everything equally well. If I do have to put some bright parts on the mini I can put down a base layer of white on just that part before the final color.
I find that after I use the black wash on the white primer, it comes out grey for the most part anyway. 
I don’t do it now but if I keep seeing such strong shadows in miniatures I’m going to get pissed off and start doing it just to show how subtlety works.
Of course, that means I’ll have to learn how to do it myself… 
