Painting tips
These are a set of tips I've picked up for painting your models both quicker and better. If you are an experienced painter, you are probably familiar with most of these tips, but have a read through to see if there's anything you missed. I will be covering some fairly simple and basic techniques, as well as more complicated ones. If you aren't doing some of these, I'd recommend trying just one added technique at a time, that way you can see the difference it makes. I'll put them roughly in the order they'd actually go on the model, just to keep things organized. After I cover the individual tips, I'll make some suggestions for ways to improve already painted models. (Like that army you built a couple of years ago and you want to make it look better, but you don't want to repaint the whole thing.)

Find the Time
One of the biggest problems with painting, much less painting well, is finding the time to do it. I rarely have a 2-hour or more block of time to paint models, so I have to be able to paint a little bit at a time. If you put everything in one place, ready to go, you'll be able to get it out and paint any time you have five minutes of down time. When I was painting up my Tau army, I put the paints and models I needed, my brush, a small tray to paint on, a paper towel and a cup for water in my computer desk. Whenever I had a few minutes, I'd just put some water in the cup to rinse my brush and I'd paint a little bit. Then I'd rinse out the brush and the cup and put it away for another time. If I hadn't had it all together, I'd have to find the paints and brush, find the models, get a work surface ready, etc. All before I'd actually get to painting.

Mold Lines
Try hard to find all the mold lines. I know it's a pain, and it's something I used to skip, but mold lines can really ruin your clean lines or cool paint scheme. Since our models are made in 2-part molds, there are seams that sometimes run across them where the parts of the mold met. These lines are more pronounced the older the mold is, so they are usually barely noticeable on the newest types of model, but if you get something that's been around for a while (like Chaos Space Marines) they will be really obvious. If you have a hard time finding them, try doing a very light drybrush of white all over the model. This is a very quick method that will put white on every raised feature, which will help you tell what's supposed to be there and what's not. In addition, since they are two-part molds, once you find one mold line, you can generally follow it around the model to find the others. (Note that you may still find bits of sprue attached to your model in other areas, so don't just look there.)

Treat the VIPs Right
The characters and special models of your army (Captains, Lictors, Dreadnaughts, etc.) deserve some extra attention. These are likely to draw more attention than your rank and file troops, so give them a little extra care. Conversions and extra detail that would take too much time if applied to your whole army are perfect here, as you won't have nearly as many of these models to apply them to.

Set the Stage
Moloch talks about large bases being the chance to "tell a story" and that is a great way to think about it. If you normally just paint your bases, try putting some flock on them. If you already flock your bases, add some terrain details or little bits of flora or fauna or the detritus of war. For example, a green-flocked base might get some mushrooms or a patch of taller grass or maybe a skull or a dropped weapon or even a snake. You can take this one step further, like Moloch and have it tell a story (I'd save this for bases larger than 25mm, though.) Have the model's leg resting on the skull, or have him pointing his weapon at a crocodile coming out of the swamp. Maybe simply have muddy bootprints behind him.

Get Some Stability
Some people have very steady hands. I'm not one of them. One simple way to steady your hands is to hold the model in one hand, the brush in the other, then lock your littlest fingers together. This way, almost any shaking of your painting hand will be dampened by your other hand. In addition, if you put your elbows on a table while you do this, it will make a much more stable platform for you. As a bonus, this will also tend to keep you from hunching over your model, which can make your back sore and shorten your painting time.

Paint Cleanly
If you paint in short, straight lines (even on the curved surfaces) you'll find that it makes it easier to avoid mistakes. By limiting the amount you paint on each stroke, you are greatly limiting your chances of painting "outside the lines." By sticking to straight lines, you are limiting the movement of your hand to one dimension, so it's less likely to go a little crazy or wander off in the middle.

Spray Details
If your hands aren't very steady, or you've got a plan for lots of little details, consider using a spraycan for the detail color, then paint the base colors over it. That way you only have to paint the "big stuff" not the little details. I've never used this method, but Lee Gunby recommended this to me (Hi Lee!) and it seems like a great way to get those details painted without giving yourself a headache trying to paint them individually. In addition, I usually find that it's the detail work that takes the most time, while painting the larger bits goes a lot faster.

Use a Wash or Glaze
A wash is a very simple way to bring out some of the fantastic details in our models as well as to shade the recessed areas of the model. A wash is usually a watered-down ink applied over parts of the model, often just applied directly to the low areas. On the other hand, a glaze is basically the same thing applied over the whole model. The watered down ink flows over the whole model and will slightly shade areas that are flat or raised, but it will gather in the lower areas, darkening them more. It's a fantastic way to bring out those details without painting every muscle or scar on the model individually. I would highly recommend adding a bit of Future Floor wax to your thinned ink, as it decreases the surface tension and helps it go on more smoothly. You should wait to paint your detail bits until after you do the wash. The smaller details can get obscured by the wash, so it's better to . A variation on the glaze uses tinted polyurethane resin (such as the minwax polyshades series) thinned with mineral spirits. This can be very messy to work with and has nasty fumes, but it creates a very good effect and also gives your models a protective coating to prevent them from being chipped and scratched. If you choose to work with the resin, please be careful of the mess and of the fumes. The fumes are dangerous and the resin will stain things and be almost impossible to remove from various surfaces if you spill it.

Use Highlighting
Since our models are so small, we have to emphasize the (small) differences between the low areas and the high ones, and an easy way to do this is to highlight the high areas. By painting those high areas in a lighter tint than the surrounding area, it creates the illusion that they are even higher, which makes it look more realistic. One very simple and quick way to achieve this is to use drybrushing. By wiping most of the paint off the brush, it will only tint the highest points. You can also directly paint on the highlights. Basically, just imagine where the light would hit the model most strongly, then paint lighter tints there. If you have a hard time imagining that, take a picture of the model under very strong lighting, then use that as a guide when highlighting.

NMM or Metallic Metals?
After some research on NMM techniques, I found that they were primarily shading and highlighting to mimic true metal reflectivity. I also found that NMM is a little easier than I thought it would be. One of the tutorials that I read on NMM talked about how you could use the same techniques with metallic paints, but most people don't, which is why NMM looks so cool. Whether you choose to do NMM or not, consider putting in the extra effort for the highlighting and shading to make your metals look more realistic.

Touch Ups
Sometimes when you are painting a model, you will get partway done and make a little mistake. You get a little paint on an area that's supposed to be a different color. It's easy to just leave it, but if you take a minute or two at the end and look over each model and do any touchups necessary, it really makes a huge difference on the overall look.

Detail the Details
Sometimes you can add a few extra details to really make a model pop. Painting lines where a pouch would open, or little bits for a clasp can really make it a little more fancy. A simple way to do the eyes is to give a little bit of black or a color as a dot where the eye should be. If you want to make them look even better, put a tiny dot of white in each corner of the eye. After you have finished, go back and make sure they don't look crosseyed or bug-eyed, though.

Updating Your Old Army
First off, do some touching up. Typically armies that get played a lot (or not stored well) will have some of their paint chipped or rubbed off. There may also be some battle damage you didn't get around to fixing. If you haven't done highlighting or shading on them, that's a quick way to make them look much better. Detailing is another way. Go back and hit some of those details you didn't hit the first time. Next, take a look at the bases. Most players don't do much with their bases, so even a few little rocks or patches of grass will really make things more interesting. You can also go back and retouch any plain metallic paints you've used with some better highlighting and shading. Finally, go back and redo the VIP models, as those are sort of the crown jewels of the army. If you do nothing else, just redoing the characters will make a big difference.

Painting Faster and Better
Next week, I'll be putting up an article about painting an army quickly but still getting a better effect than most "gaming standard" armies. When I put it up, you'll be able to read it here.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!