My Mission

The purpose of this page is to teach new painters the techniques for painting large quantities of rank and file figures in the least amount of time. Individual figures that you want to paint to a higher standard will use the same principles but require more care and time. There is no reason that anyone, after a little instruction, cannot paint to a high tabletop standard. I'm actually getting back into painting, in part because my 5-year old sons are interested in them, so as I go back and revisit techniques, I thought I'd update this page as I go and learn new things. The miniature you'll see here come mostly from the Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40K, Confrontation, and Warmachine games, but the techniques can apply to miniatures from any range and from any scale.

News and Updates

7/19/08

Chugging along on 22 Orks as well as some Tau I bought on-line. Here's a test scheme for the Tau, that I think I'm going to mostly stick with. Also trying to make progress on my Refinery piece and my entry for the Librarium Online Iron Chef Scenery III competition.

7/16/08

Not exactly painting, but this is a new trailer for the new Dawn of War II game, coming out soom. It shows a firefight between a squad of Space Marines and Eldar. Very good trailer. Definately 2 thumbs up.

7/11/08

The terrain makers over at Librarium Online (LO) run an interesting challenge. Iron Chef: Scenery. Just like the popular TV show, the goal is to create a piece of terrain using a secret ingredient, which is then judged and voted on by your peers. I've decided to participate this time .... who knows what I'll turn out. Anyways, one of the requirements is to maintain a WIP thread over at LO to show others how to replicate your work, but I'm also keeping a detailed project log on this site: Iffy's Project Log

7/10/08

The refinery is coming along. I cut and glued on all of the banding and rivets ... 88 of them. I remembered a good suggestion to use a leather punch to make rivets and thought I'd write that up. Making Rivets.

7/7/08

Chugging along. I finally got the set of 22 Orks cleaned up and primed. Next step is basecoats and assembly of arms. I also completed another objective marker, a set of lost tech fuel cells, made out of some old fuel injectors. I also took some of the work I did on the TF2 objective marker, and posted an article on industrial striping. Meanwhile, my refinery project is chugging away and hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have something that I can prime.

7/5/08

My relaunched site is now 2-months old. Woo hoo. I finished my capture point. Here it is along with the step-by-step write up.

7/4/08

Thought I'd try my hand at some terrain. Here's an objective marker (WIP) modeled after the Team Fortress 2 capture zone.

6/29/08

More works in progress. I dug out some of the Warmachine and Confrontation miniatures that have been 80% completed for years. Time to finally finish them. Here are the finished Bloodletters too.

I also stopped off at Home Depot today and picked up a couple of sheets of MDF and some plumbing supplies with the intent to make a small refinery piece for terrain.

6/28/08

Finally got a couple of pieces done and ready for sealing. Woo hoo. In the meantime, I wrote an article on, Why Miniatures Gaming Is A Great Hobby For Kids, since there are tons of positive benefits that come from gaming that often get overlooked by uninformed parents. I'm also trying to update my tools and painting area articles. The hammerhead step-by-step is already posted. I'll finished the ones for the Broadside and the Empire Priest this week.

6/24/08

Kids can make you so proud that you feel like you're going to pop. Yesterday, at school, they painted styrofoam planes. When I picked them up, they told me about their planes and explained how they had mixed colors, drybrushed the planes, and given them washes. Meanwhile, they continue to make good use of their gaming table.

In another humorous note, in the Return of the King, there is a scene where the Orcs use their catapults to throw the heads of slain Gondorian soldiers over the walls of Minas Tirath. The kids were making a Lord of the Rings "set up" and loaded their Crossbows & Catapults catapult with Lego heads to recreate the scene. How's that for imagination.

6/23/08

Now that I've had a chance to use the new Citadel washes, I thought I'd run an experiment to see how they work. In the article, Testing Out The New Citadel Washes, I compared 2 applications of washes (one over basecoats and another over straight primer) vs. plain basecoats and the results I get from a Paynes Grey wash.

6/22/08

Posted two new articles, The Secret Ingredient: Paynes Grey, which is one of my favorite techniques and another on Speed Painting, which addresses some ways of significantly cutting down your painting time per figure.

6/21/08

finished my Bloodletters and Tau Hammerhead and posted the write ups in the the Figure Tutorials section. I also wrote up a quick expected kill calculator, based on a really nice article by Redbeard, Basics of Mathhammer on the DakkaDakka forums.

6/14/08

Wrote up a quick article on how I painted my Battlefleet Gothic ships. You can take a look at the articles on Imperial Cruisers or Chaos Cruisers.

6/11/08

Updated the article on Paints and finished the step-by-step for the Imperial Assassins.

6/9/08

I'm making some changes to my format a bit. In most sections, there will be a section called Step-by-Step, Post Mortem, and Notes. You can see an example of the new format on the Hammerhead guide. The Step-by-Step is pretty self explanatory. The Post Mortem really covers things I learned as I painted each miniature. I learn a lot from each new experience and it's useful to pass those lessons along so that other people don't make the same mistakes I did. Lastly, the notes just show when the article was last updated and it's a useful spot for me to note prerequisite articles and related articles.

6/8/08

Got some work done on a Tau Hammerhead and a XV-88 Broadside. The models are still works in progress, so the write ups aren't complete, but I thought it would make for a good journal as I go. These are a bit of an experiment in paint as well as a new type of model so I've decided to capture my lessons learned as well, so that other people (or I) don't make the same mistakes. I'm also starting to drybrush the metal bits on my Ork Trukk, another WIP.

6/6/08

Woo hoo, received my set of Citadel Washes in the mail today as well as two Foundation paints. I'm trying out some new things on a Tau Hammerhead that is looking promising and I'm comparing some plastic bloodletters painted with the new Citadel washes with my tried and true Liquitex Paynes Grey. Article to follow soon.

6/3/08

Started writing a new article titled, Where Career Meets Hobby: 10 Business Lessons I Learned From Miniatures. It just a fun article about the work and competitive ethics you can develop from gaming that will serve you well in the real world.

5/29/08

Picking up paints and getting ready to paint miniatures for the first time can be a daunting challenge, especially if everyone around you paints pretty well. Here are a couple of tips you can use to get some practice in before starting your first real paint job.

I also started assembling a list of bits sources as I've been looking for some Empire artillery crewmen and I don't want to pay for the cannons.

5/27/08

So you want to start a new army. Where you do you start without overwhelming yourself. Here's my 2 pennies on the matter: Starting a New Warhammer or Warmachine Army.

5/24/08

Painting Ultramarines: A Guide for 5-Year Olds. The kids get to paint two marines all by themselves with as little assistance from me as possible. Follow the project log and see how they turn out.

5/17/08

The June edition of PC Gamer magazine has a nice series of articles on Dawn of War II as well as some tidbits about Warhammer 40K Online and Warhammer Online. I can't find a cover graphic, but if you can find it in your local store, it's worth checking out. It also comes with a CD with some Warhammer related media on it.

5/10/08

Built a nice little light tent according to the instructions on this site. It cost all of $6.31 and about 30 minutes of work. Here it is:

Here's a picture of a miniature I took inside it. At first, I thought it looked a little dark, but the shot turned out just fine.

5/8/08

Added a number of figure specific guides to the Guides section as well as an article on selling miniatures on E-Bay.

I really need to update my pictures. The lighting is terrible and the blue background isn't doing it for me. Look for new photos in the near future. I found a nice article on building your own photo light tent so I'm going to have a go at that.

5/7/08

One of the first guides I want to post is the Cygnar Charger, for Warmachine, I did. This is one of the first miniatures I painted using the Ultramarine Blue spray as a primer. It paints up very fast and I'm pretty happy with the results. I need to update the pictures too and will use the base of the Charger in the basing section.

Clearing out some closets and old boxes of miniatures and finding a treasure trove of items that are slowly being sold off. You can take a look at the list in the For Sale section and e-mail me if there is anything that interests you.

5/6/08

Throwing open the doors and well see what comes of it.

5/5/08

I'm still noodling around what I want this to look like, so bear with me and ignore the dust.