Painting Miniatures Figures Made Quick And Easy
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
1/1/09
First post of the year. Here are two AOBR Ork Boyz that are the test figures for the 75 other Orks on the painting table.
12/31/08
Last post of the year. This has been a good painting/gaming year. I got reintroduced to the hobby by my kids, who found my figures in the closets and got me painting again. Achievements for the year:
- Got my kids painting miniatures, reading Warhammer books, and playing games
- Relaunched my website and added a number of articles
- Completed 112 Tyranids
- Completed 11 Ork Boyz and 9 Deffkoptas with good progress on the next batch of 99, 1 Stompa, and a Trukk
- Finished 3 Tau vehicles with pretty good progress against 22 figures
- Outsourced the painting of 80 marines, just so they would get off my 'to do' list
- Got started with terrain and produced 3 pieces, including 2 Iron Scenery entries and 3 objective markers
Currently, I'm working on my 77 AOBR Orks and finishing up some work on 22 Orks I did previously.
12/21/08
Finally got the last bits done on my 4 monsterous creatures. Once I get these sealed (waiting for the weather to improve), I am officially done with my Block 2 projects.
12/16/08
Deffkoptas are more or less done. I have some extra weapons coming in the mail that I will use to make the big shootas, but that will happen when they show up. I've also posted the full "how to" write up. Eventually, I hope to write up an Ork Compendium too.
12/12/08
5 1/2 hours of effort later, and I have 9 basecoated Deffkoptas. Next step, the Paynes Grey wash.
12/10/08
Time to take a break from my Tyranids and start working on some of my Orks. First up are 9 Deffkoptas from the AOBR set.
I've been keeping a log with time spent on various steps, which I will post as a "how-to" later on. So far, after conversion and priming, it took 1:50 (40 for the tin, 40 for the gun metal, and another 30 for the red on the cowlings) to do the first 3 colors on all 9 koptas and then another 30 minutes to get the single test figure posted to the state you see. I expect the other 8 to go a little faster now that I can do them assembly line style. The first two metallic colors were done with #10 flat brushes and the cowlings were done with a #2 flat. I think I'll be able to do most of the other colors with a #1 flat brush.
12/8/08
Progress against Block 2 is going quite well. Against a goal of 20 Hormaguants, 9 stands of Ripper, a Lictor, Hive Tyrant, and a Carnifex by Saturday 12/13, I've completed 39 Hormagaunts, 18 stands of Rippers, and the Lictor. The Hive Tyrant and Carnifex, along with 2 others, are done and just waiting on the edge lining for their carapaces, so I'm considerably ahead of schedule.
I've just posted a bunch of how-to tutorials on my Tyranid army along with paint notes. You can find the summary here.
That will make 112 Tyranids, 2,200 points in about 2 months. I'm getting a little tired of looking at Tyranids, so I'm going to take a break and work on my Orks. I've got 9 Deffkoptas on the desk and 70 AOBR Orks primed and ready to go.
11/29/08
Last push before the end of November and my workspace is jammed full of Tyranids. I'm making good time though and by the end of the weekend, the only thing I should have left is flocking the bases, edging the carapaces, and all of the purple bits that need to be washed. That sounds like a lot, but it's the basecoats that take the most time.
11/24/08
I've been asked a number of times what my mix to water ratio is for the Paynes Grey wash I use. Given that I've been painting up a number of Tyranids, albeit with Raw Umber, so I've tried to take some notes. First, I've decided that I'm getting more consistant results with the VMC Glaze Medium vs. Liquitex Glaze Medium. In part, because the Liquitex product is pretty viscous and needs to be diluted itself. Another note of caution; all three I'm going to reference below are different sizes. Also, when I wash, I do lots of figures at a time (e.g., with the Tyranids, I was washing 30+ stands), so I don't necessarily measure a precise number of drops. However, that being said, the ratio was probably pretty close to: 1 drop of Liquitex : 2 drop VMC Glaze Medium and then used 5 drops of water from a straw that I used as a pipette. I mix it up, rinse out the brush, then apply it to a test mini to see if it's the result I want. I'm actually flood washing my figures, since I hit the entire figure and not simply parts of it. I'll add more or less water depending on how deeply stained I want the figure.
11/20/08
I took a slight detour and made a Tyranid-themed objective marker out of pill bottle, a straw, and an extra pair of rending claws. Hope you like it. I also wrote up all of my notes in the form of a tutorial: Building A Tyranid-Themed Objective Marker
11/16/08
Block 1 for the Endgame Finish-an-Army-Challenge is over and now it's onto Block 2. We had 18 people show up for presentation of Block 1 work and it was pretty awesome to see 13,500 points of painted/in-progress goodness. I ended up tieing for first in the People's choice category which I was pretty satisfied with. For Block 2, I've got 3 monsterous creatures and 29 troops stands to paint up. Outside of the challenge, I have another 3 monsterous creatures and 43 troop stands. ... and then there's the 76 Orks I just primed ...
11/9/08
The family actually went away for the weekend. Fortunately, my wife drove so I prepped figures in the car for 5 hours. I spent an additional 4-5 at the cabin cleaning pieces, drilling barrels, assembling figures, and even got in a little bit of basecoating and washing. As a result, I got 70 AOBR Orks ready for priming.
11/6/08
Pretty much done. I finished edging the carapaces on the Gaunts in Citadel Blazing Orange using a #2 flat brush and then added spots of green static grass here and there. Some of the lessons and process changes I'll take into blocks 2 and 3 are to paint the rims before sanding and do an initial QA pass right after the wash dries. I think those two pieces caused the most amount of rework and I should be able to smooth out the process in subsequent phases.
11/3/08
Home stretch for Block 1. The deadline has actually been extended a week to 11/15, but I'm trying to stay on schedule for a 11/8 finish. I've done a tons of purple washing using a copious amount of Leviathan Purple, and the Warriors finally got some needed attention.
10/26/08
I've been travelling a bit, so that's eating into my painting time, though I have a nice chessex case that I've been packing with me containing a couple of Tyranid Gaunts and Genestealers. I pack one or two colors and spend a couple of hours just knocking out some basic stuff. I also do a little bit of writing on the plane. I've updated my Build an Army Log and I expect that I'll be ready to take some more pictures once I get home and can dry brush the ground and paint the base rims black.
I'm also writing an article about what you can do about paint haters ... people who hate or refuse to paint their miniatures. This was based on a discussion over on the DakkaDakka forums.
10/19/08
This has been a busy month of painting. I've been working on 3 armies. I got mostly through a pair of Tau Devilfish and 11 Pathfinders, my Tyranids are getting done through the Endgame's 40K Finish-an-Army Challenge, and I just got another 50 AOBR orks and 6 Deffkoptas in the mail. This gives me a total of 70 Orks and 9 Deffkoptas to do something with. I even took a box of gaunts with me on a recent business trip and used some of the evening down time to paint carapaces.
Here's the full set of 35 Block 1 models after a busy night of washing. Included in the picture are some Tau Pathfinders that I washed at the same time, since the Raw Umber wash was already made.
10/5/08
Wow, it's been 5 months since I relaunched the site. Feels like it's been a lot longer than that. Anyways, I've finished another article on the Negotiating Trades. Trading for figures is a great way to build up an army at discount prices, but you need to be clear about what you're looking for and what you really need. A figure trade is a negotiations just like any other negotiation and being poorly prepared means that you walk away with either more stuff than you need and/or you paid more than you needed to. This supplements an earlier article on Acquiring Second Hand Miniatures.
9/28/08
I think I'm going to throw my name into the hat for the Endgame 40K Finish-an-Army Challenge, which will be good motivation to get my Tyranid army painted. The contest will run over 3 months, and at the end, hopefully I'll have 86 figures painted and ready to rock. I'll write up a project log as I go with pictures. I also updated the list of topics and guides based on some of the articles I've been working on, but haven't posted.
9/26/08
More or less done with my landing platform and wrote up the "how to". Here's what the final version looks like.
9/21/08
Started a new terrain piece for Iron Scenery IV (Librarium Online). The secret ingredient was "something from the kitchen". My creation is comprised mostly of items found in the kitchen. It's a raised resupply station for land speeders. It's a basic platform with an elevator to raise fuel, food, and ammunition, where the speeders can land, reload, and take off. I'll get a how-to write up posted soon. Here's a shot of some of my source material and the current state of the piece:
9/11/08
Posted a new article on the use of colored spray paints as well as some WIP step-by-steps for the Tyranid Guant and Tau Firewarriors shown earlier. Lastly, I posted the how to for my refinery terrain piece.
9/8/08
The Assault on Black Reach (AoBR) boxed set for Warhammer 40K was finally released on Saturday, so I dutifully packed up the family and trundled down to my LGS, Gamescape, to pick up my pre-order. Upon getting home, I sat down with my kids and we opened our box.
For the uninitiated, AoBR is a starter box from Games Workshop, designed to give you everything you need to play Warhammer 40K (WH40K). You get 46 snap fit plastic figures, range rulers, dice, templates, and a miniature version of the rulebook. You only need supply the terrain. Since we already play the game, I'm going to skip right to the assembly of figures, but we played a game with the AoBR figures later with some addition of Boyz and it filled up our small 4 x 4 table quite nicely.
I (Benjamin) clipped out all of the figures and everything seemed to fit together fine with the exception of the Warboss' power claw, 2 of the Deff Copter pilots' arms, and I think one of the SM bolters. Getting these to fit required a little trimming of pegs or boring out of the hole. Otherwise, everything fit pretty nicely without any fiddling. Of course there are the mold lines to clean up, but overall, I'm happy with the figures. They are good quality with nice dynamic poses. It would have been nice to have some options (e.g., more power claws and change out sluggas for shootas), but that would have just been bonus.
My rulebook came with slightly crinkled edges on the cover. Probably the same packaging issue as some other posters, had but it sure is nice to have a small portable reference. An included reference card, like what we got in an earlier White Dwarf, would have been a really nice addition, instead of having it at the end of the AoBR book. In fact, two cards, one for each player, would have really made it a extraordinary set in my opinion.
For the small Assault on Black Reach pamphlet, I would have liked to see a couple more pages on the background of the battle for Black Reach and some scenarios. The thumbnail sketch on the Imperium and how to expand from the AoBR set into a larger army is nice, but I would have also liked to see something specific on Black Reach.
Overall, I'm happy with my $60 purchase.
9/5/08
Finally got around to posting my first gallery, which is a bunch of really old, out of print (OOP) figures from when I first started. Lots of stuff heavily drybrushed. Meanwhile, the test wash on the grey-primed terminator was a success, it didn't bead up, which I was concerned about and I'm waiting on my order of Almond colored Rustoleum High Heat spray to come in to Ace Hardware, so that I can finish priming my Tyranids. Hopefully by then, the rest of my genestealers will have arrived.
9/1/08
Yesterday I got 64 gaunts, 4 carnifexes, and 6 warriors primed. Went though an entire can of Rustoleum Heat Resistant Almond. Also washed 37 Ork Boys with Paynes Grey. My finger cramped up from so much spray painting. Also clipped a bunch of pennies for weighting the bases of my Hormagaunts. Today, I started off with finishing the washes on the last 15 boys and painted up a test figure for my Tyranids, pictures to follow soon. I'm off to spray paint a bucketload of terminators ... 50 of them to be exact.
Here is the test scheme for my tyranids, showing prime coat, basecoat, first wash, and then details.
8/31/08
August has been a very poor month for painting. Between being sick, travel, and getting hammered at work, I haven't done much. I finished some terrain and got through basecoats on 20 Orks, but that's about it, so unless I make a ton of progress today, August will be a bust. This means I'm going into September with a huge list of to-do's. YIKES!
Anyways, I've been on an acquistion spree and have acquired a fair number of second hand miniatures over the last few months (> 200 Space Marine, Tau, Ork, and Tyranid figures and vehicles). One of the things I'm really appreciating is a well prepared and cleaned figure that doesn't require stripping. I've summed up some of my thoughts and observations in an article about acquiring second hand figures
8/21/08
Wow, almost a month since the last update. I was out for almost an entire week in Dallas for QuakeCon, which was quite a blast. For those unfamiliar, it's a large LAN party hosted by id Software, producer for several of the games I've been involved with for a long time: Quake III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory, and now Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I got to compete, reconnect with friends, and see some neat new computer hardware.
Needless to say, I did get much painting done. Seems like most of my time has been taken up by scenery projects and prepping the terminators and tau I received in the mail. I've been painting the Tau according to my test scheme below and drilling out a butt load of storm bolter barrels.
Anyways, Iron Chef Scenery III has concluded and my entry, a Transporter Jammer is done. To be honest, it's OK. I would have liked to do a better job on it, but simply ran out of time. I am happy with my use of the secret component, coat hangers, so all is well. Here's the step-by-step if anyone is interested.
7/25/08
Like I need more things to paint. I just received 36 primed Space Marine Terminators that I bought on-line. Yikes. Between those and the ones I just stripped, I have a total of 50 terminators to paint up.
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.