Speed Painting

What is speed painting. Simply put, it's significantly upping the number of figures you can "produce" over a period of time. This can be done by cutting down figure quality, simplifying the paint scheme, or by finding ways to get more paint onto the figure in a faster manner. I'll be discussing the latter.

I don't necessarily consider myself a speed painter per se, but I have found a couple of tools and techniques that allow me to increase my throughput considerably. Given the pair of 5-year old boys I have running around, maximizing my painting efficiency is pretty important. However, even if your goal isn't 100 figures by the end of the week, you can still use some of these techniques to free up time to spend on detailing and other things.

Levelset Your Expectations

This is important. When you increase painting speed, you may make trade-offs in quality. You need to be OK with this. In my case, I'm aiming for tabletop standard where people are going to be looking at units of figures from 9-18 inches away. As such, I'm not going to sweat the small stuff like making sure everything is absolutely painted between the lines or that everything isn't subtly shaded up to the final highlights.

That being said, just because you're painting quickly DOES NOT have to mean that you're turning out low quality work. The Cygnar Charger shown here was painted with the principles discussed in this article, with a little additional attention spend on inking the engines and some edge lining.

OK, now that we've established that we're not speed painting Golden Deamon candidates, on with the article.

Master The Fundamentals

Speed painting isn't a replacement for being a good basic painter. Quite the opposite. It's the ability to execute well on the basics of color selection, brush control, highlighting, and washing, that allows you to take shortcuts adn still come up with good results.

Use A Colored Primer To Eliminate The Basecoat

I hate basecoating figures. Where possible, I like to prime figures and vehicles in the base color, which allows me to cut out this step and save a lot of time. This may take a little bit of research on your part, but it's worth the time to wander through your local hardware store and look at the different brands and colors of spray paints available. Rustoleum in particular seems to have a nice range of outdoor and camo colors (tan, olive drab, and army green) but you can similiar colors from other manufacturers.

A couple of things to consider when you're looking at various spray primers. Some of these considerations are going to require that you actually buy a can to try out, but at ~$5.00 for a can of spray paint, it's not too bad of an investment.

• Has to be a matte color. If you use a gloss, it won't take paint very well.
• Find a color that has a very close match to an existing Citadel, Vallejo, or P3 color. You're going to make mistakes and will need to touch up your basecoat here and there. If you can find an exact color match, the process will be fairly painless.
• Pick a spray primer that will take a wash. A wash is probably the easiest and fastest way to achieve shading, so a primer that will take a wash nicely allows you to speed up this process. The Citadel sprays take washes quite nicely, but unfortunately have been discontinued.

Here's a Tau Hammerhead that was spray primed using Rustoleum Specialty Textured Plastic. It's a very good color match with Citadel Dheneb Stone (Foundation) and has a bit of a gritty texture, which I liked for the Hammerhead, though I probably wouldn't use it for troops. As a result, the only thing I had to paint on the Hammerhead were the green and black parts and the highlighting.

Use the Largest Brushes Possible

It's a no brainer to understand that the larger the brush, the more paint you can put down. For most of my projects, I rarely pick up a 000 brush. I typically use #1, #2 or #5 brushes. In the Bloodletters below, the only time I picked up a 000 brush was to paint the eyes and pick out the teeth. Just about everything else was painted with a #2 or #1 flat brush. The highlights on the Tau Hammerhead were mostly done with a 1/2" flat brush.

Naturally, if you've developed good brush control skills, then you can use the larger brushes more effectively, so this is a fundamental skill you'll need to work on if you don't already have it.

Here's a selection of brushes I typically use. From left to right:

• 1/2" (#10) brush. Highlights and drybrushing on very large pieces such as vehicles.
• #5 round brush. This is my standard brush for my Paynes Grey washes
• #4 flat brush. I use this for basecoating large areas. The flat edge also makes it a good brush for edging.
• #2 flat brush. This is probably the brush I use most often. It's large enough to put down a fair amount of paint and because it's flat, I can use the corner or edge to get more precise results.
• #1 flat brush. I use the #1 when the #2 is too big.
• 000. This is only used for fine detail and lining. I do very little basecoating or washing with it.

Rely On Technique To Deliver Results

This unit of 8 Bloodletters, excluding assembly, prep, and the banner, (which I still need to finish) took 158 minutes, including the basing. I only counted the 8 figures because I painted 2 of them separately as a test. Painting up a test miniature can actually be a time saver too because you'll learn what steps can be consolidated or re-ordered to speed the process. I only counted the 8 figures because I painted 2 of them separately as a test.

I started by priming them with Citadel Blood Red spray and then washing them with Paynes Grey after doing the other basecoats with a #2 flat brush. Because I know the Paynes Grey will flow into the recesses nicely, I don't worry about minor overpainting ... the wash will cover it up. The brass is painted the same way, Vallejo Brassy Brass applied with the #2 brush then washed with Liquitex Burnt Umber. I don't worry about not covering absolutely everything in brass because the wash will cover some of it and the rest will never get seem.

Just like I look for a primer that can take the place of the basecoat, I look for a wash that works for multiple colors. The product I use is Liquitex Paynes Grey. In fact, I wrote up an entire article on this, The Secret Ingredient: Paynes Grey. This is a wash that I can use over a wide range of colors, meaning that I only need a single wash over the entire figure, instead of multiple washes over parts of the model. Also, because I'm only using a single wash, this cuts down on the amount of waiting time needed.

After the wash dries, a quick drybrush re-establishes the highlights on the skin, horns, and sword. Drybrushing is also a great technique to bring out armor, scales, and fur ... basically anything with a lot of texture.

Be Smart About Color Choices

If you're painting for tabletop quality, smart color choices can help your units stand out. The Bloodletters above use blue as a secondary color. The eyes and the tongue are done in Citadel Enchanted Blue which draws the eye to the faces and adds a nice spot of color in an otherwise red model.

Color choices also apply to the base. I based my Bloodletters in brown dirt and then used a lighter color of static grass to help bring some contrast to the model, which I think helps them stand out.

Take The Assembly Process Into Account

I've been working on some new Orks. I assembled them and then as I was painting them, I was cursing them because they were a pain in the ass to paint because the arms and weapons get in the way of getting to some of the detail on the torso. As I plan the next batch of figures, I'll assemble the legs, torso, and head but hold off attaching the arms until everything is basecoated at which time I'll attach the arms and then wash the entire figure. In this way, I can basecoat much faster and more completely, and then highlight just the parts that are easily accessible.

I took this same approach to the Trukk I'm painting. Keeping the component parts separate make each piece easier to handle and paint. As you can see, the Ork driver and gunner are much easier to basecoat when they're separate pieces vs being already glued into the Trukk.

Once the major pieces are basecoated and washed, (again, with Paynes Grey) everything is assembled. Here we have a basecoated and washed Trukk that certainly needs more work, but is tabletop acceptable.

Notes

Last updated	6/22/08
Author	Michael Kan
Pre-requisites	None
Related Articles	The Secret Ingredient, Paynes Grey