Well, I just want to be thorough and realize that not everyone has even started a miniature. In addition, through the years I have seen so many people put so much effort into a miniature to only be disappointed by the little things they didn't even think to do in the beginning. Thus, the previous two articles was an effort to eliminate that part of the equation. As for painting, well, it can be a lot simpler than some make it out to be.
There are lots and lots of advice out there about painting. A lot of it is from professional painters who try and convey how they do some of the wonderful things they can do. This is not that sort of article. Firstly, because I'm not as good as those guys; secondly, because it hardly pays to go through all of that if you can't even put straight color onto the model.
As stated before, this whole series of articles is meant to be an aid to your average roleplayer who just wants to put some nice stuff on the table during play. This is not about who can paint the most intricate piece. We'll get into doing some of that in later pieces, but let's get back to basics, shall we?
The Prime Directive
What can I say, I'm kind of a cheapskate. I don't like to spend money if I don't have to, so whenever someone tells me I have to buy something, I typically check to make sure that the guy isn't trying to pull a fast one on me. Well, I have no money or anything invested into this... just my time and entertainment, so let me say this simply: you need good primer.
Ask anybody who paints anything for a living, and they'll tell you the same thing. A good house painter uses primer, automotive painters use primer, and we will use primer. Primer is the first thing that goes onto the model when painting. The whole purpose of primer is to give a good surface on which paint can adhere.
The type of primer you use can make or break the model. You don't believe me? Put on a cheap automotive primer, see how much of the detail is left on your model. A lot of automotive primer is actually meant to fill in gaps as well as create a good surface, and any auto painter whose looking to put on a nice finish to your car will take the time to sand that primer down to a nice, even, smooth coat before repeating the process until it's just right. Put that on a model, and you can wave goodbye to any details.
Get a primer intended for miniatures or at least from a manufacturer that makes a nice thin primer meant for spraying on and painting over. The easiest way to get decent primer is just to stick to miniature primer, trying to use primers intended for other purposes is an experimental process. There are several companies who make it, quality varies.
I've been using Citadel primer for quite some time. I started with it, it works, and I know its subtleties from using it so much. Its a very nice primer. For those who feel like experimenting a bit, I believe the primer sold here in the United States is manufactured here. I believe it's Krylon, and I have been told that others have used it with great success. The advantage being that since it isn't marked up for having the Citadel brand name on it, it's a bit cheaper. Armory also makes a spray primer. I'd check your local hobby store and see what they have.
Several manufacturers also make a brush-on primer, and it may seem cheaper, but it isn't. You get a lot less and it goes on unevenly. This is really meant more for touch-ups. Check around, try them out, see which one you like. If it goes on pretty smooth, consistently, then stick with it. Ask your hobby store owner what he prefers, or even what sells the best, and that should be a good bet. What's available to you where you live is going to dictate a lot, anyway.
As for primer color, there are typically two colors to choose from unless you go with a major brand manufacturer like Krylon and others. In most hobby stores you'll find black or white.
Black is good for building color up from darkness and has the advantage of starting with all the shadows blacked in if you want to use techniques like "black-lining." The bad side of black primer is that some colors don't cover black very well, and it will depend on what brand and shade of paint you're using as to which colors have a tough time covering black. For example, Citadel's bestial brown doesn't always cover over black very well. On the other hand, Vallejo's equivalent color does.
White is good for bright colors right away, and most paints cover white a lot easier than black. The negative side is that if you miss a spot, you'll have a glaring white area to look at, and you have to add all the shadows and black-lining.
Some people are advocates of grey primer. This is a interior designer's trick, as the grey is neutral and works decently well both ways and takes color pretty well. It's a kind of medium between the two. I don't personally like it; models need to be rather dynamically painted to really see anything, and grey doesn't help in that regard.
Now, to actually prime the model, we should start with something to put the miniature on. Some cardboard is good, a thin box being best since it gives you some more area to hold onto and has some extra stiffness to it so it doesn't bend while you're using it. A cardboard lid also works well, with the added bonus of having sidewalls to prevent the miniature from falling and then sliding off. The disadvantage being that the sidewalls keep you from spraying the primer more directly at the lower portions of the miniature. You can really use anything, but use something relatively stiff and flat. I actually know someone who rigged up a cutting board with some handles. That worked well, but it was heavier, and he had to clean it on occasion to keep the buildup from making the surface overly uneven.
Once you have a surface, make sure to shake up the primer thoroughly. There should be a ball inside the can that you will hear clattering around inside the can. It helps mix the paint. Make sure to roll the ball around the bottom to clear anything that may have settled there. Shaking it ridiculously too much will never hurt, shaking it too little will result in a bad priming job.
At this point you have your miniature on a nice stiff surface, your primer is thoroughly mixed, and you should be in a well ventilated area. Avoid doing it outside, try to do it in an enclosed space, wind will just make things even harder. Just make sure the enclosed space is properly ventilated or you'll be breathing a lot of fumes. If you get light-headed, that's really bad. That's the feeling of your brain cells dying. Open the windows. Even pale, light-fearing gamers need a little fresh air.
Your primer can probably has instructions on it. Follow them. If not, the instructions are simple. We already got the mixing done, take the cap off, spray a little into the air. That'll fill up the tube and clear out any debris in the nozzle. Shake it one last time, and hold it about 8-12 inches away from the model. Putting the board on a surface is good, but be careful not to spray what you've put it on. Holding it in your opposite hand works well, but you have to pay attention so you don't drop it.
Now spray lightly, you don't want to soak the model, just put a light coat on it. Miniature primer is pretty forgiving, the pigment granules being very small, but you can still clog up details with too much primer. Try to coat the entire model evenly, turning it and moving the can as necessary to try and get into the little nooks and crannies. It's better to spray several coats on to try and get at those hidden places than to just keep spraying and put too much primer on it. If you get too much on it, you'll have primer running down the miniature and pooling up in areas. This isn't going to help. Take the time to prime the miniature right and your paint will go on that much better.
Once you have your miniature primed, give it time to cure. It will dry within a half hour, depending on humidity, but let it sit for longer. I personally like to let it sit overnight so that there aren't any issues, but letting it thoroughly dry and cure is a good thing. If you start painting on it immediately after, you risk the primer rubbing off as you handle it and paint it. It may do that anyway, depending on how you handle it, but it will be a lot less likely if you let it dry thoroughly.
A little dab will do ya...
With a primed model, we now need paint. There are a lot of brands of paint and I'm not going to advocate any one company. Frankly, it depends on the painter and the way you paint, as far as what brand suits you best. A lot of 0different painters use a lot of different brands.
The one thing I will not recommend, however, is to go to your local Arts and Crafts store and buying the cheapest paint they have. It won't work. That type of paint usually comes in a big plastic bottle with a squirt top of some sort. These are used for things like painting pottery and such, and they do not do well with detail work. There is a low amount of pigment and it takes very thick coats to cover anything adequately, and it does not thin well with water. In the cause of saving money, a lot of people have tried this stuff, and it has never gone well in my experience. Cheap is... well, cheap. You get what you pay for, typically.
Amongst the miniature paints that I'm aware of, there are quite a few brands. I'm sure there are more than this, but it's a good place to get started and these should be available at most stores: Citadel, Vallejo, Reaper, and Armory. All of these are acrylic paints. Acrylic is water-based and is the primary type of paint used in miniature. Lacquer or solvent based paints are certainly usable but are harder to work with as you need to play with a chemical solvent (thinner). This isn't a lot of fun, honestly, and results in very shiny finishes. Stick with acrylic to start, all the instructions in the later painting series is going to center around acrylic paint as I have very little experience with the lacquer paints except on model cars and planes.
Citadel paint you will usually find with Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy/Warhammer 40,000 stuff. It's their line of paint, and it's changed several times over the years. Everyone has their preferences. This is a pretty good paint line with a lot of colors and inks. I used this paint for years and it served me well.
The current line now uses flip-tops, which allow you to just pop it open with your thumb and go at it. I find these work pretty well, can occasionally be messy, but removes the threading problem with the previous generation of paints where you had to remove the top by twisting it off. Paint would get into the threads and make things difficult. The new crop of paints is a bit thinner than the last generation. This is good or bad depending on your perspective.
Vallejo has two paint major paint lines.
Their base line of paints covers a wide range of colors and just about lets you skip any mixing that might be necessary. They also have colors very specific to military miniatures if you need that exact pigment to go with your particular unit or type of miniature. These are intended for historical painting in their setup of color range. However, it's a good paint and there are many inks, extending gels, varnishes, and other tidbits that are used in painting in addition to the various colors. If you need more drab paints, this is a good source of them as well.
Their other paint line, titled "Game Colour," is meant more for fantasy and science fiction painting in that it has fewer shades of color and sticks to more of the vibrant and main colors. This is also supported with some of the varnishes and inks of their regular line. These paints come with a twist off top that reveals a nozzle with which to squeeze out drops of paint. This allows for a lot of control in how much paint you put on your palette without having the paint exposed to the air.
I prefer this style of paint as it doesn't dry out nearly as easily. The only downside to this style of paint bottle is that the nozzle does get clogged on occasion if you let it sit for awhile after having used it. The easy fix is to ram a small needle through the nozzle to clear it.
Reaper paints also has two sets of paint. I think their current paint is their next generation line of paints, but it's pretty new and I still see the old paints in stores. There is their regular line and their Master Series line.
The regular line of Reaper paints comes with screw off tops and comes pretty thick. There's quite a bit of paint in these. These would probably be a good base-line paint, anything below this level isn't going to be very good. It comes thick, which is kind of nice in some instances, but thins out at different rates according to pigment. Of course, the thread problem also happens here, but not quite as often as the lids are much stiffer than the old Citadels were, and are textured on the sides for easier grip. There are some interesting colors in this line.
The Master Series paints I have never used, but they come in the same kind of bottle as the Vallejo paints do so I surmise its probably the same as far as using it goes. It seems to follow the basic paint pigment scheme that both Citadel and Vallejo Game Colour use in their lines.
Armory makes paint in addition to primer. I have not used their paints. They also come with the screw-on lid. I mention it here because I've seen it at quite a few stores, colors seem to be the usual array, but I have not seen it used or used it myself. As with their primers, I've heard both good and bad about it. I imagine the paint is fine and it seems to come with quite a lot of it. The aerosol primer has been finicky when I've used it. I don't use it anymore.
The Wide World of Brushes
With paint, of course you need brushes. Here is the one place I'm going to go against what I've said thus far, sort of, in regards to spending versus results.
If you are a beginning painter, don't even bother with the very expensive brushes. You don't need to buy a $40+ brush, you're just going to ruin it. In fact, it's a fact of painting: eventually, you're going to wreck the brush. Its going to wear out. The really expensive brushes are very nice and they are worth it, but to a lesser degree. Like anything, after a certain point you get diminishing returns for your money spent, and no point in buying a Lotus Esprit for your teenager when its so very likely to get totaled within the first few years. The same goes for your brushes as a beginner. Buy something nice and serviceable, reliable, that won't break the bank or require constant maintenance. Of course, we need to define what that means in terms of brushes, so let's get to it.
Brushes come in three parts: tip, ferrule, and shaft. I don't know the technical terms for them, but that's unimportant. The tip consists of hairs at the tip, the ferrule is the metal part of the shaft that covers the hairs and aids in holding the brush on, and the shaft is the part where you hold onto it.
The tip can be a lot of different types of hairs, both natural and synthetic. For our purposes, sable is probably the best material for the tip as it's cost effective and it's pretty soft and has good properties. I can't remember what animal it comes off of, but I amuse myself to think of them as coming from chipmunks. Someone told me once, but I forgot. There are various types of synthetics, I haven't had too much luck with them, and some various other hairs like camel and various others. Sable works well, and high end sable is really nice.
The ferrule and shaft is pretty much to taste, just get one that holds comfortably and has a nicely shaped tip of sable only. The blended ones are iffy.
For miniature painting, I've always been an advocate of three brushes. A larger, nice brush able to hold a very good point; a small dry brush, and a large dry brush. In Citadel brush sizes, that would be a large brush, a small dry brush, and a tank brush. You can get away with just the first two, the last being a luxury for later. The reason I advocate these brush sizes is because a larger brush holds more pigment, has longer hairs, and it gives a large variety of surface to use. Dry brushes come with a much coarser material, it shouldn't have a real point, just a vague one at best. Synthetic is fine here.
There are a lot of companies making brushes. Check any hobby store and you'll find a few brands. If you go to a more Arts and Crafts store, you'll find a bunch more. Spending a bit more is a good idea, spending a lot is not. You can get a pretty good brush for $5-10. Any more than that and you'll be wasting your money until you start into the more difficult elements. The added bonus is that you don't have to have a coronary when you realize you left paint in your brush and it's crusted the brush up and made it from a pointy instrument of detail into a fuzzy piece of trash. Or, as in my case, finding your baby using it to poke around in its diaper.
In your typical game store you'll usually find several generic brands and probably some Reaper and Armory brushes. None of these are too bad, and its good to start with something simple. Stick with sable, its easiest to work with, especially in the beginning. Do not buy the ultra-cheap brushes with no tips that spray their hairs all over the place. Its just not going to help you any. They don't even work well as dry brushes, usually. The hairs are coarse, thick, and generally unusable for detail work. Honestly, there are so many brands it would be ridiculous to try and name them all. To get higher end brushes, you'll need to go to an art supply store. Tread lightly, it can get out of hand pretty quickly but you will likely end up with some pretty nice stuff.
Finally, getting it on!
First, you're going to need a palette of some sort. This can be anything, just a glass plate will work fine, or a Tupperware lid. Choose something flat, though. I typically just go out and buy a ceramic tile. They're cheap (under a dollar) and work well, and it keeps those you live with from wanting to lynch you for messing up the plates. Also, a glass of water. Either buy a new glass, or pick one no one uses and take it over for yourself. Opaque or clear isn't terribly important, but clear helps in determining how dirty the water is as you go. When it's dirty, dump it out and fill it up again. Also be sure to have a nice, well-lit area. Probably the same area as you used to build the miniature in the first place.
Look at your model. You've already come up with a color scheme, right? Well, at this point, I'm not going to go much into composition, but think on how you want the character to look and choose colors accordingly. Make sure to shake up the paint before using it, to make sure its thoroughly mixed. It doesn't take a lot, but a good couple of shakes should get it mixed up decently. Paint has a tendency for the pigment to settle to the bottom if allowed to sit.
If you have a squirt top, just squeeze out a drop or two of paint. If you have an open top, use the back of your brush and dip out some paint and tap it onto your palette. In this case, it's good to have a paper towel handy so you can wipe off any excess. If the paint is thick, just get some water from the cup with the back of your brush and put a drop into the paint and mix it up. You're looking to get a consistency just a bit thicker than perhaps milk. It's best to just add a little water, mix it, and see how it goes than to add a lot and have to add paint back in to make the consistency right.
Clean off the handle so there isn't any more paint on it. Take the brush in your hand as if it were a pencil, but about 2-3 inches higher than you normally would. Pick up the miniature in your left hand by its base. Put your elbows on the table and your left hand nicely into the light so you can see the miniature clearly. With your left palm facing toward you and your brush hand palm facing away from you, rest your two wrists together. You now have three points to steady the model and your brush hand: both elbows and your wrists together. This helps to avoid extraneous movement, and makes the brush usable much more like an actual pencil. Get a feel for this position, its a good position to paint from. You'll develop your own little contortions as you go to get what you need, but this is a good position to start with.
Take your brush and get some paint. Do not load the entire brush end with paint. Just roll the tip into the paint enough to get perhaps half of the brush tip wet with paint. Get back into position and take the tip of the brush and put it at one end of the area you wish to paint and slowly pull the brush across the surface. Repeat this until the entire area you're trying to paint that color is covered in a nice thin coat. Don't let the paint pool up anywhere, just spread it nice and even over the model. If it doesn't completely cover the primer, don't worry, its not a big deal. After it dries, just put another coat of paint on it until it does. Better to be smooth than to put on a thick coat right away and get a lumpy surface. Take care and make an effort not to get paint onto the other area of the model. It won't ruin it if you do, its just good practice for later and will work on your brush skills. Concentrate on trying to acquire some precision and just getting used to how the brush works. Get more paint onto the brush as soon as the color doesn't go on as smoothly, and wash the brush occasionally to keep any paint from drying in the hairs.
To wash the brush, simple swish it around in the water vigorously and then lightly wipe it off on the paper towel while rotating the brush. Do not mash or smash it into the sides of the cup or onto the paper towel. Just swirling it around in the water should be enough to get most of it out, and if there is a need, rotate the brush along its axis against the wall of the cup (thus keeping its shape) to agitate the hairs a bit to get any stubborn bits. The point of wiping it on the paper towel is to get rid of the excess water before getting any more paint. You don't want extra water in the brush when you get the paint as it will dilute the paint even more. Also, remember to occasionally mix the paint on the palette to keep it nice and homogeneous as you use it. Which basically boils down to not letting the paint separate into its components and keeping it nicely one color.
Wrapping it up for this one...
Spend your time getting the base coats right. This is the foundation, as with everything so far, to completing a very nice model. Don't worry if it doesn't come out perfect. If you smudge or get paint onto areas you didn't intend to be that color, then just go over it when you paint that area. So long as you don't overdo it, things should be fine. Miniature paint is very thin and forgiving, which is a boon in many ways. Practice this with as many miniatures as you can, and over time the rest will fall into place.
Like in many things, getting the basics down will accomplish 90% of the task. If you can simply master the art of putting paint only where you want it, then everything else is just a matter of learning a different application of that same fundamental skill. A lot of people try to make painting mystical or magical, but it isn't. To get beyond a certain skill level takes real talent, but anybody can learn to paint a pretty good model that will impress most everyone.
So far, we've just set down the basic colors. Make sure the colors look good together. If they don't, just change them by painting over what you had before. Keep the coats thin and there shouldn't be any problems. In the next article we're going to cover dry-brushing and washing, two of the little not-so-secret tricks of the trade that allow you to add a great amount of detail without a whole lot of work. This should take your model into the next level to start and there is a lot you can do with just these two techniques to create various effects. We'll cover the basic technique and some of its applications and go into some ideas for other uses.
Until then, enjoy your painting! You are now an official miniature painter.
