| Poll |
| How to paint and what to buy? |
| The "normal" way (like my half-painted skaven team) |
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34% |
[ 15 ] |
| Speed paint! Wham bam and done! |
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37% |
[ 16 ] |
| Something else, like.... |
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4% |
[ 2 ] |
| Paint a pie with icing instead. |
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23% |
[ 10 ] |
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| Total Votes : 43 |
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baelnic
Joined: May 27, 2011
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 Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 14:58 |
 
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Bah, go the art store/craft store route, you won't pay over $1 USD for a 2 ounces of pot of acrylic paint. They have nearly as many colors (sometimes in the 100's of colors) and you can mix REALLY easy any color you need. If budget is an issue you can save tons here. I mean why pay around 3 euros for a color when you can get almost 4 for the same price. |
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Badoek
Joined: May 17, 2009
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 15:19 |
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Ok then but the craft store scares me. I've been there to buy paint for this thing we do with Saint Nicolas (You know, with the white dude with the beard and his "black" slaves...). But there's so many paints!
Acrylics you say? That's the stuff they sell in those roll-up metal tubes right?
edit: like This one? School quality!
I assume school quality means half-decent... |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 15:29 |
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I like to have three size-0 round brushes: one round is in great shape for detail work, one is in good shape and is my workhorse, and then the last one to start getting ratty on me (or my favorite dead old brush) is a drybrush/highlighter. I keep a 1-flat, an angled brush and a couple little ones (a 5/0 and a 10/0 usually) for detail, plus a big ol' round 2 (still a tiny little brush lol, non-gamers think it's funny when I call it a big honkin' brush) as an applicator and mixer.
Paint, I go for good acrylic brands like Golden in mars black, titanium white, cadmium red and cadmium yellow. After that, mostly I go for the cheapest stuff I can find, including a low-end red and yellow too. Really high-end paints don't grey out much when you mix 'em, and for fur and flesh and other grungy stuff you want to be able to control how much of that effect you get. I find that cheap reds tend to be watery, but a good red and two cheap greens gives you pretty much an infinite palate of browns. Citadel paint is pretty middling in quality: the bargain-basement stuff has less consistency control, the pure tints have less filler and don't grey as much. Citadel is good for its stock of "gamer" colors but otherwise is just mostly overpriced, and all those aptly-named colors just save you about ten minutes at the art store.
Acrylics are the way to go, unless you've been doing it forever and are set in your ways. I don't know why anyone would go to the trouble to paint minis in enamels, at least not minis of people: if you're painting model cars or planes or whatever it makes a lot more sense.
Time, well... can't help you there.
For style, there are two basic methods I use: white and black. Black creates very stark contrast, and is good for really gritty-lookin' types like Mordheim or Necromunda figures, or for Skaven or Chaos or Nurgle. White allows for more subtle color variation, and is good for anything with a lot of colors, or in light color or pastel. White takes longer, as washes take some time to dry but highlights dry in seconds.
If your primer is black, your job is to pick out the highlights. For me, the order of operations in the black method is: black primer, a heavy highlight (in white if I'm working fast, or a lighter version of the basecoat if I'm taking my time), basecoat, highlight, detail, dry highlight, then hit it with finish.
If your primer is white (or any non-black, to be sure), your job is to do both highlights and shadows. Start with a wash. Then, when that's done, basecoat and wash again with a darker version of the base color. After washing, basecoating, and washing again, let it dry, do the detail, do another (thinner, darker) wash if you want, let dry, highlight once or twice (less paint, lighter), and you're done except for clearcoat.
It's pretty easy to find painting tips, the only one that I don't see a lot is my easy way to keep the lighting consistent on a figure. Pick an angle you're going to work your highlights from, a place to imagine the light falling on the figure from. When you highlight your mini, try as much as possible to hold your mini so that spot faces your eye, and drybrush from that point outward. My method is really highlight-intensive, and as such is very hard on brushes. Do all your washing and drybrushing with old beat-up brushes and all your basecoating and detail with newer ones.
Washing is pretty straightforward, but you have a lot of options. Start with a wash in whatever color you want the shadows to be (dark brown for gold or flesh, gray or black for most things, light blue for a snowman lol): the heavier the wash, the less detail you will get, the less work you will have to do, and the more your finished product will look like a muted version of the black method (good for differentiating the rogue in the party, say). Two or three washes can be fun, each progressively thinner and darker than the last. I got hooked on watering Windsor Newton ink down 50% for a simple one-wash on wargame units, but that is so not necessary: any appropriate dark paint, diluted to a watery consistency, will do. If you want really great detail effect, aim for a darker, thinner shade of your basecoat for the first wash, then thin it and blacken it yet again for a second one. Always be ready to highlight after you're done washing, and always be ready to give your waterier mix time to dry. |
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Last edited by JackassRampant on %b %06, %2013 - %17:%Sep; edited 1 time in total |
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PainState
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 17:01 |
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| Badoek wrote: | Budget is a part of the "requirements" but I'm not going to only buy the three primal colours and mix the rest myself.
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Well in your budget for this project do not forget to put some cash on the side for the beer.
I would recommend for this project one of my favorites.
Spaten Optimator. It will set you back about 19-20 Euro's for a case.
I would not drink them one at a time. Rather I would get a nice large stein that can hold 24OZ. Double up on them. |
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Garion
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 17:04 |
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whiskey is good too, because you drink it. Plus if you do a bad job on your mini you can strip paint with it too  |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 17:04 |
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Prices US.
Full set of Brushes and spares: $20
Titanium White, Mars Black: $20 (don't go cheapo)
Decent red and yellow brands: $10
A boatload of cheap paints in an array of colors: $25
2 cans each b/w primer: $25
Palettes, a towel, a cup: $0
$100 US gets you started.
When it comes to paint, buy the smallest units you can, except maybe white and black. You'll buy a lot of brushes and primer, but paint lasts forever. I spilled my 0.6 oz jar of Citadel Bestial Brown in 1997, and the residue in the jar finally ran out in 2010. I just noticed that I've finally made a dent in the 4 oz jar of Mars Black I bought at the same time. Your kids will inherit your paints: pewter will be by far your biggest recurring expense, brushes a distant second (more than you think, I probably chuck one brush per five figures and a brush costs as much as 2-3 cheap/bulk figures or 2/3 of an à la carte character), and primer is a distant third. (Okay, really the biggest expense is time, but in purely material terms, that's the order). |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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Garion
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 17:18 |
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One thing I would say is stay away from GW brushes, they aren't very good. The paints are pretty good quality though over priced, the brushes are expesive hairs fall out all the time. |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 17:30 |
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Yeah, go to an art store. Paying GW prices for paint is forgivable, but if you're gonna spend that much for brushes you want good ones (I like Princeton: they have different models at different price-ranges, go cheap on zeros and larger, and high-end on detail brushes, but be picky with your individual brushes, look at the bristles before you buy). I like Krylon primer: their black used to be flaky, but it's improved sharply over the years, so it's almost as good as the expensive stuff. (Nothing wrong with Citadel primer except the price.)
Alternate paint philosophies, if you love or hate mixing paints and have more money to spend:
Hate mixing? Buy Citadel. You'll pay too much, but you'll always have a suitable color. Long-time TT gamers will notice, and may think you're a rube lol.
Love mixing? Buy only the finest, and get wide array. Drop a wad on it: paint is a one-time expense after all, so even at $10 a color it's nothing compared to pewter or brushes. You don't need but so many colors before you can easily mix everything. Don't buy the absolute smallest, though: mixing colors uses a heck of a lot more paint than just putting a little on your palette to paint directly from, so the more you mix the more you waste. But mixing cheap paints only gives all your figures a dirty grey look, great for undead, not for elves or knights, so you need all the true tinctures, not just hues. Then they all mix funny with each other (sometimes this is cool), which opens up a lot of opportunities but sometimes means you need even more colors. Like you may want a true cadmium red and a cadmium red hue, for mixing different tones. You can start out with the Citadel or cheapo model and evolve into this if you like, one expensive tube at a time. (Hint: you'll probably start with red/orange/yellow... it's a consistency thing.)
Oh, about high-end paints. Early on I bought Golden Mars Black and Liquitex Titanium white. I should have done it the other way around. Both are fine paints, Golden I like the consistency more but it costs more. However, Golden is much thicker and a bit more opaque, and the lighter the color the thicker and more opaque the paint should be and the less of it you need on your brush. |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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Abraxas365
Joined: Jun 30, 2013
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 18:10 |
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Base coats and washes make anything look great on the table top.
Skin, armour with basic colour washed with the corresponding wash (citadel) will create and nice effect. If you really want you can dry brush your highlights with a slightly lighter shade of the base coat but i dare-say for Blood Bowl it is not really needed.
The major key in creating nicely looking painted models is keeping the initial base coats neat. The washes will do the rest.
Don't neglect your base ; pva and kitty litter works fine when washed with some brown ink.
It's simple as that. |
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Abraxas365
Joined: Jun 30, 2013
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 18:12 |
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I would not be forking out loads of money to paint a blood bowl team. There's not enough models to justify it.! |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 18:17 |
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If you just want to paint one team one time, plan out a color scheme, decide on a primer/method (white or black), and buy only the paints you're going to use to paint them. For just one team, buy all Citadel except brushes unless you're poor: the color selection is quite helpful and the non-bristly product is not bad, if you pay too much. Black is easier and a lot faster, because you only wash (and hence incur major dry time) when you need to correct your mistakes, and maybe not even then: just detail and highlight can do the job.
If you're like me and want a coaching staff and all the configurations you might ever use, you're looking at 20 models. You'll use 3-4 different 0 brushes (prolly 4 for a noob), one detail brush, or two if you ruin one (easy to do starting out), one flat 0 or 1, and one applicator.
For a team in uniform, process matters. Do the first couple steps (white primer and wash or black primer and highlight) on everybody, using only one 0 brush. This will be your highlighter brush. Then switch to a new 0 and do all your basecoating for one model, preferably some lineman. Finish that guy, all the way, and use him as a template for the others, doing one step on all of them at a time, going over at the end of the session to review your work and catch anything you missed (make actual corrections later in the process, starting with washes).
Washing vs highlighting: a means of getting shadow and showing raised surfaces is critical. The real art in figure painting is recognizing how the shadows fail to scale and accounting for it. The major advantage of white method is that if you wash both before and after basecoating you get really rich shadows, looks very realistic. A little highlight is a necessity, but 3 layers of drybrush is only good for reflective surfaces at the light source. Black method means you don't have to wash, just highlight successively. This is easier, but the product tends to come out either stark and unfriendly (less paint) or animated and cartoonish (more paint).
Abraxas is right, basing is important. For BB, I like to paint 'em green and then flock 'em: I have a little jar of modeling flock that I dip a dry, painted, unsealed figure in, after hitting the base with Elmer's school glue. Then when that's dry I clearcoat them. Other games, yeah, kitty litter is fun. Or sand/gravel, or melted corn-starch packing peanuts, or textured Elmers, or whatever. If there's a serious gap from the figure slot, glue a little paper on first. (When you start modeling, index cards are a convenient flat surface, like metal plates and stuff, attached to green stuff... sooo eaaaasy!) |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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baelnic
Joined: May 27, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 18:56 |
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| Badoek wrote: |
Acrylics you say? That's the stuff they sell in those roll-up metal tubes right?
edit: like This one? School quality!
I assume school quality means half-decent... |
No not oil like acrylics in the metal tubes. Those are for "real" painting. They sell 2 ounce bottles that they call "hobby paint" or something like that. It's the same consistency as the GW stuff sometimes it's slightly thicker and you can buy some acrylic thinner to make washes or just to thin it down a bit. The great thing about a craft store or art store is there is someone there to help you that is knowledgeable. And here is the kicker, no matter what you tell them your project is they won't flinch because there is always some bigger weirdo in the world that is painting life size My Little Ponies for his roof or a 1/5th scale Spice Girls reunion concert diorama.
Here is what the hobby paint you're looking for LOOKS LIKE. This is their "high end" line they have cheaper lines too. I'm sure there is something like this companies product where you live too. |
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xnoelx
Joined: Jun 05, 2012
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 19:00 |
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I wouldn't bother buying the thinner. As long as you buy the right kind of paint, water based, you can thin it down with water. |
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Garion
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 19:05 |
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| xnoelx wrote: | | I wouldn't bother buying the thinner. As long as you buy the right kind of paint, water based, you can thin it down with water. |
yes this ^ |
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PainState
Joined: Apr 04, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2013 - 19:17 |
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| Abraxas365 wrote: | | I would not be forking out loads of money to paint a blood bowl team. There's not enough models to justify it.! |
Well this is an interesting side discussion.
I believe this to be counterintuitive.
BB teams only have up to 16 players..thus since there are so few you would in theory want all of them to look at least good or better quality. They stand out.
Now my Empire army on the other hand. I have 200+ rank and file guys in multiple blocks of units. I would think on those guys since they are a mass unit only the front rank needs to be good or better quality but the guys in the middle to back ranks. They can have the quick down and dirty paint method.
Just a random side thought as related to this topic. |
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