New to painting

[KnightsErrand]

So I got back into 40K and decided to pick up some Space Wolves. I used to play Tau and actually did an okay job painting them, but I was never good at doing details.

 

I could use alot of help doing it. Terms like dry brushing, wet blending and everything spiffy is greek to me. Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Angry Angron]

I'm not good at explaining anything but drybrushing is quick highlighting by wipping of the most color from the pencil and then just bruhshing it over the mini. Like if u drybrush over a catachan green then you could use like camo green or something

[peirced_monster]

coolminiornot has some good articles on painting,but be warned they are done by members so some of them arent really that gd hope this helps

[LunchBox]

WELCOME TO THE BOLTERAND CHAINSWORD!!!

 

There are so many good articles out there, but I would suggest either searching (up on the right), or taking a few hours...seriously...to browse through our tutorials. Many B&C Brothers are very handy with the brush, and have posted some great tutorials here. If you have any specific questions, please don't hesitate to post those as well. Frequently, we'll see a post that is rather vague, so it's hard to know what to reply with, and where to start. On the other hand, "I need help painting wolf pelts" is a great way to attract many responses, that will offer you a variety of top notch techniques to try out.

 

I do have a question for you...are you wanting a showcase army (every model converted, and painted near Demon standards); a tournament army (one that wins most RTT best painted army awards, and might even place at a Grand Tournament); or a decent table top quality army?

 

Again...welcome!

[BLARGAG!!!]

@ lunchbox...

even though i am not the person who started this post, i am in a similar boat. i want your tips on getting an army painted up to the standards that you have... i have the patience but not the no how. please help a brother in need

[LunchBox]

Well, that's part of why I asked our new Brother what kind of painting standard he was after. In my tournament army, I spend about 40 hours per Marine, and little more on characters. Most people don't want to do that...and I don't blame them. There are ways to speed paint a very sharp looking army.

 

In fact, I'll start with this: If you are painting Space Wolves, prime them with a gray primer. Over that, paint the armor with thinned SW Grey. Super-even coverage isn't a deal breaker, but it needs to be fairly even. After that dries, wash all the armor with Shadow Grey (4 parts water, 1 part Shadow Grey). After that dries, glaze Chaos Black (mostly water, with a little bit of black...it should look like slightly dirty water) onto the crevaces, joints, and recesses. After all that dries, highlight the top edges of the armor with SW Grey, and above the belt (torso, arms, helmet), add a final bit of thinned Ghost Grey, or 50/50 mix of SW Grey and Skull White.

 

For the joints with the ribbing, you can even make a black wash 4/1 water/black, and wash the joint areas behind the knees, and upside of the elbows. Since you primed with gray, you can actually stop right there...it will shade itself.

 

Also, you might ask "littlebitz"...he has a a gorgeous Wolf army that is painted using very simple base and lining techniques (generally a 2 step process)...but it's so smooth, and so clean, it earned him 3rd place "Best Painted Army" in this years Grand Tournament.

[sar mikael]

a lot of guys go on about how great washes are, but i find drybrushing a lot easier and just as effective! not only that but washing takes a fair bit of practice to master where as drybrushing is simple and a whole squad of marines can be done relatively quickly.

i find starting with a black base coat- regardless of the final colour, best as all the cracks and crevices are picked out straight away as colour is applied. to do the drybrushing you have to get the paint on the brush as normal then wipe the majority off, either on your pallet or on kitchen roll, then quickly brush all over the miniture- all the raised parts will get the paint on them, leaving the dark mould lines for the armour. continue this until most of the model is drybrushed with the desired colour then add a touch of white to the current mix or go a shade lighter and again drybrush the miniture but with even less paint on the brush and quicker over the model. keep adding white/ going lighter until you're happy with the raised parts being picked out lighter- similar to high lighting. then finish the rest of the model and intricate parts as normal.

hope that helps, seems to work for me!

[Askren]

a lot of guys go on about how great washes are, but i find drybrushing a lot easier and just as effective! not only that but washing takes a fair bit of practice to master where as drybrushing is simple and a whole squad of marines can be done relatively quickly.

 

Drybrushing is, and I hate saying this, one of the 'easy-way-out' techniques. Not that it isn't perfectly viable or useful, no. It has it's applications, but for the most part, new painters cling to drybrushing as a catch-all technique for painting everything from skin to metal to highlighting, and to be honest, it gets old.

 

Now, if you honestly are happy with the results, and see no reason to put more time or effort into painting, then great, you've accomplished the goal of Warhammer modeling, which is to please yourself. But if you WOULD like to improve, the first thing to get rid of is drybrushing.

 

I'm not going to go into much more specifics, but I would be more than happy to explain anything people in this thread want to know, be it color theory or paint application. Not that I'm an expert, or teach master class or anything like that. I just happen to be an art student with a knack for explainging things.

[cathar the great]

well Askren, you are more or less right on drybrushing. People new to miniature painting do like it. It is after all, a kinda moron-proof technique that gets you very fast and not too bad results. So why not do it?

 

I used to use it more extensively. Nowadays, I just use it once per mini, and only on (Chaos) Space Marines of which I have to paint a lot.

 

After priming with black, I lightly drybrush the whole model with codex grey. This helps me redefine some of the details that might be harder to make out on all black surface (and helps if the light around your workplace sucks) and sometimes helps with a first nuance of highlighting. It also seems to me that light colors, which usually are the devil to get on black primer, go on more easily.

[cathar the great]

EDIT: DANG; twitchy finger

[Askren]

well Askren, you are more or less right on drybrushing. People new to miniature painting do like it. It is after all, a kinda moron-proof technique that gets you very fast and not too bad results. So why not do it?

 

I used to use it more extensively. Nowadays, I just use it once per mini, and only on (Chaos) Space Marines of which I have to paint a lot.

 

After priming with black, I lightly drybrush the whole model with codex grey. This helps me redefine some of the details that might be harder to make out on all black surface (and helps if the light around your workplace sucks) and sometimes helps with a first nuance of highlighting. It also seems to me that light colors, which usually are the devil to get on black primer, go on more easily.

 

I never said there's anything wrong with it, especially if you neither want nor see a need to put more effort into painting your minis. But the comment I quoted struck a nerve with me. I've taught quite a few people I game with to paint, or to 'learn how to learn', as I say. One of them is a Daemon player who came up to me and proudly showed me his two Soul Grinders, which were basically just sprayed black, and then drybrushed with a coat of their respective color (one was red, one was green). He told me they were the best painting he's done, and he wanted his third to be better. This is where I see the technique being nothing more than an invisible wall people think keeps them from getting better. He couldn't see beyond drybrushing, and everything I tried to teach him, he compared to drybrushing. I don't know why, but it's like drawing stick figures. People assume that they can't do better, so they default to that instead.

 

Like I said, 'learn to learn'. That is, teach yourself that you can be taught. Learn that you can learn more than you already know. It's all about learning. Every time I paint a new model, I learn something new. Every time I mix paint or pick up a brush, I learn something new about what I'm doing. I learn, because I've taught myself to learn. I think that people need to be taught that not only can they do better, but that there really never is a point where you stop growing. And once you've got that, everything else, no matter how hard it may seem to others, becomes just "Well, I don't know it now, but I can learn how to do it."

[cathar the great]

I'm totally on your side with the "learn how to learn" thing. I'm more a converter than painter, and I could scream everytime I read/hear someone saying "I'm not so good with GS/Plasticard/Kitbashing/Clipping-Bitz-off-the-Sprue and I know that in fact that guy has not even tried to do this ONCE.

 

I just wanted to point out that drybrushing is not a COMPLETELY useless technique and that it can be used in different ways.

 

As the final and/or only coat of paint on a mini, it sucks a lot of course.

[CaptainForge]

The trouble I'm having with washing is getting the right amount of paint out of the pot and the right mix of water. Whenever I read 4/1 or 2/1 on anything, I mentally groan as I know that I will end up making a big mess. How do you get the right measure of paint out of the pot? I've tried eye droppers and that's a waste. I've experimented some with using different size brushes to dip the paint out and place on the palette, that seems to work somewhat better. So is there some big secret that I'm missing?

[Brother Captain Andrecus]

I'm new to this forum, but I've been painting and playing with GW minis for as long as... Uh... *counts on fingers* At least five years. Possibly more! (To some that might not seem like much, because it isn't.) And I still can't paint for the life of me!!! I have, however, come across a few nuggets of info that I think are kinda important.

1) ALWAYS PRIME YOUR MINIS BEFORE PAINTING!!! I know this seems like a stupid and kindof obvious one, but the tempation to not prime with a spray primer is great, and I've found myself slipping out of priming duty on a few occasions. I used to paint my LoTR Easterlings without any primer whatsoever, and although they ended up okay-ish, they weren't good by any means. I recommend using black spray primer. As has been said, black is better. I used to use white and grey primers, and neither gave me as big a headstart as black did. (If you want your minis to look light and airy, like High Elves or Eldar, then grey is a good compromise...) If you're painting metal minis, primer is a must.

2) Drybrush, drybrush, DRYBRUSH!!! It works great for metals, for furs, for cloth, for dirt, for anything. The average miniature brush carries a surprising amoun of paint though, so be sure you wipe your brush good before using it to drybrush.

3) Ink is your friend. A basic black ink can be made by mixing your basic Chaos Black with a mixture of clean water. What I've found is that you don't really need an exact recipe for the ink, just put a dollop of paint in a little bit of water in your pallete. Then, keep adding more water or more paint until you get the effect you're looking for, usually a dakr ink that is just a bit transluscent. Apply in to crevasses and it'll add a lot of depth to your painting.

4) Always get a painting stand for your mini. Get a paint pot and some blue tac, and attach your mini's base to the pot with the blue tac. Paint stands are your momma, your poppa, and your shoulder to die on!!! (That means you need them.) It'll keep you from accidentally grabbing a recently painted part of the mini, and smudging your paintjob. (Many a brave High Elf Archer [if High Elves can be called brave] was ruined because I neglected to put him on a paint stand. Nowadays, I never paint without a stand.

5) Lighting is also your friend. And he's a better freind than ink, let me tell you. Get a good lamp to keep in your painting area. (And for that matter, you should probably set up a permanent paint area, they're important!) Good lighting will make it easier to see paint the li'l details on your minis.

Sooooo... That about sums it up. 5 things that are of some import to new painters. :o (I am by no means an expert, and I'm hardly at intermediate status myself... But I like helping other people, so hopefully this will help you!)

[Askren]

The trouble I'm having with washing is getting the right amount of paint out of the pot and the right mix of water. Whenever I read 4/1 or 2/1 on anything, I mentally groan as I know that I will end up making a big mess. How do you get the right measure of paint out of the pot? I've tried eye droppers and that's a waste. I've experimented some with using different size brushes to dip the paint out and place on the palette, that seems to work somewhat better. So is there some big secret that I'm missing?

 

Two words: Wet palate. Do a forum search for the phrase, and find the tutorial for it, or use Google. It's as simple as a tupperware, some paper towels, some wax paper, and water. I swear by one now, because I can slap as much paint as I want onto it, and I know it will always be perfectly mixed with the right amount of water when I dip my brush.

 

Other than that, it's all eye. If the mix says 1/1 paint/water, than one drop of paint, let's say the size of this here -> O <- should be mixed with a drop of water the same size. 2/1? ->OO<- with ->O<-