stabbington posted:

Prepare for . Helpfully divided into supplies, prep, and painting sections for your convenience.

Supplies
Universal: You're going to need some glue. If you're putting together GW plastics, get plastic glue (GW will sell you some, I personally like Tamiya Extra Thin Cement, other people swear by Revel Contacta Pro, it doesn't matter that much). For anything else, a gap-filling superglue is good (Zap-a-Gap, purple-label BSI Instacure, loctite gel, etc).

You'll also want an xacto knife. You can buy them pretty much anywhere that sells art supplies or tools, just make sure it's the kind with replaceable blades. Optionally, you can also pick up a pair of clippers. Xuron makes the best ones and Privateer Press resells them under the P3 label, or you can buy from GW or whatever your hobby/game shop has on the wall.

Finally, you'll need a jar to keep paint water in (empty pasta sauce, salsa, or pickle jars are my favorite, because they are difficult to mistake for the glass I keep drinking water in) and some paper towels. Some newspaper to keep paint off your desk/table is nice but optional.

Minimum additional cost (~$25), moderate-high effort option: go to an art store and buy some cheap synthetic watercolor brushes, round size 2 and smaller (starting with a 0 or 1 will probably be better if you've never painted anything before), with a 3/0 (occasionally seen as 000) being your smallest. Princeton is a decent brand name for this (their Series 6150 watercolor brushes in particular). While you're there, find a cheap multi-well plastic palette tray (optional if you're really on a budget).

Next stop, walmart or whatever for a can of Krylon flat black spray paint.

Finally, paint. What colors you need depends on what you want to paint, but you can't go wrong buying a white, black, red, yellow, and blue - using these 5 colors, you can mix pretty much any other hue. If you want to stay cheap, I recommend Delta Ceramcoat, it's by far the best cheap craft paint out there.

Moderate cost (~$35), low effort: Go to a GW store. Buy this thing or one of its equivalents if you like the colors in the other ones better.

Buy the aforementioned Krylon flat black.

High cost, high effort: Why is this even an option? This is all poo poo you'll end up wanting eventually if you stick with the hobby and want maximum results, so you save yourself some money in the long run by just buying in at the start.

Go to an art store. Buy a Winsor & Newton Series 7 or Raphael 8404 Size 2, 1, 0, and 3/0. Buy the aforementioned plastic palette. Pick up some brush soap for those nice brushes while you're there. A dropper bottle of some sort wouldn't hurt, either.

Krylon flat black returns, on account of being both cheapest and best in the black primer field (if you can get to an car shop more easily, Duplicolor Sandable Black Primer is as good and slightly more expensive). White primer can wait, and is a whole pile of controversy all on its own.

Paint: Find a hobby shop, buy GW black and white, boltgun metal, mithril silver, gryphonne sepia, devlan mud, badab black, along with P3 Menoth White Highlight, and whatever brand's colors you think are relevant to your project.

Prep
You've just opened your first box of plastic man-dollies, and they're all on this weird plastic thing (called a sprue) looking something like this:

Take your knife (or clippers, if you bought them) and trim the parts off. Make the cuts a bit away from the model so you don't accidentally chop off details. Now that you've got your pieces roughly chopped off the sprue, go back and trim the leftover bits off carefully. Always cut away from yourself, that knife is sharp as gently caress and will go through your fingers and hand no problem.

Once you've got everything trimmed, look for mold lines - these will appear as seams in the plastic, and are a nearly unavoidable relic of the model casting process. To remove them, scrape your knife along the line with the blade perpendicular to the surface, producing a small tuft of plastic shavings that is easily rubbed off.

Glue everything together, then glue it to the base.

Take your can of black spray paint, shake it well, and basically follow the instructions and advice in this article until he starts doing complicated stuff with multiple colors.

Wait a few hours.

Holy poo poo are we Painting Yet?
This is not the only way to paint, and it isn't always the way I paint, but it is a way to paint, and works well for beginners because it's relatively easy.

Getting paint onto your palette and thinning it: Pot-style paint (GW, P3): Take the non-brush end of your brush, get some paint on it, scrape that paint off onto your palette. Add a bit of water (figuring out the right ratio is a personal thing and varies a lot between individuals and paints, but you're looking for something that flows well and doesn't leave brushstrokes, about the consistency of heavy cream), then mix the two together.

Dropper bottles (Ceramcoat, Vallejo, Reaper): put a drop of paint on the pallete (you may need to run a needle through the dropper head if it doesn't flow immediately). Add water to achieve proper consistency (see above).

Basecoat: Get some paint on your brush, being careful not to let it get into the metal part (the ferrule - paint drying up in there is the number one cause of brush destruction). Roll your brush against a paper towel while pulling it back towards you to remove a bit off the water and reshape your brush into a point, then apply it to the area of the mini that you want to be that color.

Repeat this process with your various colors for the entire model, rinsing your brush in your water pot occasionally, and whenever you want to change colors.

Troubleshooting: If you get big blobs of it, you either have too much on your brush (solution: place your brush against the paper towel and let some of the excess seep off before trying again), or your paint is too thin (solution: add more paint to your paint/water mixture). If you see brushstrokes or your paint clogs details, your paint is too thick, add more water.

Simple Shading: Cover your model (or the parts you want shaded with that particular color) in a thin layer of a wash like GW's Badab Black or Devlan Mud, or a similar dark tone that you've made yourself (a simple shading wash can be made with a paint color darker than the base coat and enough water to make it relatively translucent), making sure that any pooling that happens is limited to recesses. Making sure your wash doesn't pool is important for preventing unsightly rings from forming on your model.

Simple Clean Highlighting: Using a lighter shade of your basecoat color (made by mixing that basecoat with a a lighter tone if necessary, see below for suggestions) , and making sure your brush has very little water on it (the paint should still be thinned, hold your brush against a towel to wick away excess water), carefully paint the portions of the model that would catch the light - upper surfaces, edges, etc.

Messy Highlighting (Drybrushing): Take a brush you don't care about. Get some paint (of your highlight tone) on it straight from the pot, then rub it against a paper towel until each stroke leaves only a small amount. Picking a direction that will cause your brush to not enter areas that should stay shaded, run your brush over the model, causing it to deposit small amounts of paint where it passes. Repeat as needed until the color feels acceptable. Works great for metals, not as awesome for things like cloth.

Highlighting Hints: Most colors are easy to mix highlight colors for using a white or off-white (P3 Menoth White Highlight and VMC Ice Yellow or Ivory being perennial favorites around here). Oranges, reds, and purples aren't, unless you're painting a creamsicle or something pink. Oranges and reds both benefit from a bright yellow being added to them. Purples generally want a red or orange. There's a bunch of technical reasons behind this, but that's the end result.

Hope that helps!

PaintVagrant posted:

So Ill start this off with some poo poo ive painted recently, as well as some miniatures I have boners for:

My stuff:

PaintVagrant posted:

Danger - Octopus! posted:

How do these kind of bases work? Do you get a base with a sunken bit in the middle, a scenic bit and a miniature; are you supposed to provide the scenic bit yourself or is it moulded onto the miniatures feet?

Pagan posted:

Has anyone actually purchased videos from

http://www.miniaturementor.com/painting_tutorials.html these guys?

Pagan posted:

Has anyone actually purchased videos from

http://www.miniaturementor.com/painting_tutorials.html these guys? Is it worth it? I'd love to be able to see someone paint, so I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, but at those prices it's pretty steep.

Fyrbrand posted:

Washes are one of the best things GW has ever produced c/d?

Grandpa Pap posted:

They made painting 30-odd Crimson Fists in the space of just under 3 weeks possible!

Seriously, once my CF test model got heavily washed with Asurmen Blue (after shade/basecoat/highlight), it pulled the look together so completely that my motivation for painting was off the charts during that time.

Arlaharen posted:

pureblood warpwolf

Arlaharen posted:

This is pretty much the best I've painted in my opinion and I'm drat proud of it. Rip it apart.

Jen Haley posted:

This was my third go at a monochrome miniature, a male ranger sculpted by Jeff Grace for Dark Sword and painted for a video tutorial. I like the dynamic pose of this model, and thought he would look interesting in the simple color scheme. RMS Walnut Brown and Creamy Ivory were the only two paints used.

Ceritus posted:

My only real criticisms are that the verdigris on the armor looks kind of strange - probably because the wash just pooled in the recesses of the plating and doesn't cover the rest. Also, the pureblood's left hand looks a little strange on that base since its not resting perfectly flat. (fingers jutting over the edge of the scenery).

Some of his spines/claws could use some touch-ups too, but I'm guessing that's just damage he's taken from table time?

Dixon Cox posted:

PaintVagrant posted:

I assume she meant colors, because she had to use white and black in addition to those two colors, right?

There seems to be some warm and cool transtions, which implies more than just 2 total paints...