Calling my fellow geeks!!

[kellinator]

I'm thinking about taking up a new hobby (as if I needed another time and money sink): miniature painting! I was hoping some of you out there might have some tips on getting started. In particular, is there any such thing as a set of paints that won't break the bank?

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

I haven't painted in years, but here's a beginner's guide:

Invest in a couple of cans of primer. For the beginner, I recommend one white and one grey. Black is tough to work with for beginners, and even when I became more advanced, I always had trouble with getting successive layers of paint on to cloak the black. The colors do seem deeper, though.

Start with water-based paints. They're easier to work with and much more forgiving w/r/t mistakes. I don't know what's being sold these days, but Citadel's always had a really good selection of colors. If you're good at mixing, all you'll really ever need is 8 to 10 colors. I never was, so I had almost a hundred. :)

Brushes: I only ever needed 2 or 3: a fine (10/0) and a wide (2/0).

Prime your figures, wait a day, and then get to it! Start with wide swaths of color (like cloaks and such) and then work on the details. Rinse frequently. Have a palette ready for mixing and for sloughing off excess paint.

I used to do checks and stripes a lot. A mechanical pencil is tricky to use on a really detailed figure, but you can use it to draw patterns, then paint over them.

The two most impressive methods of adding texture to your figs are drybrushing and washing. In drybrushing, you take a wide brush and tap the brush on your palette until there's almost no paint on it. Then, apply it to hair or fur to give the illusion of light striking it. Washing will give cracks and crevasses texture. Do this by diluting some paint about 1/1 with water in a shallow pool. (Or you can use wash inks). For a red cloak, for instance, you could use red and black paint to create a deep red watery mix that you then can lay on with a wide brush.

Wow, this takes me down memory lane. I played a lot of Warhammer 40K and it's been a while since I painted. Maybe I'll put pics up of some of my figures one of these days. :)