Painting Gaming Miniatures with Craft Paints
I've received about a dozen emails asking for a post that details
my painting technique, and four of those have specifically asked me to
address the use of craft paints. I'm happy to lift the curtain and show
you how the trick is done.
Before I start, I
have a disclaimer to make. I know my limitations as a painter better
than anyone. I've never had any success--any--with
using washes. I tend to use the paint straight out of the bottle, not
thinning it a bit, so that my figures can look a little puffy in areas.
So I'm no Kevin Dallimore. I've won painting awards, but I understand
that I did not win those for the excellence of any individual figure. I
won those awards because of the quality of the army paint
job. And that's my strength. I can do a pretty good paint job, and I
can crank it out over and over again in very little time. If you're
looking for the very best painting technique, look elsewhere.
Of
course, if you're looking for the very best painting technique, you
should probably be painting 200mm figures or 1/4 busts, not wargaming
armies. My technique will let you field large, well painted armies.
I
don't have a hobby store nearby, and I don't fancy ordering hobby
paints through the mail. I've had bad experiences doing so, where the
shade I got wasn't even close to what I thought I was getting. And at
$4 a pop, a few of those mistakes each order add up. I buy all my
paints and brushes at two stores: Michael's and The Creative Element (a
local art supply store). For those of you outside the US, Michaels is a
craft store, and it carries a wide variety of items: scrapbook
supplies, artificial flowers, art supplies, woodworking supplies, home
decor, art prints, and fabrics. It's not a hobby store at all. They
have a couple shelves of cheap models, and that's about it. But they do
have an entire aisle of craft paints.
I try to
buy Delta Ceramcoats whenever I can. The other brands are cheaper, but
in general the paints don't have as much pigment in them. Some of
their shades, however, are very nice. I included the paint bottle I
used for each step in the photographs below.
The
figure we'll use as our exemplar is a Foundry Marian Roman legionary.
Romans are one of the easiest figures for me to paint, and one of the
quickest. This entire paint job, including breaks at each step to
photograph the miniature, took only 40 minutes. Without photo breaks,
and using an assembly line approach, I can cut that time in half.
Step 1: Priming
I
base the cleaned figure on a popsicle stick, three figures to each
stick. I prime the figures with Rustoleum's flat black enamel spray
paint. I've tried Gesso, but it leaves too much bare metal in recessed
areas.
Step 13: Tunic Highlights
Step 2: Silver Drybrush
I
haven't ever found a good acrylic silver or gold paint, so I use the
little $.99 Testor's enamels. You might remember these from the models
you built when you were a kid. I use a broad, flat brush for the
drybrushing, and I don't keep it very neat. Anything that gets
mistakenly painted silver will be covered by other paint soon enough.
Step 3: Brown Basecoat
The
sandals, pilum shaft, sword grip, and helmet get an undercoat in Brown
Iron Oxide, a very useful paint. All of these will get highlights in
other colors, but the brown undercoat provides a nice base. I've
switched over to a 000 fine point paintbrush for most of the work that
follows.
Step 3: Red Basecoat
The
tunic gets a Cinnamon undercoat. Again, this is a very useful color.
I use it for all my reds. Cinnamon is a sort of reddish brown or
browninsh red.
Step 4: Leatherwork
I
use Autumn Brown as my main leather color most of the time. I used my
broad, flat brush to drybrush the sandals, and I used the 000 fine point
brush to pick out the leather bands on the chainmail and the leather
bits on the sword scabbard. Autumn Brown is not as well pigmented as
some other colors and goes on a bit translucent, so I tend to use a
large amount of it.
Step 5: Wood Grain and Sword Grip Highlights
I
paint the fiddly details with a 10/0 fine point brush. This particular
brush is almost at the end of its life, but it still has some use left.
I use Territorial Biege (a tough color to find) to paint the grain of
the wood and to pick out the leather grips on the sword.
Step 6: Gold Drybrush
I
go back to Testors enamel paint for the bronze helmet. Sometimes I
paint the detail with a fine brush, which gives the helmet a nice gleam.
I want my legionaries to look a little more worn by active
campaigning, so I used my broad, flat brush to drybrush the gold. Here I
am very careful not to get gold on the shoudlers or pilum head, but I
don't mind getting some on the face.
Step 7: Flesh Basecoat
There
are three different shades I use for the flesh basecoat: Dark Flesh,
Cayenne, or a shade I mix myself from Dark Brown, Territorial Beige, and
Medium Flesh. None of these shades covers the black very well, so I
really glop the paint on. It takes a while to dry, but it does cover
the primer pretty well.
Step 8: Tunic Medium Coat
The
Cinnamon tunic now gets its first highlight. I use Red Iron Oxide for
my Romans, leaving Cinnamon showing only in the crevices of the tunic
folds.
Step 9: Flesh Medium Coat
I
use Medium Flesh as my main flesh tone. It's quite a bit darker than
the Fleshtone paint, and it works very well for wargame figures. I
start with the face, then do hands and arms, then paint the legs, then
pick out the toes. By the time this step is done, the figure really is
ready for the wargame table. But for this demonstration, I'm going to
add three more shades to really make the figure pop.
Step 10: Leather Helmet Strap
This
figure has a strap extending from his cheek guards to the back of the
helmet. I paint the strap with Brown Iron Oxide and highlight it with
Territorial Biege.
Step 11: Flesh Highlights
This
is really an optional step, but I'm starting to use it more and more on
my figures. It doesn't take much time, and it helps the flesh to pop.
For this Roman, who is showing quite a bit of flesh, it's an easy way
to improve the figure's appearance. I use my 10/0 brush and dab a
little Fleshtone on the tip of the nose, the chin, the knuckles, the
toenails, and the centers of my Medium Flesh.
Step 12: Mixing the Tunic Highlight
As
I wrote earlier, Romans are prett easy for me to paint. One reason is
that their uniforms are not very ornate. Another is that they acutually
have uniforms.
I can set up my assembly line and crank them out without changing
paints too often. But a third reason is that I have all the shades I
need ready at hand. This isn't the case with every army. Often I have
to mix my own colors by adding a little black or white to another color.
For Romans, I only have to do this with the tunic highlight.
I
take the dab of Red Iron Oxide left from the tunic midshade and add a
tiny drop of white. I want the tunic to look faded, not pink! I use a
toothpick to stir the paints together.
Step 13: Tunic Highlights
Using
my 10/0 brush, I pick out the very top areas of the tunic folds. I use
this color very sparingly. It's easy to overdo this, and the result is
a pastel tunic. We want to avoid that. It makes the warlike Romans
look strangely effeminate, and we don't want the ghosts of legionaries
past to haunt our die rolls.
Step 14: Painting the Base
I'm going to flock the bases, so I don't need to do too much here. I slap on a little Dark Brown and call it good.
Finished Figure
So
here is the result of 40 minutes' work. Again, without photography
breaks, and by painting 60-100 figures at once, I can average about
three of these per hour. That doesn't include prep time, of course, nor
flocking and texturing the bases, but I can field a well painted army
very quickly.
10 comments:
-
Declan said...
- Love the blog. Keep up the good work.
-
Caroline said...
- WOW!!! Thanks sooo much for the tips!
Cole -
Greg Sapara said...
- Great step-by-step Scott!
Can you tell us how this process is different for 15mm miniatures, if at all?
I'm hoping to get a couple of FOG armies painted up early this year, and I really appreciate the look you achieve with your technique and the paints you use.
My main problem is speed, and your process looks to aid the speedy completion of an army.
Also, I haven't painted 15mm in quite some time, so any pointers would be welcome!
Regards,
GregS -
BigRedBat said...
- That is really clear and extremely helpful. I think it takes me around
90 minutes to paint the same figure as you, to a standard that is
certainly no better; so I had better revise my technique!
Thanks, Simon -
Craig Welter said...
- This is a very nice article. It's helpful to see other people's painting techniques, especially in such detail.
-
jonfreitag said...
- Excellent painting tutorial. As good as I've seen anywhere.
-
EricS said...
- Great tutorial!
How about some paint triads you prefer. -
Andrew said...
- Brown as a undercoat for bronze? Good idea, I think I'll steal it!
-
~ Tom Terrific said...
- Great write up. Very helpful and informative.
Apple Barrel 20762 Pure Silver is a great craft store acrylic. I've also added Deco Art DA070 Shimmering Silver to my palette. They are the best alternatives I've found to Testor's enamels.
Thanks for the inspiration!
~ Tom T -
Doug Welch said...
- I have finally gotten all of the paints together (needing to replace
Ceramcoat's Cayenne with Vallejo's "flesh base") and the contrast of
shades of your flesh tones is fantastic! Now I have to do the clothing
as well!
Do you have any suggestions of base, shade, and highlight colors for Celts, like your recent 15mm Celts?
Also, any suggestion as to how to make reins for 28mm cavalry figs?
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