Painting Miniatures Guide
Greetings! In the last few weeks a number of folks have asked for advice on basic painting. I firmly believe it is possible not only for anyone to paint miniature to a table top level, but to rapidly increase their skills in the hobby with just a bit of dedication. I hope this thread can serve as a sort of table of contents for folks and if you think there are some links I should add, please post them!
Basic Painting Games Workshop’s Tutorial has a few useful articles. Naturally, they are trying to sell you some product, but it still is solid advice from an industry leader.
A Guide to Painting Basics - this is from the OZ site.
Quick painting (Army Painting) tips - this is from the OZ site
Tools and Brushes Spray Primering Step-by-step tutorials for various models J.D. Wiker has some decent basic tips to get you started
Miniatures 101 Miniatures 102 Miniatures 103 Miniatures 104 Sven Adrian has a different technique worthy of consideration on coolminiornot:
Step-by-step painting Easterlings Todd Arrington has a solid article on basics over at Brushthralls. In fact Brushthralls is an excellent source for a lot of solid articles mostly concentrating on the Privateer Press models.
Miniatures 101 Color Theory Priming White Pinning Mario Fuentes has a great, in-depth step-by-step on Vallejo's site:
Painting Figures with Model Color Jakob Nielsen has a solid step-by-step tutorial of a GW Chaos Warrior:
JRN Chaos Warrior step-by-step Mike Kan mostly paints GW, but he paints pretty quickly and has lots of tips for painting lots of clean, well done, table top standard figures quickly:
Mike Kan Paint Paint References
Totengraber has begun a really cool paint database that gives swatches and matching colors for other lines of paint. Still a bit of a work in progress, but very cool!
Totengraber's Paint Database Techniques
One of my favorite painters is
Jenova! Who is very generous with her knowledge.
Jenova!’s site
Several solid technique articles at
Brush Thralls.
Painting White Painting Black Additives, Glazes, and Smoke Using Glaze Mediums Creating different metal effects NMM Thierry Husser a very skilled painter who does mostly Rackham stuff has posted an excellent full color chart of his NMM fomulas:
Color chart for NMM Liliana Troy is a top notch painter who has dominated U.S. painting contests for years. Here are some of her NMM recipes:
Liliana Troy's NMM recipes INKS Total Model has a nice basic article on the uses of acryllic inks:
Painting with Inks Metallics Jakob Rune Nielsen has won numerous Golden Demons and posts an excellent tutorial on painting metallics:
JRN Metallics Tutorial MIG Productions has produced a cool article on using dry pigments to weather metallics.
Using Colored Pigment Powder to Weather Metallics and More! Blending The Raging Gaijin's Dojo has a FILM! of blending techiniques that really is solid. These techiniques are for show quality pieces! The only bad news is his tips are in Microsoft Word and the film is in Real Player, but it is worth it.
Gaijin's Dojo Blending Tutorial wyrd-games has a very interesting blending techinique that does not require mixing colors. Very well written and very good results.
wyrd-games blending article Oz Painters has a solid thread on using transparent glazes to blend - he calls them juices.
Juices for blending Dipping
Here is a cool article on dipping figures in poly stain for speed painting. I have used it on Eastern Indians to great effect!
DIPPING FIGURES IN MINWAX POLYSHADE Faces Jen Haley is the queen of painting without peer in the states. Her painting a face article is particularly helpful!
new page her articles thus far:
Painting Faces Painting Freehands Choosing & Using Brushes Brush Thralls have a great tutorial on faces and skin
Painting Faces and Skintones Reaper has a tutorial on painting eyes by Darin Hlavaz. Thanks Lord Tirian for the scoop.
Eye Tutorial Wings Necromancer Tales brings us a lot of cool tutorials including this one on scratch built wings.
Scratch Built Wings Gems ZaPhOd's has a neat tutorial on painting translucent gems:
Complex Gems Lighting Effects Iron Halo has a very interesting article on painting a blue lighting effect:
Blue Lighting Effect Hair Darkstar over at Reaper's message board does some of the most awesome hair I have ever seen. He explains his techinique in this thread:
Hair tutorial. Horses Veni Vidi Vici has an excellent section on painting horses:
Painting Horses on VVV Games Workshop has a decent article by Mike McVey on painting horses. It includes a step-by-step on doing a dappled gray. Here is a direct link to the pdf:
WD199 - painting horses by Mike McVey Re-painting D&D Plastics
A tutorial on preparing and re-painting D&D plastic minis:
koboldmage's tutorial on re-painting Stone
Texturing Granite article on Hot Lead:
Texturing Granite Textured Wood
An article over on hot-lead.org on painting textured wood:
Painting Textured Wood Scottish Tartans
An article over at Vulture Miniatures on painting tartans:
Painting Scottish Tartans Dr. Faust has tons of useful articles in his clinic:
Dr. Faust’s Paint Clinic The Nexus has one of the most exhaustive lists of miniature manufacturers and websites on the net:
The Nexus Links Bases Frank the DM's Marble bases
Quick and easy marble bases fingolfin's site has a cool tutorial on making cork bases:
Cork Bases
Part 2 of the tutorial:
Cork Bases Part 2 Make bases like Rackham Rackham style corkbase Ali McVey makes some awesome looking slate bases
Slate Bases on Brushthralls
I have found articles on net to be very helpful, but one other resource that should be employed is message boards like Reaper’s where excellent painters are always anxious to share their knowledge. When I have more time I will further organize links into techniques, but this certainly is more than enough to get someone started!
Have fun!
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