the first here is the second miniature i ever painted, the first one did not belong to me, a friend lent it to me, so i could try out painting them for myself. I painted this guy pretty much from my list of things not to do. He was unprimed, painted with Testor's high gloss enamel model paints using a plastic bristled brush.
Not too bad for a first try though. I started out by painting my HeroQuest minis, and I made the mistake of using Testor's on bare plastic too. Some of those don't look too bad, but they're not great. I got better after reading a Dragon article on painting that introduced me to acryllics, priming, and drybrushing. So after reading that, I picked up three sets of acryllic paint that was made by Testors, there was a basic primary color set, an auto detailing set, and a set for model ariplanes and stuff that had stuff like olive drab, gray, and tan. Those paints worked better, but some were glossy and looked like crap if used wrong. The flat paint was better and looked pretty good, and I eventually added a few other colors I needed. My palette was somewhat limited, but I'm ok at mixing colors if I need them. I haven't used them in a while though, so I imagine most of them have probably dried out. I might be able to revive some of them with some water, another one of the pluses to acryllic. The brushes were mostly cheap crappy brushes, but I added a few better brushes for detail work, and I still use the crap brushes for stuff like priming or inking where I'm more interested in covering as much of the mini as possible.
Now here is the secret, here is how to get the best of both worlds of prime, and more when it comes to prepping your minis: the Greybrush.
Interesting. I usually start with a flat white prime, do a base coat, ink it with watered down flat black, drybrush the whole thing with white, then drybrush the rest of the colors. I'll have to try that method, looks like it can save some time.
Here's some half painted ones:
That's pretty good. Most of my best figures look a bit like that, though complete of course. I'm not really interested in doing award winning work on the minis, but I also don't want them to look like crap, and I have a decent eye for detail. Most of my minis are closer to your battlefield standard though, I'm generally more careful with unique PC-type minis
EDIT: that reminds me, before you start painting, wash your hands! You don't know where they've been, and you don't want the grubb form your grubby mitts to get all over your awesome mini.
That always helps. I wash my hands a lot when I'm working on game stuff, because I don't like stuff like Cheeto dust getting on my campaign notes. I like to write my stuff up by hand. The same thing goes for minis, dirt, oil, sweat and all kinds of crap can mess up a paint job.
the pliers on the left hand side are there because the old GW paintpots are less than cooperative when it comes to opening once paint dries in the grooves of the caps.
I've been there. I learned the hard way to be careful with the pliers too, because too much pressure can crush in part of the lid, and then it builds up rust which contaminates the paint. When a lid is stuck, I usually dip on of the junk brushes in my wash solution, and rub it around the inside of the lid to soften it up a bit first. If the dried paint isn't too bad, sometimes that even does the trick.
You also need at least 2 cups of brush water that you are willing to sacrifice to the cause, I use disposable red party cups.
I use water with a little bit of alcohol and soap added to help clean up the brush.
Thou Shalt Not Leave Thine Brushes Sitting in the Water.
I don't even let go of the brushes when I'm cleaning them off and let the tips touch the bottom of the cup for that reason. I just swirl the brush around real good, wipe it off on a paper towel and repeat until there's not color left. Then I dry the brush off really good, because the excess water will thin the paint out and weaken the coverage.
If I had a working digital camera, I'd probably share some of my better paint jobs in this thread.
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