Fighting the Gray Tide (Miniature Painting)

[MGibster]

If you know anything about miniature painters, we tend to have a lot of unfinished or never started projects just lying around. Oh, yeah, we bought that beholder with some big ideas on how to paint that one big eye, we just had to have that giant robot as the centerpiece for our army, or maybe that squad of orcish grenadiers seemed like just the thing we wanted, but we got distracted by other projects, and eventually our big ideas faded from thought. I hadn't thought of it very much until my Zombicide: Dead or Alive Kickstarter arrived a few weeks ago. The basic game comes with 88 miniatures in total, but I backed the Kickstarter at the highest level I could, and suddenly I have 232 new miniatures. (I've painted 40 zombies so far, so I've put a dent in it at least.)

A lot of models are gray plastic, so a lot us refer to our unpainted collection as the gray tide or menace. In my case, it's not pathological, I'm not spending more money than I have, my house isn't cluttered, and it doesn't have an otherwise negative impact of my life. But I really, really need to get some of this stuff painted. I thought I'd make a resolution not to buy any more miniatures until I put a dent in the tide, but goals should be realistic, and that one would never last. I also don't want to paint just for the sake of painting, that's a chore, but at the same time I can't be beholden to one game or another. With that in mind...

Goal: To put a significant dent in the number of unpainted miniatures in my possession, as well as practice new techniques in order to improve my skills.

That's the goal, but what's the plan? You gotta have a plan.

1. Organize my unpainted miniatures. I have Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar, Star Wars Legion, Zombicide (multiple versions) Fallout: Wasteland Tactics, and a lot of miscellaneous miniatures that need to be painted. I really need to assess what I have before coming up with a final plan of attack.

2. Decide what skills I wish to practice on which miniatures. For hordes of zombies and Rebel troops, I'm probably going to go with what I think is the quickest way to get decent results, so we'll be using slapchop method for those. For centerpiece models I'll go for more traditional techniques and practice my glazing, layering, and wet blending. I'm going to try to actually paint eyes on things. Practice, practice, practice.

3. I'll post some pictures here as well as an explanation for what technique I tried. You'll see some ugly photos from time-to-time because that's what happens when you try something new. Sometimes you get results you weren't looking for, and that's okay, it's part of the learning process.

I encourage anyone else who enjoys painting miniatures to post here as well with examples of your work. Tell us what you did, hell, talk about color theory. I'm not a great artist, but I'd love to hear why you chose your color palette. If you've had to fight off your own gray tide, tell us how you did it.

 

[Richards]

I don't paint minis (alas, I lack the skills), but I do have my own gray tide to fight: the hair in my beard and at my temples. And...I've pretty much decided to just surrender.

Good luck in making your dent, and I look forward to seeing the photos of your work. Like I said, I'm not a minis painter myself, but I enjoy watching the results of those with the skills to do so.

Johnathan

 

[payn]

I'd very interested to come back here week to week or however often and see which skill you are attempting to master. I'd certainly give them a go myself in tandem. Be fun to compare notes.

 

[MGibster]

This is a New California Republic force from Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. In case you're unfamliar, this is a skirmish level game based off the Fallout computer games by Bethesda. I purchased these miniatures within the last few months and decided to finally get around to painting them. I tried a combination of regular painting in layers with the new slapchop method that the kids are into these days. I say new, but slapchop has been around for a while. Basically you have a dark base, dry brush a lighter color over the parts that stick out, and then put on a transluscent layer which automatically applies dark and highlighted areas in one go. It's not likely to win me any contests, but when you want to paint a lot of miniatures in a short period of time, it's good enough for table top standard.

I tired some a new product for the base made by Vallejo called Thick Mud. This is European mud. I really like it. They're not lying when they say it's thick. It'd be a bit pricy to use for a whole lot of miniatures, but for a few it's not so bad.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I’ve found that the minis that take priority to paint are those that will be featured in an upcoming session. Alas, those mountains of minis that aren’t in an adventure I’m DMing are still unpainted.

 

[MGibster]

I’ve found that the minis that take priority to paint are those that will be featured in an upcoming session. Alas, those mountains of minis that aren’t in an adventure I’m DMing are still unpainted.

That's how I priortize my painting where possible. Usually I'm going to prioritize models for war gaming purposes and RPGs come next. If a game of either variety stops being played, then the motivation to complete painting them goes away. That's why I have a lot of Star War Legion, Age of Sigmar, and 40k models I still need to paint. This last year, I finished painting by Imperial Knights army, and that one was done purely for the pleasure. I wasn't in a rush to paint them in order to play, I took my time painting them and they turned out great. For the most part, I paint as a means to and end, with the end being to use the miniature in a game. Right now I'm trying to prioritize painting for the sake of painting to improve my skills and just have fun with it. But gaming is still going to factor in how I prioritize my list. I'm painting Fallout because I want to run a game sometime this year.

 

[Andvari]

Counterpoint: See using miniatures unpainted as the default. But allow the painting of miniatures that see frequent use or are likely to feature in a boss encounter. On exceptional occasions, allow a miniature to be painted for the fun of it.

 

[Umbran]

Until I parsed the parenthetical, I thought this was going to be a thread on players ageing in the RPG community.

 

[MGibster]

Counterpoint: See using miniatures unpainted as the default. But allow the painting of miniatures that see frequent use or are likely to feature in a boss encounter. On exceptional occasions, allow a miniature to be painted for the fun of it.

I'm not so much of a snob that I'll turn my nose up at an unpainted miniature. Heck, I've used coins, gummi bears, dice, marshmallows, and other things as proxies for orcs, hobgoblins, and horses. For me, having a painted miniature just adds to the overall atmosphere, and even a poorly painted miniature is better than a plastic colored miniature.

Until I parsed the parenthetical, I thought this was going to be a thread on players ageing in the RPG community.

Ha! I've certainly talked to some folks my age about how many campaigns we'll be able to play once we're all in the same retirement home.

 

[Andvari]

Just trying to say you can see the gray tide as a positive ("Wow, I have so many minis") rather than a negative ("Wow, I have so many unpainted minis"). And painting being an enjoyable extra thing you get to do when you feel like it, rather than a chore.

It just sometimes seems people feel "bad" for having unpainted minis, which they should not.

 

[MGibster]

Just trying to say you can see the gray tide as a positive ("Wow, I have so many minis") rather than a negative ("Wow, I have so many unpainted minis"). And painting being an enjoyable extra thing you get to do when you feel like it, rather than a chore.

You bring up something very important, your hobby shouldn't be a chore. There are parts of miniature painting that can get a bit tedious, but if you're working on a project and it just feels like a grind you get no joy from, it's probably time to switch to another project or take a break. If someone has their own grey tide and they're perfectly happy with that, I'm sure as heck not going to rain on their parade.

For me, I just want to put a large dent in my grey tide, but I wouldn't say it's bothering me in the sense that it's keeping me awake at night or stressing me out. I've got plenty of space (for now), I'm not spending more than I can afford, I don't have a compulsive need to buy every miniature that looks good, though, since money isn't really an issue, I often purchase more than I can get to in a reasonable amount of time. I've got a friend who has tons of unpainted miniatures, and he's perfectly happy with that.

And actually, having a ton of stuff isn't really a uniqe aspect of miniature painting hobbiest. The knitters and woodworkers I know have tons of tools, projects they've never started, and projects that are half-finished lying around their work area.

 

[MGibster]

Okay, so for all the talk about the grey tide, there's also the bright, well, tide might not fit, how about tide pool? Yes, the color tide pool. These are the miniatures someone has started, but, for whatever reason, they lost interest before the project was complete. The miniatures below are the Space Marine Terminators from the Space Hulk board game. I purchased the game in 2017, I painted them in 2020, and left them unfinished for the last two years. You might be thinking they're finished based on the photo, but they're not, though some of them are close. A lot of them still need the detail work completed, and those lightning claws really need some work for that one guy there.

I tried something new with these, I applied a base coat of aluminium and followed that up with some Tamiya transparent red which gave these guys an interesting look. I had a hard time completing the detail work, because the paint didn't want to stick to the coat of Tamiya I laid down. So I've applied some varnish to the miniatures in the hopes that I'll have an easier time completing the details.

For most of my projects, the vast majority of the painting is completed in a very short period of time. But when you start adding the little details, highlighting chains, weathering, etc., etc., that's where you end up sinking most of your time.

 

[MGibster]

I'm going to call this poor bastard done. All I did was add a few more details, applied an oil wash, let dry, and removed some of the oil and I'm happy with the results. The first time you apply an oil wash it's a scary thing because you think you've ruined the paint job you worked so long on. But once it starts to dry, just use a brush damp with thinner (I used odorless turpenoid), and you can wipe off most of it revealing the acrylic paint underneath. It really helps the mini pop. This dude is supposed to have been sitting around on a space hulk for a few centuries, so he's the only one who will get an oil wash. I want the others to look bright and shiny.

U

 

[MGibster]

I'm very happy I didn't place an embargo on model purchases as part of my effort to fight the grey tide. Truthfully, I knew an embargo couldn't last so there was no point in trying. My local game store has a big sale at the end of every year and all sorts of things were 50%. I purchased the following:

Ork Battleforce for Warhammer 40k, the Killdakka Warband - +40 miniatures
Mega-Gargant for Age of Sigmar - 1 miniature (but it's a big one)
Ogor Mawtribes Tyrant for Age of Sigmar - 1 Miniature - regular sized

The Tyrang and the Mega-Gargant are two armies I'm slowly building up, but the ork purchase was on a whim. It was so cheap, $105, and it came with an ork plane. Do you understand? An ork plane! I couldn't not buy it. But I'm probably not going to even open the box until third or fourth quarter of 2023. It's entirely possible I might just trade the boxed set away for something I want more.

 

[trappedslider]

 

[MGibster]

I've finished all of the regular zombies from Zombicide Undead or Alive. Well, all the zombies in the base boxed set, because I'm nowhere close to completing all of them from the Kickstarter. The only downside is that I had to eat my sausage and biscuits this morning sans sausage.

Because this was a large batch of miniatures, I went with the so called slap chop method of painting. Black undercoat, light colored dry brush, and then transparent colors on top of that. Individually, these miniatures look terrible, but when you have a hoard of them all painted up they look pretty good. Sometimes you want to look at the forrest and not the trees.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I'm old school - I've never actually tried "slapchop" before. On the other hand, I mainly paint for display instead of gaming.

Since I haven't been painting in quite some time, due to lack of inspiration for most of the year and currently due to it being too cold in the house to paint, this is my particular mini-related project at the mo...

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as too many miniatures, just not enough storage, lol.

This is the original shadowbox that's been hanging on my bedroom wall for decades.... (Hell, this picture of it is twenty years old, lol.) Obviously, it's a generic shadowbox, clearly not originally meant to display minis.

It's about 20-in. tall, 18-in. wide, and has basically nine shelves on it. And it's currently packed to the gills with figures - I have essentially the entire run of the old Ral Partha AD&D 11-xxx Adventurers series on it as well as the Grenadier box sets 6003 Elves of the Sylvan Brotherhood, 2018 Female Adventurers (2 complete sets, although they're lined up behind the other) and half of 5002 Monsters, plus about two dozen other random figures.

So, I'm making a new one. It's going to be 28-in. tall, 22-in. wide, in a cherry finish, and have eleven functional shelves on it with 2 inches of space in between them. Rather than split the shelves into individual boxes I'm just going to have two evenly spaced interior vertical dividers/supports, so the shelves will be divided into thirds which will let me position the figures any way I want them.

Currently, I've got the wood cut for the shelves, and am in the process of cutting the back piece out of plywood.

It's going to take a while to finish, since I'm doing it entirely with hand tools, and rather than cutting the two interior supports into little pieces, I'm going to notch both them and the horizontal shelves so that they're interlaced. I'm also currently job-hunting at the moment, so I don't have a lot of free time during the hours when it's warm enough in my basement to work on it (I'm currently without heat in the house). But I'm planning to try to post WIP updates as I complete steps or at least once a week in order to try to keep motivated on it.

 

[MGibster]

So, I'm making a new one. It's going to be 28-in. tall, 22-in. wide, in a cherry finish, and have eleven functional shelves on it with 2 inches of space in between them. Rather than split the shelves into individual boxes I'm just going to have two evenly spaced interior vertical dividers/supports, so the shelves will be divided into thirds which will let me position the figures any way I want them.

Nice. I went the Ikea route to display my miniatures. I'll likely haver to start seeking long term storage options and rotate my display. Like a museum. Maybe I can rotate my collection with the season?

 

[MGibster]

Back in late 2020, or perhaps early 2021, I purchased the Dominion boxed set for Age of Sigmar, I traded the orks that came in the set for more Stormcast Eternals, and then I traded some other miniatures I had for even more Stormcast Eternals. I painted a good number of them, and then just stop midded project. These little guys have been sittng around for almost two years unfinished. They're still not finished, I need to do something with their bases, but that's basically it.

Guys like this are cluttering up my work area. Clearing things in my work are is currently a priority as that will allow me to be a bit better organized and plan how to tackle the rest of my collection.

 

[Mannahnin]

I've finished all of the regular zombies from Zombicide Undead or Alive. Well, all the zombies in the base boxed set, because I'm nowhere close to completing all of them from the Kickstarter. The only downside is that I had to eat my sausage and biscuits this morning sans sausage.

Because this was a large batch of miniatures, I went with the so called slap chop method of painting. Black undercoat, light colored dry brush, and then transparent colors on top of that. Individually, these miniatures look terrible, but when you have a hoard of them all painted up they look pretty good. Sometimes you want to look at the forrest and not the trees.



View attachment 270988

These may be an excellent example of models which would look way more finished with a bit of basing material and color. Maybe a little static grass. I know you just wanted to bang these out, but that could be worth an extra hour.