Help with Mini's

[Mantra]

I'm thinking of purchasing some mini's for the first time and I'm looking for some advice on what painting supplies I need (colours, brands, brushes...) Any help would greatly be welcomed.

 

[S'mon]

I'm thinking of purchasing some mini's for the first time and I'm looking for some advice on what painting supplies I need (colours, brands, brushes...) Any help would greatly be welcomed.

For some GREAT pre-painted minis to get you started I recommend em4miniatures:

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/shop.html

I got their very nicely painted set of 5 Oriental Heroes plus 5 high-quality d20s each colour-coded to one of the minis for £10.99 +£1 p&P in the UK, which seemed wonderful value to me. They also do prepainted orcs, dwarves & sf minis. Delivery in the UK took I think 2 days from submitting my order! They also are distributed in the USA.

Re painting supplies:
A small (OO) medium (O) and large (1) brush of decent quality.
Acrylic paints - I've found my wife's art shop acrylics to be better quality and much much cheaper than my own model shop acrylics (Citadel/Games Workshop & Tamiya), although you may need a flesh tone from a model shop and the most recent GW paints have decent consistency, just horribly expensive.

Spray matt black or matt white paint for undercoating - black gives instant shadowing in unpainted areas, good for evil or grubby figs. I find that plate-armoured figs are best left un-undercoated, just use a black wash to bring out the armour detail and use the minis natural metal colour as the armour colour. White undercoat gives brighter colours, good for elves & angels, but be careful not to miss any! Plastic minis don't need undercoating but it can help.

Spray Varnish - clear of course, gloss is best to protect but you can add a thin matt coat on top to avoid the sheen (though I like it).

 

[WillieW]

And of course you also have the option of using Enamel paints on your miniatures. These are oil-based and will often allow you to give a "well seasoned" look to the adventurers, rather than the "just bought my stuff in Adventurers-R-Us" appearance that some paints do. The paints that are made for Humbrol and Airfix models are extremely good.

It's also recommended that you avoid using colours directly from paint-pot to miniature. (You can break this "rule" if you want, of course). You can have fun mixing small amounts of colour on a piece of hardboard or some other suitable non-porous surface. If you don't go the "official paints" route, you'll need one each of red, yellow, white, black, and dark blue, from which you can mix most colours you might need. As the previous contributor suggested, a ready-made "flesh" colour is very useful, and it's worthwhile looking at special bronze, silver, gold and other matallic paints as standbys.

Keep your brushes clean, and your work surface tidy. Take frequent breaks to help your eyes. Work in a well-ventilated room. Probably better not to try to paint a miniture from start to finish at one sitting. Most of all, have fun!

 

[S'mon]

And of course you also have the option of using Enamel paints on your miniatures. These are oil-based and will often allow you to give a "well seasoned" look to the adventurers, rather than the "just bought my stuff in Adventurers-R-Us" appearance that some paints do. The paints that are made for Humbrol and Airfix models are extremely good.

It's also recommended that you avoid using colours directly from paint-pot to miniature. (You can break this "rule" if you want, of course). You can have fun mixing small amounts of colour on a piece of hardboard or some other suitable non-porous surface. If you don't go the "official paints" route, you'll need one each of red, yellow, white, black, and dark blue, from which you can mix most colours you might need. As the previous contributor suggested, a ready-made "flesh" colour is very useful, and it's worthwhile looking at special bronze, silver, gold and other matallic paints as standbys.

Keep your brushes clean, and your work surface tidy. Take frequent breaks to help your eyes. Work in a well-ventilated room. Probably better not to try to paint a miniture from start to finish at one sitting. Most of all, have fun!

I agree with all that, although personally I don't like enamels. For a grubby/seasoned look I use a heavier black wash (small amount of black paint diluted by dipping brush in water before applying) than usual to give darker shadowing and a bit of a dirty appearance - on my sf minis' armour it looks oily. It's always good to mix paint colours before applying, for some reason they always look better than straight-from-pot. I think the slight variations in tone give a more realistic look, straight from pot paint looks flat, although a wash will help. I tend to just use black washes (laziness), but a wash of a darker tone of the base colour gives subtler effects.

 

[RogueJK]

Many of the paints that you can buy will also need to be watered down a little before applying to your miniature. This is another reason to not apply paint straight from the pot.

Another important thing is to have several small containers of water nearby. Two different containers should be used to clean off your brush when switching colors: one is used to clean your brush after using normal colors, while a second container should be used for cleaning metallic paint off. Another container is used to water down paints and create inks.

Be sure to keep an eye on the color of your water. As soon as it start to get slightly "muddy", it's best to replace it with clean water. It's no fun getting brownish-colored water mixed in with your paint.

There are several good websites out there for beginning mini painters. I'll see if I can dig up some links.

[Edit] http://www.paintingclinic.com is one of the best sites for miniature painting tips. [/Edit]

 

[Mantra]

Thanks, the information has been quite insightful thus far, but I was also wondering about which colours are the most useful or which colours are necessary do a decent job. Any help with that?

 

[Wicht]

It is hard to have too many colors...

But I find that I use black, white, leather brown, green, red, chainmail, light grey, bone and flesh the most.

My two favorite brands of paint are Liquitex and Citadel. The citadel I use straight from the bottle as often as not but the liquitex often needs watered just a tad. For painting bases I use a larger brush, around a 1, but for the minis I tend to use 00 and 000 the most.

If I want the mini to be more heroic looking I start with a white base but for others a black base is the best.

For my bases I just within the last year switched from using sand as a texture to using railroad modeling flock (i.e static grass) and have been very pleased with the result. In my experience the mini looks twice as good if you take the time to do a little with the base.

 

[Storminator]

For colors you have to get all the basics (red, yellow, black, blue, etc) and a bunch of browns. One shade of brown is horrible. You need basically as many as you can get. Greens as well. The more greens you have the better.

And yes, mix your own colors. But be careful. You don't need a custom color for every part of your mini, and if you have to touch up (and you will!) it's sometimes hard to mix exactly the right color. I painted a thief once for a friend. He wanted a dark blue cloak (mixed blue and black), a blackened sword (mixed silver and black), and strange hair (silver and white) when I was done mixing and applying those colors there was no place to hold the mini without rubbing off a little of the paint, and each color had to be matched for touch up. Needless to say, it was a pain. The guy came out looking great, but I had to take a lot of care with the colors.

A final note, get some tools. All minis come with a little extra metal from casting that you need to remove. Get an exacto knife and some tiny files. Makes a world of difference.

PS

 

[RogueJK]

I was also wondering about which colours are the most useful or which colours are necessary do a decent job. Any help with that?

It really depends on your level of skill with mixing paint and how much you're willing to experiement. It's possible (although pretty hard) to get by with just blue, yellow, and red, but I wouldn't recommend it.

You should do fine with the following colors:
Black
White
Red
Blue
Green - As Storminator said, it can't hurt to have a few different shades of green
Brown - Same as with Green... You'll use several browns on just about every mini you paint.
Yellow
Silver/Chainmal
Gold
Flesh - there are several shades of Flesh, usually corresponding to Elf (pale), Dwarf (tan/reddish), and Human (plain).
Possibly Bronze/Copper (depends on the minis that you are painting)
Possibly Bone (again, depends on the minis)
Any of the other common colors, such as purple or orange, are pretty easy to make yourself. And you can add black or white to any of the above colors to create lighter or darker shades.

Don't bother buying any pre-made inks. You can make your own inks easily enough.

 

[Wicht]

For colors you have to get all the basics (red, yellow, black, blue, etc) and a bunch of browns. One shade of brown is horrible. You need basically as many as you can get. Greens as well. The more greens you have the better.

I seem to get by alright with only two browns, Citadel's snakebite leather and Bestial brown to be exact, of which I use the snakebite leather the most.

But I do end up using many different greens all the time. From citadel, scorpion green(green yellow), Goblin green, snot green, and Jade green and from Liquitex I use the Christmas green (mostly for bases)

Also for most minis pick a palette of paints and stick to it. If you can use 5 or 6 paints on one mini it will often look better than if you used 15-20 different colors. IMO anyway. YMMV.

Also in addition to the chainmail paint I forgot to mention I use bronze paint a lot. I have gold but find it tends to be too light to make a good contrast in most instances and that bronze and copper is more effective.