Painting Miniatures - The very basics

Yep, I love my Vallejo paints. In fact I might just spend some time painting this afternoon.

That’s what I thought. I found an UK shop offering free shipping and £1.80 a paint - UK people is that a good deal? (Sounds good to me).

Privateer Press Paints are pretty good, too.

Will look at them.

So I found three boxes of Warhammer, Warhammer 40.000 Epic and Man’O’War miniatures and rulebooks - so is there any reason to keep this stuff? Even if I should find the room and interest in playing again, two games are out of print and those in print change so much over time, that I won’t be able to use my miniatures, or…?!

I’m considering keeping the Man’O’War stuff, because I more or lest managed to buy everything ever made for the game at a huge clearance discount before it was discontinued and the miniatures are rather solid - which means I can keep it in storage and if I want to play, I can treat it as a normal game without having to find somebody else who owns it and has his own miniatures (I also liked it a lot), but with the rest, I guess I’ll be better off just starting from scratch, if I ever want to play again.

Does anybody want this stuff? As in can I expect to sell it or give it to somebody who can use it? - I’d rather do that than chuck it. And I really don’t have the storage space. Saw that the place in the UK with the cheap paint where buying miniatures, but I doubt they’ll care about such old stuff… or that shipping lead across an ocean can ever be worth it.

In other news, I just won $250 in a friendly poker tournament, so I guess I’ll just order whatever paint I need and not look a second time at at the old stuff I have.

Epic is kept fairly up to date actually - there’s people developing army lists and tweaking things all the time. However, if you’re not interested in keeping the models, lemme know what you’ve got as I might well buy them off you :)

A lot of Warhammer collectors love old minis. You could probably make some money selling them on e-bay.

As to whether they are usable today, well it depends who you are playing against and what they are. If they are minis of unit types/characters that still exist in the rules today then you should be fine using them anywhere. If they are from unit types that got discontinued then you might have trouble figuring out rules for them that fit in with other stuff that’s around now and you probably wouldn’t be able to use them in a fancy pants tournament. You’d probably be surprised though at how similar most stuff still is. Before my current bout of enthusiasm (see the other Warhammer thread in the games forum) I last played ten to fifteen year ago and browsing some armies pages today I still see minis I recognise from back then (like http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod840868).

Not nearly as impressive as other stuff in this thread, but my Merchants and Maruaders fleet is growing. :)

A question for the experts on brushes: I find that my brushes never keep a point after even a night of painting. The tips always get broken up, and by the time I’m painting faces it’s almost impossible to get any accuracy. I’m using whatever I can get at my local Hobby Lobby (some kind of synthetic blend, ~$4 a brush), but before I shell out for something fancy online I was wondering if there were anything I could do differently.

Also, if I should just get some good brushes, can someone help me navigate this page? It makes my head hurt.

Get Windsor and Newton Series 7. You won’t ever need anything else. You probably also only need a Size 2 and a Size 1 since the point is so nice on them.

Very few things will improve your painting in a single stroke as much as a good set of brushes.

Generally the best ones are sable or a sable blend. I have never seen high quality synthetic brushes suitable for miniatures painting. What you are looking for in a brush is a full body, a good tip and a good amount of spring in the bristles. There are several excellent ranges and, while you will likely pay a lot more than $4 a brush, you can expect each one to last you a long time. My brushes (da Vinci sable) generally last me about a year each.

To make sure that your brushes stay in condition, you should:

[ul]
[li]Never leave them resting on their tips.[/li][li]Never let paint get into the ferrule (the metal band that holds the bristles to the handle)[/li][li]Don’t use your good brushes for drybrushing, painting on solvents or varnish or for mixing up big batches of colour.[/li][li]Clean them thoroughly after each painting session. You can get specialist brush soap but even just making sure that they are properly rinsed out in warm water will do.[/li][li]Periodically condition them with hair conditioner - rub it into the bristles, tape some card around the handle and leave them point downwards overnight (so that the cardboard is supporting the brush and not the bristles). Rinse thoroughly in the morning and they should be as good as new.[/li][/ul]
From the link that you provided, I’d recommend these:
W&N series 7
da Vinci Series 1526 - 90% of all my painting including fine detail work is done with a No.2 brush from this range.

Thanks for the advice. I’ve been putting off getting the good brushes since they’re so expensive per pop, but I’ve officially reached a point where I’ve replaced enough cheap brushes to equal one of the good ones.

I’m painting 15mm - will a 2 be small enough for details here? Granted, you can’t see a lot of detail in the first place at that scale, but that size always seems quite big for what I’m doing.

It’s all about the point. You want the biggest body that you can get away with because it will hold more paint and will last you longer as the wear will be spread over more bristles. As I said, most everything I paint is with a number 2 brush (da Vinci size 2, there’s no standard size grade between different manufacturers). I very, very rarely crack out a smaller brush than that, mostly when I’m not using the no.2, I’m using a bigger brush for washing or basecoats. I paint really small detail, reasonably intricate freehand and smooth highlights with just that one brush.

what kind of brushes should you use for drybrushing?

I use old brushes that I’ve cut the point off of so they’re a bit flat.

Already mentioned, but you have to get really good brushes. Back when I was painting minis I’d spend up to 20 bucks for a good brush. It’s well worth it; they will last a LONG time. II think the W&N Series 7’s I used pretty much lasted forever; I was painting with them for at least 2-3 years.

Kolinsky sable is pretty much at the top of natural fibers for watercolor brushes. Using such a brush to paint miniatures with their harsh paints and surfaces is something of a crime. Mind you, if you take care of your brushes, they work better than anything and actually last longer than cheaper brushes, but you can use cheaper brushes and get good results - my Winsor and Newton Series 7 are used for watercolor and watercolor only. Cheapass brushes, on the other hand, are simply awful. They don’t hold a point, they don’t last, and end up holding you back. One warning: All Kolinsky sable brushes are not equal, and all sizes are not necessarily the same even giving the same number. But from there, Red Sable or Pure Sable are usually extremely good if not quite Kolinsky, and from there it gets confusing (various hairs invariably that are not actually what they say they are - camel hair, for instance -.

Personally, I’d save a ton of money and use something like Robert Simmons Sapphire (Red Sable and synthetic blend), which are durable, hold a point, and while not quite as good at flow and paint load, aren’t going to be holding you back. If you go to Dick Blicks or other quality art store (not Aaron Brothers or Michael’s) and try these, you’ll find their spring and snap is much better than pure synthetic brushes. You’ll have to ask for the W&N series 7 (usually hidden behind the counter or otherwise under lock and key).

Beat up old ones. They actually work better beat up some, not to mention dry-brushing tends to trash your good ones.

I’m just back from a gaming con, and my analysis paralysis about which minis to get for my first attempt at painting ended when the options were physically in front of me. I bought some Malifaux stuff to actually play with (I’ve liked it since I heard of it.) I asked a friend (who was Wargames Director at the con) to take me through what equipment I needed, and when he heard I’ve never painted before he gave me ten Mantic Forge Founders (Dwarfs) and ten Marauders (Orcs) that Mantic gave to him for me to practice on first before I fuck up my Malifaux stuff.

I’ve glued together two dwarfs, but I think I need to get green stuff because there are gaps where I glued the model’s bits. Apart from that I think I messed up my choice of paints (I was rushing when I chose them.) I bought the Games Workshops paints as they were available, but I don’t think I chose wisely nor did I buy enough. The paints I bought were;
Skull White
Chaos Black
Ultramarines Blue
Sunburst Yellow
Dark Flesh
Snot Green
Dwarf Bronze

From reading articles online I think at the very least I missed out on a red and a metallic silver. I’m really just interested in getting my painting not atrociously terrible before I work on the Malifaux models. So part of that is seeing how paints interact, and I was wondering what colours I would need to get to complement what I have? Is it normal to get two paints of the same-ish colour one darker and one lighter? What other techniques need specific paints? And am I getting ahead of myself? (I do think that’s a possibility.)

Also, if anyone has any decent youtube videos they could link to I’d appreciate it. While Iain’s advice is awesome, I think I need something starting with the basics. :)

(Eschewing the nonsensical names) Red, silver, gold and/or bronze, dark brown, middle brown, middle gray, purple, orange, off-white (beige, cream, something like that). Now, you can mix some of these yourself (orange, purple, green, gray, etc.) and lighten, darken, and dull (add complement - I have an entire squad of ninjas grayed out adding blue and orange, green and red, or yellow and purple, all carefully mixed to slightly favor one or the other and give them the most subtle of colored grays), but for the lazy (raises hand) or those not up on their color theory, a light and dark of the same color makes things easier (and even light, dark, and middle). A nice selection of earth tones is always good (traditional names I’d use such as yellow ochre or burnt sienna are probably wasted on the goofy names from Games Workshop). Of course, you don’t need all these for one set of figs, but for the future. Just make sure you prime them - bare metal pretty much shows through the paint otherwise.

Cheers. I’ve glued together two models tonight and I haven’t stuck my fingers together despite them getting covered in glue individually. I primed them (the models mainly, but also a small bit of one finger) in black, although I think I’m wasting a good bit of the spray can because I’ve had to spray them four times turning them over and upside down. The primer has dried (it seems to dry quite quickly.) Looking at the models now the places where I imperfectly glued them together and there were gaps have been filled up by the primer. So I might not need the green stuff, although I’ll get it if people recommend it. So tomorrow, I’ll get a few more paints which I think I do need because the models have a lot of nobbly bits and detail that’ll need different colours. (Although I’ll try to keep it simple.)

And I agree about the nonsensical names. I think they were designed to appeal to nine year old boys but I figured most people in this thread will have used them at some point and know the particular shades I mentioned.