How Do You Paint Figures In A Painting

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I'm trapped at home right now, same as you are, because of the coronavirus pandemic. While I'm stocked upwards on supplies, and take family unit and streaming television to keep me busy, many of my favorite video games simply don't sit well with me at the moment. It's times like these that I usually plough to board gaming with my friends, but social distancing requires that we stay autonomously.

So, I've taken to painting miniatures. It's been a wonderful opportunity to remainder my torso and clear my listen, and getting started wasn't well-nigh as hard as I thought it would be. Best of all, you can actually get some amazing results with merely a few basic techniques.

Where to begin? Start you demand to discover some minis. If you accept a modern tabletop game in your collection, you might have unpainted miniatures sitting in a box already. It seems similar just about every major Kickstarter lath game campaign includes dozens of unique sculpts. While it can be hard to get folks to sit down with you and learn a new game, now might exist the right time to crevice open those boxes and paint those monochromatic miniatures.

a photo of miniatures from the board game Scythe — The miniatures from *Scythe* are remarkable niggling works of fine art. Those mechs also look grand with merely a basecoat and some simply drybrushing.

Painting minis is also a dandy way to plow through your backlog of podcasts. I learned to paint a few years agone, and all it took was one box of Warhammer 40,000 minis and a few dozen episodes of Welcome to Night Vale. Moreover, painted miniatures are a corking way to spice up your favorite tabletop role-playing game. In one case your regular group gets back together to play in person, you could have customized minis waiting for each of them.

So why non employ this weird window of time to pick upwards a new hobby, i that tin easily fit into any living space? I've written lengthy guides on the subject area before, but here'southward a quick rundown on what you need to kickoff painting minis, and some quick tips on where to get educated.

Finding a workspace

You shouldn't need all that much room to go started painting miniatures. You'll want a comfortable chair, of course, and a sturdy table. But too consider your lighting. Shadows tin can play with your perception of miniatures and their details. That could cause you lot to miss a spot, but it can also easily lead to eyestrain. Consider getting a few movable lights mounted on arms. I use two, each 1 outfitted with 1600-lumen daylight bulbs.

Also, get a hold of your favorite coffee cup, paper towels, and some h2o. Everything included in this guide — except the glue — cleans up easily with water if y'all spill it on a hard surface.

Assembly

Star Wars: Legion - Luke Skywalker, AT-RT, Rebel heavy weapons trooper, generic Rebel trooper — Fully assembled miniatures from Fantasy Flight Games' *Star Wars: Legion*.

If your miniatures don't come up pre-assembled, you'll need to spend some time putting them together. That can be as unproblematic as shaking the bits out of a plastic bag and gluing them together (every bit with Star Wars: Legion from Fantasy Flight Games). For nigh others, you'll need to cut the pieces free from their plastic sprue. For that, you'll need a hobby pocketknife, a cutting mat, nippers, and some glue.

105 Piece Precision Hobby Knife Kit

$eleven

Prices taken at fourth dimension of publishing.

I prefer hobby knives with breakaway blades, mainly considering at that place's less for me to lose. Just for the price, why non go both kinds? This kit also comes with a cutting mat, which will proceed you from damaging your table.

$11 at Amazon

Beadalon Nipper Tool

Prices taken at fourth dimension of publishing.

Y'all might be compelled to dip into the toolkit and simply grab a pair of pliers or a wire cutter. Don't do that! Nippers have a peculiarly shaped edge then you can get right up against the models without dissentious them.

$11 at Amazon

Games Workshop Citadel Plastic Glue

Prices taken at time of publishing.

Don't be fooled by the proper name. This is not actually gum; it'southward cement. Information technology'due south a chemical that melts plastic pieces and fuses them together. Most, just not all, miniatures require this stuff. Read your directions to meet if y'all need cyanoacrylate — Super Gum — instead.

$6 at Amazon

Priming

Subsequently assembly and cleaning, the first thing you'll need to do is prime your blank plastic miniatures (unless you buy ones that are primed ahead of time).

I recommend the pre-primed miniatures from WizKids, which come gear up to paint correct out of the box. The visitor sells minis from tabletop standards similar Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, every bit well as brands like My Little Pony and Transformers. On the ones I've seen, the details are a little softer than I'd similar, but y'all can't beat the convenience.

If y'all're just starting out, then do yourself a favor and go something medium-sized, like the beholder from the Dungeons & Dragons Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures line. It has lots of texture and is a great platform for beginners.

Otherwise, let me to recommend a bones black primer from Games Workshop's Citadel line. I've used the Regular army Painter rattle cans before, but I've gotten very mixed results.

Spray paint can exist egregiously expensive online. If your local hardware shop is open up, you can probably find something much cheaper there. Just be certain to read the label and make sure it's good for plastics and compatible with acrylic paint.

$28 at Amazon

I've gone through a lot of rattle cans in the final few years, and it's always a drag to spend a ton on a nice can of pigment and and then throw information technology away after a week of use. I recently bit the bullet and invested in an airbrush. While non recommended for beginners, it's really not as intimidating as I originally idea — certainly something to consider downward the road, if miniatures painting sticks with you.

Showtime painting

The ii big players in acrylic hobby paints right now are Games Workshop and Vallejo. Both sell bones sets of paint that are great for beginners. The Vallejo kit comes with xvi colors to Games Workshop's 11, merely the Brits throw in a cracking paintbrush to make up for it.

$40 at Amazon

Whether or non y'all end upwardly with the Games Workshop paint prepare, do yourself a favor and get two of the company's medium layer brushes — you might wreck ane while yous're learning. As well grab 1 of its medium dry brushes, too as some castor soap.

$7 at Amazon

Now it's time to begin painting.

Pick i would exist to scour the cyberspace for guides and videos on painting whatever miniature you've elected to go started with. But, if you'd rather go your own way or stick to the short listing of colors that you've got on hand, at that place'due south an app for that. It's chosen the Citadel Colour app, and information technology'due south available gratuitous on the App Store and Google Play.

Say that your miniature has some leather bits on it. Click on Dark-brown in the Paint Past Color guide, and yous'll be greeted with several options for how to achieve the look you want. (If you went with the Vallejo paints above, hither's a handy conversion chart.) The same goes for virtually every other color and texture in the rainbow. All of these guides rely on 3 basic techniques: layering, dry out brushing, and border highlighting.

Layering is fairly straightforward. You're blocking out the colors on the miniature, painting details from the bottom upwardly. Details that are deeper into the surface of the model — the surfaces of armored plates, for instance — get painted starting time. The details sitting on top of those surfaces — leather belts or decorative elements — get painted next. That way, you're able to correct your mistakes as you go along.

Once y'all get the basic colors on your miniature blocked out, you'll want to do some dry brushing. That'southward where you use a brush with barely any paint on it at all. Again, Games Workshop is on hand to give y'all some smashing guidance at its YouTube channel.

Finally, yous'll likely desire to practice some edge highlighting. That's where you take a lighter colour and trace around the edges of a model in a very intentional way. Everyone's instinct for border highlighting is to observe the smallest castor they can, merely that's non actually the all-time way to do information technology; your medium layer brush will piece of work just fine. Check out this video from Scott "Miniac" Walter on YouTube for more information.

Between painting sessions, yous'll too desire to be sure to clean and maintain those brushes. The best guidance I've found for that is on YouTube, and information technology also comes straight from the Miniac. In addition, his video includes some great communication for loading up your brushes with paint and getting a good, clean line.

Again, this is only a quick guide with its own integral shopping list. I've also written a much more in-depth guide to the wargaming hobby as a whole.

What have I gotten myself into?

Real quick, though: Allow's consider for a moment that maybe my well-intentioned guide has had the reverse effect. After reading all this, y'all definitely don't want to pigment miniatures.

That'south fine.

Maybe you just want to build miniatures. A skillful identify to start is with a nice Gunpla. They're robotic Gundam figures that are poseable, which adds to the complexity of the build. But nearly of them come in multicolored plastic kits that don't actually require whatever painting. Get yourself a decent hobby pocketknife and some clippers, and you're off to the races.

If you'd like to stick to gaming, I recommend Games Workshop'southward Adeptus Titanicus or the Warhammer forty,000 line of Knights. Both lines have models that are very expensive, simply they're likewise poseable, with hips, knees, and elbows that allow for some interesting options. They will definitely benefit from a nice glaze of paint afterward, but for you, maybe that's just a unmarried color and a dry brush handling that makes it looks like a statue.

Source: https://www.polygon.com/deals/2020/4/7/21206194/painting-miniatures-getting-started-how-to-paint-brushes-tools-where-buy-guide

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