Hi Uncle atom, Like all your video's, but this one especially speaks to me. I have been wargaming for about 23-24 years now, and have ammased a ton of models in that time. Talking 8000+ models in all scales, mostly 28mm,but also 10mm and 6mm. A few years ago i got sick of having so much unpainted stuff that i decided to drop the quality andup the speed. I painted 1001 models in 2017 and 767 models in 2018. what works for me: - assembly line all the way, anything in between 10 to 30 models works best -prime in your main colour! always do this you'll never regret it! -washes are your friend -always have 2-3 things going at a time, in case one of them is not 'doing it for you right now' -when morale is getting low, don't be afraid to switch to something that's nearly finished, having an immediate finished result in little time can give you a boost to keep you going. -challenge yourself: at the start of the year i tell myself what i will do that year. 2017 i said i will paint 1000 models (and i painted 1001), last year i wanted to finish 10 forces (i ended up finishing 15) -talk about your challenge: i follow my progress on a forum topic. Having the extra motivation from other gamers can keep you going as well. Just be aware some people will sometimes critisize your work. Input is good, but don't get carried away and forget your endgoal. Clearly state your goal and don't let others talk you in to spending 10 more hours on something you thought was done. -ALWAYS have a clean brush ready in a pot of water. Touching up mistakes takes longer than just immediately wiping the paint off with a clean wet brush!!! Hope this year will go just as well for me painting wise!
I couldn't agree more! I use almost ALL of these points consistently. Especially the points about having other models to switch to when you feel like your current project is a chore. I find that I have a small group ready. Like a skirmish games worth. i.e. a blood bowl team, Kill team etc. that I can churn out in a couple days. The great feeling of knowing you have a games worth of models painted and ready to go recharges me when painting those large scale armies! Also, setting milestone games when painting large armies helps me stay motiviated. Like hitting 500 pts. of 40k and having a game. 1000pts. having a game etc.
Your post is an inspiration along with being good advice. I too have amassed quite a collection over the past 26 years in the hobby. I would add: 1) Listen to music, podcasts or audio books while painting. It helps to pass the time faster. Watching videos doesn't work for me, as I get distracted from painting. 2) Having a dedicated painting area is a huge plus, since I can sit down and paint something when I have 15 to 30 minutes. Taking 15 minutes to set up and clean up each session is 30 minutes spent not painting. 3) If you are to this point in the hobby and haven't added an airbrush and compressor to your hobby yet, strongly consider it. Yes, the learning curve is steep, but learning how has never been easier. It will speed up your painting so much! 4) Take breaks. It sounds counter-productive, but a short break each hour to stretch, refill your drink of choice, use the bathroom, or take a walk around the block. It will help much more than trying to plow through a marathon session over several hours at a time.
It's worth mentioning that batch-painting your models (all green parts, then all the green washes etc), rather than finishing one and moving onto the next, is a much faster method.
Yes, I always batch paint, even if they're not all the same type of model. It just gives you another model to work on while the previous one dries. Thanks for watching!
@@tabletopminions I'm batch painting 19 skinks right now. Normally before I start a batch painting job I completely finish one model in the group (hence 19 skinks and not 20). It lets me see the finished model as both a reference and to know if it looks good. I find doing at least one model first let's you not question yourself as you paint the rest.
@@lordbaconbane6145: I do the same if it's a new project. Although sometimes I start off with a character (Like a Lieutenant or something) as my basis.
I hear what your saying... but I hate batch painting. I prefer painting I model to completion before moving onto the next. I get the gratification of finishing, then the motivation to start the next one.
@@TheAurgelmir I've done this too, end up painting at least one different model from all my Necron units in the same scheme to see how the look together. Then the real torture beings replicating everything lol
We've all been there. The sad fact is I can my models to about 90% of my best effort in a few hours. But that last 10% takes exponentially more time and effort. And because I tend toward subtle highlighting (I like models to look good close up rather than pop), you can't even see it on the tabletop anyways.
As a "noob" I've chosen quality on beginning of my paiting journey and I don't regret! It made me use my brushes in proper way, thin paints, do good detail job etc. Thanks to that now I can paint quicker without killing minis.
In no particular order, let me share some tips on that topic - which is particularly important I think! Thanks for doing a video about it! 1/ Buy dedicated paints Never have to mix colors to get what you need 2/ Batch paint choose how to do models as efficiently as possible: sometimes doing the same color/layer 5 times in a row lets you learn about the model and be more efficient. If you have too big of a batch it can get discouraging. 3/ Get yourself an airbrush an airbrush can apply lots of paint fast, much faster than anything with a brush. 4/ Focus points on a model It makes sense to spend 50% of your time doing for example the face (or whichever focus point of the model), and 50% doing the rest of the model, as what people will see and focus on, is often the face. One variant would be to use one fancier technique to a part of a model while cutting corners everywhere else. People might see that awesome wetblending on the powersword, and not care too much that no accessory on the belt has been detailed. 5/ Focus points on an army If you play mass battle games, spending as much time and effort on one leader and on a ten men squad makes sense. Again, it is about focus on the table. People will look closer at the fancy leader and not so much at the grunts, so that's where you should invest time to get a good looking army. 6/ Test models : getting your recipie right. Before getting commited to a paintscheme that you will have to apply to 50 or more soldiers, you should experiment, and refine your recipie. That means first paint one, then 10. Make sure you like the result. If not: redo the test model. Take some time to think about your recipie, how you can optimise the steps, and cut more corners. Clearly define and list steps to reach a finished model (write down paints names, etc). It will help you see where corners can be cut, and it will help you 6 months later when you try to add another squad to that army. 7/ Set goals It is hard work to get through an army or even a few squads: if you set a reasonable goal, it can help you keep focus on the project at hand. For example, decide that by the end of the week, you'll be done with unit X, and that in 6 weeks you'll have a limited force ready to play for your first test games. If you feel like you're not gonna make it, revise your goals, and try to get to a finished state. That's when a well designed recipie will help. 8/ Organize your workspace Give yourself the tools needed to achieve said goals: clean your workspace, put other ongoing projects away, and organize your work area with just the tools and materials you need for the current project, also to avoid distractions 9/ Call it done as soon as possible It is easy to get carried away with yet another highlighting step, or painting another detail, or... whatever other step that can take you more time than what you should allow for the current project. It is important to think about it when doing test models: do I really need to do the next step, or could I stop after doing that step? If you have done your testmodels and paint process experiments well, it could also work the other way around: you get bored or out of time with a given project, but since you've focused on important steps first, your models are already in a OK state. 10/ Choosing colors wisely Usually, you want a base color for the body/skin/armor/clothing, eg what covers the most surface of the model. On that base color, you probably want some shading: maybe a wash and then a drybrush or two once the wash is dry. Then you'll need a few accessories colors, ideally contrasting colors, and that's about it! 11/ Base your models properly The base is an important part of the model, also worth thinking about for the overal impression your model will make once finished. Same advice apply: target your effort, keep your recipie efficient for what you need.
As just getting back into hobby, I’m using a blend of techniques, I got the a Hit the Beach and Fury sets, I base coated everything in Army painter primer matte black, then US forces got another coat of Vallejo rattle can olive drab, Germans got Panzer yellow. Now I’m going to each individual tank and get the details but at the point I am now I can play with them on the table.
For me I kinda alternate. I'll probably spend a lot of time over a character or a hero as I do like the creative aspect of the hobby. Or if it's just a small 5-6 man unit I'll spend a little bit of more time on that. But if I'm painting 20-30 man units, yeah. Gotta go speed vs quality.
Really appreciate your videos and opinions. This one in particular has addressed several of my concerns. You have a life long fan all the way in South Africa.
Personally I want my minis to look good on the table but at the same time to be quick to paint, and here's what I do to achieve that: I paint 4 minis at a time so I can go back to the first I painted once done with the fourth, prime with black and then I go ahead and paint a solid layer for each part of the mini(stage1), then wash(stage2) and repaint with the same color but leaving the crevices (stage3). So 3 Stages (4, if you count the black primer... but let's ignore that) Example: "Imperial Guards" Shock Trooper (aka. Astra Militarum): Skin: Kislev Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade (wash), Kislev Flesh (leaving crevices). Armor&Weapon: Castellan Green, Nuln Oil (wash), Castellan Green (leaving crevices). Clothing: Karak Stone, Seraphim Sepia (wash), Karak Stone (leaving crevices). Icon: White Scar, Nuln Oil (wash), White Scar (leaving crevices) Metal: Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil OR *Seraphim Sepia (wash), Leadbelcher (paint where the light would hit) *Sepia will give it more of a "brass" look. You will mostly use a "Medium Brush" for this. (A "Detail Brush" is best on Stage 3 for the face details and the icon parts.) Just to make it a bit clear: I go Stage1 on all 4 minis, then jump to Stage2 and so on.
Thanks for the timely motivation. Need to paint 1000 point Ork army for me and another 1000 in Space Wolves for my son who builds but doesn't like to paint.....all this by mid to end of February....Campaign is gonna be great!!!!
Your videos are inspiring and put a perspective to this hobby especially for someone like myself who’s getting back into it after 16 years and needs to dial back a bit when it comes to wanting painting perfection.
This is really important to me, since I'm trying to return to the hobby after spinal injuries and detail painting is incredibly difficult. Been thinking more about what army I can paint rather than how I can paint that army decently and in good time.
I've always preferred speed myself, I'm one of those hobbyists that prefer converting and scratchbuilding to painting the stuff I've made 🤣😂 Great video fella!
Thank you so much for saying this. It makes me feel so much better about my painting. I have been doing pretty close to exactly what you said and I couldn't be happier with the results. Thanks again.
"All is fair in love and war ... and art." That is what we were told when I was studying arts. Art is all about cutting corners. Every successful artist in history developed their own tricks and methods to cut corners and get results faster.
Good vid - I completely agree that it's a good idea to have the nature of your objective in mind when you embark on a project. Are you painting to play, for display, for competition or to take a stunning photo etc.? It's easy to forget, especially for newbies, that not every tutorial or whatnot is necessarily THE way to paint appropriate for your needs for all purposes.
One technique that's fun and kinda fast (if you do a huge bunch of models at the same time) is to undercoat in a lighter tone/near white, and just paint on wash for all the colors you want. It creates a very cool "Water color" feel to the models. Did this with my Witch Elves back in the day, and really liked it. I use a similar scheme for many of the details on my Chaos Marine models, I base them all in an off white color, things like skin, guts, those tubing thingies, horns, wounds... and then I wash each of the things with different shades, like a flesh shade, a sepia shade, black, brown, red/purple for the wounds. It end up looking like 4 distinctly different things, but they were all the same base color. Then depending on the detail I give some of it a light dry brush to pick out the edges.
@@arnonym3675 Very late to the party , however furr brown spray paint from army painter was a god send back in the days of old warhammer, when minimum size for skaven slaves were 40+
As someone coming back to the hobby from D&D days. I am amazed at the options today. From the painting apps to UA-cam vids. I agree about the packaging images Atom. All the old models just had painted scenes. Think airfix infantry or models. From painting metal napoleonic armies basic colours for large groups, think uniformity and simplicity for the masses. I think maybe splitting it will be best. So your central figure such as a primarch or Demon, yes, spend time. As for the armies simplicity. With younger modellers I would emphasise the game rather than the painting. It needs to be fun. Not a chore. Something I believe GW realised with the conquest magazine. Larger Primaris marines, click fitting, blue plastic, ready to go playing. Nurgle green plastic, etc etc. Easier to handle and paint. Good entry point for younger players who might not have the patience of seasoned veterans. Love the vids.
id rather take my time than look at my potato painted miniatures forever. If you dont care, thats okay. Everyone has a preference, people say I am weird for taking a long time to paint a space marine. I enjoy the painting most. For someone who would rather play than paint, slap it on, its all about what makes you happy.
Dank Floyd I find painting oddly relaxing, you just lose yourself for hours in painting models. Its all a learning experience and as you said, whatever makes you happy
Yep totally agree. For Xmas I got the Know No Fear kit and I spent about 30 minutes on each of the smaller models then like an hour on the bigger ones and it took me a week to paint them all. Then I bought some Skitarii models cuz I'm planning on a soace marine army with skitarii detachments, and I finished the last one as the new year begun (litterally like 01:00 Jan 1st)
That’s every hobbyist’s choice. The reason I made the video is that I get a lot of folks reaching out to me who believe that all their models HAVE to be painted to the highest degree - and I want to show them there are choices. Thanks for watching!
All depends on the army for me. My Blood Angels take forever to paint, but with all their details, a speedily painted marine stands out like a sore thumb. My Necrons on the other hand look about the same no matter, so I only spend the extra time on the HQ or specialized units
Spot on advice here. Painting tends to always take longer than we think it will and its helpful to set expectations. I've gone with a compromise of speed and quality. I'm more than satisfied with my paint job as it's not just slapped on, but I'm also happy that the model is done and I can move on to something else. And it's helped me to actually get faster and I've improved over the year as well. Win win
My mate hates painting but loves the gaming side of the hobby, it's up to the individual how detailed they want to go and tips like these are great to help those who just want a quick neat paint job so they can play with painted stuff ASAP.
I got to a level I am happy with and then I trained myself to paint at that level faster and faster, but while doing this I realized that once you get faster at the same level you improve your painting automatically.
I am a total speedpainter when it comes to swarms, but i take my time when i comes to larger more detailed models. Also, using bloodsplatter and Moot Green as a slime splatter can help cover up mistakes
Some great tips there. Tabletop miniatures want to be on the tabletop - get them painted and get playing! If it's a Kill Team then by all means emphasize quality on each mini. If it's a 2000 point Astra Militarum army then speed paint away!
Mix your own colors and washes! I started Tyranids as we 'miss' them in my group. I bought acrylic thickening medium from an arts store and mixed destilled water, red, violett and a smallest tad of brown to make myself a 'leviatan wash'. Similar made myself a 'horn color' from a anthrazit, violett mix. Wooden lathes with doublesided sticky tape on it, 10 gants per lath and spraypaint sand, then white from the top. Wash with my selfmade stuff. Wash some details again. Paint all horn, add some details, clean up the most messy parts, basing, done. Totaly OK for the playing table and 50 homagants took just 5hrs net working time.
I've been painting for decades, although I've never really been that good until the last few years, starting out with Warhammer 40k in the 90s. Lately I've been trying to up my Descent Second Edition game by fully painting the pieces and adding walls and a few other visual ambiences and I've pretty much let UA-cam play in the background while I paint. I love a lot of what you say and at times you've really kept me motivated to keep going. Keep preaching brother.
Eyes are fairly easy once you know what your'e doing. I always paint the whites (off white color) before I even do the skin tone, which is easier to close up the eye than vice versa. Pupils can be tricky. Just remember to paint the pupils from top to bottom of the eye area, slightly closer to the nose than ears. Just dotting the pupil will give the fear face effect.
One thing that has helps me crank out a lot of models in relatively short amount of time is after base coating I set up an assembly line. Where I have 30-50 models lined up and I paint all of the bits that are the same color. Such as painting the army cloths the main color and by the time that I am finished painting the last model, the first one has dried, then I can choose to put on a second coat or go on to other details such as washes or dry brushing on all the models. By doing this I was able to finish around 40 models in four days!
Metallic Sharpies are great for doing the raised rims and other details on Space Marine paldrons. Also, I've got an opaque white ball-point pen from a company called Hybrid, the "Hybrid Gel Grip DX", which, with a bit of practice, can be great for a bit of simple freehand work.
I do my painting in stages . First is I do a quick tabletop standard , so I spray prime say my Ultramarines in blue , then base coat all the flat colours no shade or highlights doing them In a batch painting method then I’ll do an over all shade wash 9/10 times with nuln oil gloss then when that’s dry I’ll base the model usually texture paint . Then once I’ve done a squad this way I may do more that way or I’ll take them to a good tabletop standard so ill layer over all the previous colours leaving shaded areas untouched . Then once I’ve done this I’ll highlight. I find this is the best way for me and I can get lots of models done really quick and I don’t feel daunted. Also at the end Once everything is done I.e paint transfers I use paint on varnish to take the gloss Shinyness away and protect my models .
My tactics that have really helped my cut down on the time it takes me to paint a miniature have been chosing a wise undercoat to spray on the figure, learning how to drybrush the right way, and realizing that if a space marine is fighting for his life on Mars, he isn't going to look mint condition. I think the cleanliness of the paintjob and time taken to complete it are inversely proportionate, but cleanliness doesn't always equate to quality, and I absolutely didn't want my Iron Hands looking like they just stepped off of a shiny Dark Horse comic page.
I would recommend washing after dry brushing the highlights if you apply heavy dry brushing (or high contrast dry brushing), it will blend the color in better. Especially on organic materials like cloth and skin etc. On mechanical things I would always do it Base coat - Wash - dry brush. I love making speed painting hacks, heck I try to hack to get a "table top pluss" look, and will add some details that are over that sometimes too. But I found that I want to get minis painted and on the table fast, rather than having them look AMAZING! The result is still models I am very proud to put on the table, but that I finished within a reasonable amount of time.
When painting a unit (like a squad or Blood Bowl team) I often use one model to test my planned color scheme and make notes of the colors and washes used. I can then batch paint the remaining models following my notes from the test model. I find this a good way to ensure I like the end result on one figure before committing to the whole batch.
I find building a horde army improved my painting skill. My Guardsmen are relatively low detail, but the characters got the love. For my vehicles I went with different paint schemes for a lot of them. I figured that canonically guard regiments shouldn't be combined arms unless they're scratch regiments. I play Cadians, so any differences in their paint jobs can be explained by them being survivors of cadia lumped together to make a functional regiment. Half of my tanks are light green and brown, half are castellan green and tan. My chimeras are just castellan green and my basilisks are castellan green and tan, but have more complex camouflage patterns. This keeps the troops lower quality paint job look like it makes sense thematically. Of course Creed is going to have more detail than some dude holding a lasgun. Of course my earlier paint jobs when I had less skill make sense, they're different regiments lumped together.
Dry brushing is the best piece of advice you could give. Another hack to get an Old rusty metal on large and small models is to prime black then a light spray of brown then dry brush with dark metal. Very useful for orks.
Airbrush is the single most important tool for getting good looking models done fast imo. Pre-shade (forget the correct term for highlighting/shading underneath the coat), basecoat, zenithal highlight, wash, done. A couple things like putting the Black Templar shoudler pads on after painting helps a lot too - prime the model black and shoulder pads white, much easier and get a better result.
Painted my first miniature yesterday (tau pathfinder) and somehow speed and quality both flew out the window. 7 hours and one ugly grunt later, I finished. 7 hours of paint alone, it was already built and primed. My first thought was "well I guess I know who is dying first."
There is another tip as well I'd offer people than can produce very good looking results without things looking cheap or sloppy: the right kind of weathering. Models standing on dusty or earthen terrain look good with weathering on their lower half and it helps blend them into the base. Weathering is usually not hard or time consuming. The bonus for batch painting lots of troops fast, is that if one plans ahead it isn't necessary to pick out lots of small details or cut-in cleanly around the lower parts of a model. Diluted brown washes and brown paints can be used around edges and seams, flowing into the base. This weathering would cover up what would normally be painted in those areas anyway. A related tip that I don't see enough - remember that shade washes pool along corners and hide color transitions - they disguise the edges where one color meets another. You don't have to spend a huge amount of time cleanly cutting in with a color around all the edges, if the edge is recessed and a shade wash is just going to cover that seam of color up anyway.
Brilliant video. That realisation that I am my own worst critic. Need to lower my expectation and get to dry brushing / washing more. Great channel in fact. Nice to see someone my own age doing this. I really need to try that wet palette trick too!
One of the reasons your videos are my favorite is that you have a really good speech pattern and cadence that allows me to watch at 1.5x speed without making it hard to understand. Weird complement I know.
I was interrupted about five times trying to watch this so I might have missed this point but, the first thing I would say in support of Uncy Atom is that use the hacks and stuff for your line stuff and go high detail on your HQ & Monsters/Vehicles (Although as a Space Elf, I have numerous vehicles to get my troops into shooting range). The second point I would make is I agree with his premise that you base/undercoat for the colour you plan. i.e. I use a dark brown when by troops are a red and for my Orks funnily enough. I use black or dark grey for my SE because my tie in colour for the army is tin bitz. The question I have for Uncy Atom is buildings. I have only ever successfully completed one building as a terrain piece and I went full out to do it, pulling out my old tech drawing board to plan the lay out and pre-list the colour scheme. That was for an armies on parade job but generally what gets me is the weathering. Any tips for that? I have the furnace sets to do at the moment.
i can paint a full spacemarine to my best quality in a day usually. I like to precut out my pieces & put all the parts for each marine into baggies before I start, this includes any extras for distinct personality. For me it cuts down on decision making time while painting. Instead you have it all sorted before hand. You just have baggies full of ready to clean, glue & paint models, since I started doing things this way its been a big help. ...lol I clip baggies of 5 marines together, do those 5 in a row then move on to the next 5 or whatever else I want to do next. by presorting them first you get a good impression of how theyre going to look finished & also you will have an idea of what paints youll need by what parts are in each bag :) I think this might help with any shame you have laying around too, if its in a bag ready to go it gives you more incentive if its half way started & bagged up & waiting. lol idk
Hi Atom! For speed painting tips. I HIGHLY recommend the "How I Paint Things" channel's videos that have "Speed Painting" in the titles. Like his Ultramarines video etc. He is great with little tips how how to cheat the appearance of edge highlighting etc. His whole channel is great too with painting guides.
You can do a mix of both. 1. I do the rattle can spray and keep a pot handy of the same color for touch ups throughout. 2. Shading second 3. Dry brushing the main color which you spray(primed) with a slightly lighter color is a huge time saver. Then edge highlight with an even lighter color. At this point I do this to the whole set and then break down into 3 units at a time for the other half of the work. 4. Paint additional base colors 3 units at a time 5. Shade those additional base colors 3 units at a time 6. Highlight those additional base colors 3 units at a time 7. Do terrain on bases 8. Varnish all units once the terrain bases are all done. *This works well for me on batches of 20 or so. Important to break it down to 3 at a time after the first 3 steps. Otherwise, it feels like a grind with no progress. It's psychological. Stay motivated!!!! Oh, and use a wet palette. I find this process to be the best compromise after getting back into the hobby after a 20 year hiatus.
Good topic! This is something I need to learn. I'm always fighting myself whether I should highlight every single belt on an Ork boy and for that reason I got a "hobby burnout" couple of years ago. I love to spend time with characters and vehicles, but with four armies there's no way I'm going to be able to finish them if I spend hours for each troop model.
My best painted models are my cultists because I enjoy them more than I enjoy painting marines..... .... But watching 24 hours of work be removed as a volley kills a dozen of them in one turn kills me inside.
Several years ago when I still played 40k (3rd edition) I had a self created chapter I call Storm Angel's. Their color was predominantly grey like storm clouds. I got to the point that I could knock them out in under an hour by using a primer, a wash,and a dry dry brush. The devil is in the details.
I've been getting back into painting again after getting pretty burnt out feeling last year. I often feel extremely overwhelmed by all the models I have that are unpainted. Over 600 old 80s citadel Dwarfs alone, forget about all of my other fantasy armies, 40k, other miniatures games. I've probably painted 100 models in the past 7 years and each one has taken me around 8 hours or more to finish. That's really not good enough. I'm trying to learn ways to speed things up. I really want to look at my miniatures and feel proud rather than ashamed. With so many to do, I think I need to give myself a time limit or maybe limit myself to only a basecoat, wash and drybrush, with the only details being for eyes. It can be hard to stay motivated, especially when most of the wargames I'm interested in, no one around me plays. But I've been very productive in my painting so far this year and I want to continue stepping it up.
I started the hobby trying to paint white because I liked how the Metalica forgeworld scheme looked. I shouldn't have to tell you that it was rough, but I did learn how to paint white beautifully and quickly. I feel the same way about other models. I personally prefer focusing on quality, and getting the technique down, as speed comes with experience.
Quick tip for speed, all basecoats first, single black or brown wash, a squad at a time. High contrast highlight colors from your basecoats. Allows a single highlight to give the illusion of multiple layers. Black and brown washes work well over any colors. This gets a lot of minis done to table top standard quickly and allows you to go back later and try different techniques to bring out more details if you want.
I would say it is good practice to write down the colours and steps you take for your army. It may be quite some time until you reproduce it, so having a simple list would really help.
For anyone just getting into the hobby, Necrons are one of the quickest and easiest armies to paint and get on the table. So glad I started with them. Now working on a Blood Angels army and it's nice to be able to take my time and put in the extra quality. If I didn't already have my Necrons to play with, I think I would be discouraged with how long my Angels take to get table ready
This advice goes double if you paint 15mm or 6mm figures. I will prime near the primary color, for the primary color apply a shade lighter but not worry about full coverage, then base coat the other colors. A brown wash over the whole figure usually works (with some color schemes black might be better, but I'm generally working in more earth-tones), then go through and highlight over the base colors with drybrushing. Add flock to the base (you've painted your textured base along with the figure, right?) and a thin spray with a matt varnish. From 2 feet away it actually looks like I'm good at it.
cheese and rice THANK YOU!! its about time i found a video on how to paint miniatures quickly, granted now i have to buy a rattle can of every color under the sun, but base coating with a primer, wash, dry brush, then do all the details, that make way more sense than any other channel, looking at you Squidmar, ninjon, and Miniac. great channels but seriously having a 4 step process and each step has like 3 mini steps is just too much for someone who needs to pain a zombie hoard or a goblin army.
Thanks for the video, expecting too much from myself is my biggest cause of demotivation when trying to get an army together. I'm gonna try and speed paint my next saurus warrior and see how I feel about it compared to spending a few hours on a single one, I'm positive it'll still look good on the tabletop as you mentioned.
I think every painter who just wants to play the games with painted minis but want to have the minis look really good, almost professional in quick glance, should learn to paint with Glazes over underpaint. Zenithal prime the minis, boost the shadows by drenching the whole mini in black wash, dry brush it with white to enhance the edges and bring back highlights that the washes dulled, and then paint it with paints that have been thinned to be very transparent. Glaze medium is the best but any medium should work. Even water works although it tends to make the paint too thin and runny that floods the details and dries unevenly. There, the model is mostly finished with darker shadows and highlighted edges without you enhanching them manually. Downside is that you have to be accurate (much like with Citadel contrast paints) when painting because mistakes are hard to paint over thanks to the thinner paint. Also yellow (and red to lesser extent) is still a pain in the ass, even more so because the paints are transparent, but if you paint one layer of pink glaze (or such warm color) and then do the yellow glaze then you will be fine. The results look insanely good considering how little work you have to do.
Great video as always, although I have to say that with nurgle, simply priming it white and then applying two layers of green wash is perfection. The model will be half way done in about 5 minutes and looks properly nurglish.
My biggest tips for painting fast if you are struggling with time: 1. Use an airbrush. If you dont have one, buy one. Seriously what are you doing? It might seem expensive, but think about what an hour of your life is worth? (Usually what you make an hour can be a good starting point). How much would it be worth to save hundreds of hours a year with an airbrush. You should always use the biggest brush possible, and airbrush is that. Fast zenithal priming + light glazing with an airbrush of main base coats and you are 90% done to tabletop standard. Super smooth highlights and shadows made for you. 2. Over highlight. Gloss varnish before washing. Almost eliminates coffee staining, if you are fairly careful with wash. No reason to go back to clean up and reapply highlights. 3. Minitair ghost tints. Just glaze on, and be done :) 3. Before you start painting, commit to the quality (what details on the mini will you skip, will you do the eyes or not, etc), and be ABLE to stop when you are roughly there. Be ok with subpar quality for YOUR standards. This is a really hard one for me. I highly recommend Hobby Cheating Series on youtube for hacking your painting.
One bit of advice I notice seems to always be left out of these "speed vs quality" videos; just because you have painted your models quickly to a decent to good table top quality, does not mean you have to be done. I will speed paint/hack/cut corners on my board game minis to get them on the table. But after a few game plays and some free time, I will pull them out and "upgrade" some blends or add tighter highlights or edge blend. After some months or even a year of this slow addition of detail, I will have a higher-than-tabletop quality paint job.
A pot of Tamiya Olive Drab got me through an entire reinforced company of Imperial Guard in an afternoon. 120+ miniatures done and I still got compliments on my army!
@@Redskies453 No. OD helmet and limbs, left the flak armour undercoat black, flesh on the face and metal on the gun. One colour at a time for the lot. It was like factory work.
I made the mistake of priming a deathwatch kill team with white primer, and then primed a single model with black for a quick contest entry. I am never making that mistake again. Definitely going to prime similar to the base coat.
Shoulder pads an awkward colour? You can always paint them before you stick them on the model. Base colour as undercoat works well. Spray, base coat, wash, dry brush original base coat, detail highlight....all you need for "table ready" miniatures, and then you can take leaders and develop them up further later.
I know my limitations and that I will never be a great painter so getting the figures onto the table is my goal. I discovered dips and using the primer spray the right base colour and that enables me to cut through my unpainted figure mountain quickly and get to play with them quicker
I like to put more effort into bigger fancier models or important models like HQs. But for like standard troops I try to cheat a bit. Like with my Tau fire warriors: I'll try to do some basic highlight stuff on the actual armour, the gun, the helm but I'll be a bit lazy with the back and then the clothy stuff will just be black with some drybrush. I don't mind the highlight bits honestly, thats usually when the model is near completion and it fills me with Determination. I kinda hate the basing and layering though. I've considered airbrushing but it looks kinda expensive to just start and I don't know if I have a place to really do it so I've been putting it off.
Great video, something I struggle with. I dont mind spending more time on high quality mins that I will display at home (KDM, etc), but I have a huge problem spending waaaay too long on painting board game minis. I just get obsessed with getting all the lines perfect, good coverage, picking out details, etc, stuff that my friends NEVER even notice, but there are always amazed at my paint jobs. But as non-painters they would be just as amazed if it was sloppy-ish basecoat/wash/drybrush. I need to learn to be ok with non-perfect crappy board games minis that are just going to live in a box, and get played with twice a year.....
I've done hard time batch painting greenskins and high elves for warhammer. Let's be honest it's a grind. I respect anyone who gets there minis on the table without them looking plastic. You can get some decent looking models with bit of dry brushing and ink washing. Now I tend to prefer indevidual reaper minis. Taking a bit more time make em look nice. If your models have allot of flesh. Use a brown undercoat. Armour black undercoat. Ect. Getting the right undercoat can save you alot of graft. There are such great things you can do with the bases now. I find basing the models a real pleasure. An average looking model with a nice tidy basing technique will be fine in any game. It covers alot of sins. Find I like this stage more an more because it is the finish line. Just used the Martian iron earth for first time on my Titanicus bases. Really look great. I love it. Thankfully the days of goblin green and a dip in some model railway flock is behind us.
Some times I just go: All the base colors, then a wash that goes with all those colors and call it "Done". This works well for "dirty" units like Chaos Cultists, or skaven, that you need so many of that they end up blending together anyways.
You can eventually get faster at quality paints though. Not to mention the old adage, "Taking the time to do it right the first time, saves time over doing it twice" I have been guilty of speed-painting entire armies to get them onto the table in time for an event or demo or tournament. But I have always found myself either regretting it, or stripping the models and repainting them at leisure. I reckon that I could finish - from box to table - as many Guardsmen in 3 days as I could assemble in 1 day; but they're gonna look like butt. Day 1 you clip all the pieces apart and mount them on sticks. Day 2 you spray or airbrush everything the base color. Helmets green, arms and everything else khaki, guns black if you can. Paint in your flesh, contrasting plates, etc. Day 3 assemble, garden-sand bases, dip. No drybrush.
Tabletop mini=speed painting. Display mini=detailed painting. Give the base the most detail and love. It's the largest portion you will see at a distance when playing.
Your advice on color primer is very nice, but you forgot to mention that one should always prime with a white or black primer (grey even) before you prime with a color primer. A lot of the color primers are not primer per sei, they need that undercoat to make the color primer stick, this is especially true with GW color spray cans. A nice advice on speed painting glowing weapons are basecoating blue, drybrushing a lighter blue and a very thin and subtle white drybrush :)
For my Orks I followed these steps: 1. Zenithal priming: white spray on top of a black primer. 2. Only GW washes. No paint. It's very fast and does the shadows and also the highlights, thanks to the zenithal priming and because there is no paint underneath, just gray to white so the wash almost renders like a glaze on surfaces to highlight. 3. At this point the miniature already looks very good, but if you want to take some more time you can add more highlights, with glazes or edge highlighting for example.
Only add white to your midtone if you want your model to look more white. Think of white as another color and it always makes things look washed out which might be what you are looking for or it might not. To maintain the richness of the "material" you are trying to paint you have to understand that you should first look for an analogous color that still has a higher level of saturation but is brighter than the mid tone. Which is the opposite of adding white which has no saturation or chroma. Granted you don't always have to use super saturated colors on everything unless you are painting space/murder clowns ;)
Your method is great for speed painting, but I kind of had more success switching the steps up a bit. First I prime in the base colour. Next I drybrush the highlight, but make it lighter then i want it to be and put it everywhere the light would hit. Next just wash everything. You get rid of most of the 'grain' and powder of drybrushing and sort of highlight everything at once. Works especially well with the new contrast "washes" gw puts out. Its literally just 3 steps before starting detail work. Depending on the model I may even paint some of the details that need the same wash as well, like metals.
Hi Uncle atom,
Like all your video's, but this one especially speaks to me.
I have been wargaming for about 23-24 years now, and have ammased a ton of models in that time. Talking 8000+ models in all scales, mostly 28mm,but also 10mm and 6mm. A few years ago i got sick of having so much unpainted stuff that i decided to drop the quality andup the speed.
I painted 1001 models in 2017 and 767 models in 2018.
what works for me:
- assembly line all the way, anything in between 10 to 30 models works best
-prime in your main colour! always do this you'll never regret it!
-washes are your friend
-always have 2-3 things going at a time, in case one of them is not 'doing it for you right now'
-when morale is getting low, don't be afraid to switch to something that's nearly finished, having an immediate finished result in little time can give you a boost to keep you going.
-challenge yourself: at the start of the year i tell myself what i will do that year. 2017 i said i will paint 1000 models (and i painted 1001), last year i wanted to finish 10 forces (i ended up finishing 15)
-talk about your challenge: i follow my progress on a forum topic. Having the extra motivation from other gamers can keep you going as well. Just be aware some people will sometimes critisize your work. Input is good, but don't get carried away and forget your endgoal. Clearly state your goal and don't let others talk you in to spending 10 more hours on something you thought was done.
-ALWAYS have a clean brush ready in a pot of water. Touching up mistakes takes longer than just immediately wiping the paint off with a clean wet brush!!!
Hope this year will go just as well for me painting wise!
That is some very good advice there.
Great list, thank you!!
Peter's like a Jedi bloody master at painting advice!
I couldn't agree more! I use almost ALL of these points consistently. Especially the points about having other models to switch to when you feel like your current project is a chore. I find that I have a small group ready. Like a skirmish games worth. i.e. a blood bowl team, Kill team etc. that I can churn out in a couple days.
The great feeling of knowing you have a games worth of models painted and ready to go recharges me when painting those large scale armies!
Also, setting milestone games when painting large armies helps me stay motiviated. Like hitting 500 pts. of 40k and having a game. 1000pts. having a game etc.
Your post is an inspiration along with being good advice. I too have amassed quite a collection over the past 26 years in the hobby.
I would add: 1) Listen to music, podcasts or audio books while painting. It helps to pass the time faster. Watching videos doesn't work for me, as I get distracted from painting.
2) Having a dedicated painting area is a huge plus, since I can sit down and paint something when I have 15 to 30 minutes. Taking 15 minutes to set up and clean up each session is 30 minutes spent not painting.
3) If you are to this point in the hobby and haven't added an airbrush and compressor to your hobby yet, strongly consider it. Yes, the learning curve is steep, but learning how has never been easier. It will speed up your painting so much!
4) Take breaks. It sounds counter-productive, but a short break each hour to stretch, refill your drink of choice, use the bathroom, or take a walk around the block. It will help much more than trying to plow through a marathon session over several hours at a time.
It's worth mentioning that batch-painting your models (all green parts, then all the green washes etc), rather than finishing one and moving onto the next, is a much faster method.
Yes, I always batch paint, even if they're not all the same type of model. It just gives you another model to work on while the previous one dries. Thanks for watching!
@@tabletopminions I'm batch painting 19 skinks right now. Normally before I start a batch painting job I completely finish one model in the group (hence 19 skinks and not 20). It lets me see the finished model as both a reference and to know if it looks good. I find doing at least one model first let's you not question yourself as you paint the rest.
@@lordbaconbane6145: I do the same if it's a new project. Although sometimes I start off with a character (Like a Lieutenant or something) as my basis.
I hear what your saying... but I hate batch painting.
I prefer painting I model to completion before moving onto the next. I get the gratification of finishing, then the motivation to start the next one.
@@TheAurgelmir I've done this too, end up painting at least one different model from all my Necron units in the same scheme to see how the look together. Then the real torture beings replicating everything lol
I once spent 30 hours on a termagaunt....
... it was okay.
#speedpainting
We've all been there. The sad fact is I can my models to about 90% of my best effort in a few hours. But that last 10% takes exponentially more time and effort. And because I tend toward subtle highlighting (I like models to look good close up rather than pop), you can't even see it on the tabletop anyways.
I spent 2 days on a Plague Marine
My comp nid army in a nutshell
my old nid army had 180 gaunts........... yea...... that took forever lol
As a "noob" I've chosen quality on beginning of my paiting journey and I don't regret! It made me use my brushes in proper way, thin paints, do good detail job etc. Thanks to that now I can paint quicker without killing minis.
8am on a Friday morning, watching a table top minions vid. Can't go wrong.
Adam Grant haha, cup of coffee and thoughtful miniature video to start the day right.
In no particular order, let me share some tips on that topic - which is particularly important I think! Thanks for doing a video about it!
1/ Buy dedicated paints
Never have to mix colors to get what you need
2/ Batch paint
choose how to do models as efficiently as possible: sometimes doing the same color/layer 5 times in a row lets you learn about the model and be more efficient. If you have too big of a batch it can get discouraging.
3/ Get yourself an airbrush
an airbrush can apply lots of paint fast, much faster than anything with a brush.
4/ Focus points
on a model
It makes sense to spend 50% of your time doing for example the face (or whichever focus point of the model), and 50% doing the rest of the model, as what people will see and focus on, is often the face.
One variant would be to use one fancier technique to a part of a model while cutting corners everywhere else. People might see that awesome wetblending on the powersword, and not care too much that no accessory on the belt has been detailed.
5/ Focus points on an army
If you play mass battle games, spending as much time and effort on one leader and on a ten men squad makes sense. Again, it is about focus on the table. People will look closer at the fancy leader and not so much at the grunts, so that's where you should invest time to get a good looking army.
6/ Test models
: getting your recipie right.
Before getting commited to a paintscheme that you will have to apply to 50 or more soldiers, you should experiment, and refine your recipie. That means first paint one, then 10. Make sure you like the result. If not: redo the test model. Take some time to think about your recipie, how you can optimise the steps, and cut more corners.
Clearly define and list steps to reach a finished model (write down paints names, etc). It will help you see where corners can be cut, and it will help you 6 months later when you try to add another squad to that army.
7/ Set goals
It is hard work to get through an army or even a few squads: if you set a reasonable goal, it can help you keep focus on the project at hand. For example, decide that by the end of the week, you'll be done with unit X, and that in 6 weeks you'll have a limited force ready to play for your first test games.
If you feel like you're not gonna make it, revise your goals, and try to get to a finished state.
That's when a well designed recipie will help.
8/ Organize your workspace
Give yourself the tools needed to achieve said goals: clean your workspace, put other ongoing projects away, and organize your work area with just the tools and materials you need for the current project, also to avoid distractions
9/ Call it done as soon as possible
It is easy to get carried away with yet another highlighting step, or painting another detail, or... whatever other step that can take you more time than what you should allow for the current project.
It is important to think about it when doing test models: do I really need to do the next step, or could I stop after doing that step?
If you have done your testmodels and paint process experiments well, it could also work the other way around: you get bored or out of time with a given project, but since you've focused on important steps first, your models are already in a OK state.
10/ Choosing colors
wisely
Usually, you want a base color for the body/skin/armor/clothing, eg what covers the most surface of the model. On that base color, you probably want some shading: maybe a wash and then a drybrush or two once the wash is dry. Then you'll need a few accessories colors, ideally contrasting colors, and that's about it!
11/ Base your models properly
The base is an important part of the model, also worth thinking about for the overal impression your model will make once finished. Same advice apply: target your effort, keep your recipie efficient for what you need.
Good tips, thank you
I prefer quality over speed, but my quality is terrible, so I'm still a speedy painter :^)
Don't worry, you will get better the more you paint
Same lol, although I'm trying hard to get better.
As just getting back into hobby, I’m using a blend of techniques, I got the a Hit the Beach and Fury sets, I base coated everything in Army painter primer matte black, then US forces got another coat of Vallejo rattle can olive drab, Germans got Panzer yellow. Now I’m going to each individual tank and get the details but at the point I am now I can play with them on the table.
For me I kinda alternate. I'll probably spend a lot of time over a character or a hero as I do like the creative aspect of the hobby. Or if it's just a small 5-6 man unit I'll spend a little bit of more time on that. But if I'm painting 20-30 man units, yeah. Gotta go speed vs quality.
Basically I came here to say exactly this
*Pro painting Necrons:*
Leadbelcher Spray
Nuln Oil
99% Done
Unless you're painting a vehicle. In which case I hope you like painting in assemblies XD
Or Triarch praetorians haha
@@Mouse2379 Prime leadbelcher on sprue. Assemble. Continue. Works reasonably well. :P
Necrons are my first (and currently only) 40k army and I'm definitely glad the paint scheme is simpler than some other armies.
@@andrewkreinbrink7023 Necrons are also my first and only army. I developed a custom paint scheme because I like painting. It relaxes me.
Really appreciate your videos and opinions. This one in particular has addressed several of my concerns. You have a life long fan all the way in South Africa.
Personally I want my minis to look good on the table but at the same time to be quick to paint, and here's what I do to achieve that: I paint 4 minis at a time so I can go back to the first I painted once done with the fourth, prime with black and then I go ahead and paint a solid layer for each part of the mini(stage1), then wash(stage2) and repaint with the same color but leaving the crevices (stage3).
So 3 Stages (4, if you count the black primer... but let's ignore that)
Example: "Imperial Guards" Shock Trooper (aka. Astra Militarum):
Skin: Kislev Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade (wash), Kislev Flesh (leaving crevices).
Armor&Weapon: Castellan Green, Nuln Oil (wash), Castellan Green (leaving crevices).
Clothing: Karak Stone, Seraphim Sepia (wash), Karak Stone (leaving crevices).
Icon: White Scar, Nuln Oil (wash), White Scar (leaving crevices)
Metal: Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil OR *Seraphim Sepia (wash), Leadbelcher (paint where the light would hit) *Sepia will give it more of a "brass" look.
You will mostly use a "Medium Brush" for this. (A "Detail Brush" is best on Stage 3 for the face details and the icon parts.)
Just to make it a bit clear: I go Stage1 on all 4 minis, then jump to Stage2 and so on.
I use the "Army Painter Technique": Prime, base coat, shade, anti-shine varnish, done.
Thanks for the timely motivation. Need to paint 1000 point Ork army for me and another 1000 in Space Wolves for my son who builds but doesn't like to paint.....all this by mid to end of February....Campaign is gonna be great!!!!
Your videos are inspiring and put a perspective to this hobby especially for someone like myself who’s getting back into it after 16 years and needs to dial back a bit when it comes to wanting painting perfection.
I think you need a "Paint for the paint-god" shirt.
But...that god is Duncan...
And EVERYBODY knows he wears..."TWO THIN COATS"
aspektx Id buy two
I'd buy all of them
I support this idea
This is really important to me, since I'm trying to return to the hobby after spinal injuries and detail painting is incredibly difficult. Been thinking more about what army I can paint rather than how I can paint that army decently and in good time.
I've always preferred speed myself, I'm one of those hobbyists that prefer converting and scratchbuilding to painting the stuff I've made 🤣😂 Great video fella!
Thank you so much for saying this. It makes me feel so much better about my painting. I have been doing pretty close to exactly what you said and I couldn't be happier with the results. Thanks again.
This video made me feel better about my disdain for edge highlighting, it has nothing to do with my inability to do it well. Nope, not a chance.
Bruh drybrush the entire model. Who cares if the extra paint goes on the flat areas its fine adds chsracter.
You always give quality advice and keep people going. Good on you!
"All is fair in love and war ... and art."
That is what we were told when I was studying arts. Art is all about cutting corners.
Every successful artist in history developed their own tricks and methods to cut corners and get results faster.
Good vid - I completely agree that it's a good idea to have the nature of your objective in mind when you embark on a project. Are you painting to play, for display, for competition or to take a stunning photo etc.? It's easy to forget, especially for newbies, that not every tutorial or whatnot is necessarily THE way to paint appropriate for your needs for all purposes.
One technique that's fun and kinda fast (if you do a huge bunch of models at the same time) is to undercoat in a lighter tone/near white, and just paint on wash for all the colors you want. It creates a very cool "Water color" feel to the models. Did this with my Witch Elves back in the day, and really liked it.
I use a similar scheme for many of the details on my Chaos Marine models, I base them all in an off white color, things like skin, guts, those tubing thingies, horns, wounds... and then I wash each of the things with different shades, like a flesh shade, a sepia shade, black, brown, red/purple for the wounds. It end up looking like 4 distinctly different things, but they were all the same base color. Then depending on the detail I give some of it a light dry brush to pick out the edges.
I've just never had success on this, and I really want to make it work because it looks great!
skaven for me are sprayed brown. 70% of model painted lol
Similiar to me. Spraying black, brushing brown "Almost done, time for a break"
@@arnonym3675 Very late to the party , however furr brown spray paint from army painter was a god send back in the days of old warhammer, when minimum size for skaven slaves were 40+
@@matso3856 Have to try that. Good ol´" Damn, I´m really not happy with my "old" paintjob" struck again.
As someone coming back to the hobby from D&D days. I am amazed at the options today. From the painting apps to UA-cam vids. I agree about the packaging images Atom. All the old models just had painted scenes. Think airfix infantry or models. From painting metal napoleonic armies basic colours for large groups, think uniformity and simplicity for the masses. I think maybe splitting it will be best. So your central figure such as a primarch or Demon, yes, spend time. As for the armies simplicity. With younger modellers I would emphasise the game rather than the painting. It needs to be fun. Not a chore. Something I believe GW realised with the conquest magazine. Larger Primaris marines, click fitting, blue plastic, ready to go playing. Nurgle green plastic, etc etc. Easier to handle and paint. Good entry point for younger players who might not have the patience of seasoned veterans. Love the vids.
Sir you've helped me immensely "just paint it" & move on.. usually 5 Models(soiaf) 5 colors & a wash DONE!!! Thank you SO MUCH.. Get to playing
id rather take my time than look at my potato painted miniatures forever. If you dont care, thats okay. Everyone has a preference, people say I am weird for taking a long time to paint a space marine. I enjoy the painting most. For someone who would rather play than paint, slap it on, its all about what makes you happy.
Dank Floyd I find painting oddly relaxing, you just lose yourself for hours in painting models. Its all a learning experience and as you said, whatever makes you happy
Yep totally agree. For Xmas I got the Know No Fear kit and I spent about 30 minutes on each of the smaller models then like an hour on the bigger ones and it took me a week to paint them all. Then I bought some Skitarii models cuz I'm planning on a soace marine army with skitarii detachments, and I finished the last one as the new year begun (litterally like 01:00 Jan 1st)
That’s every hobbyist’s choice. The reason I made the video is that I get a lot of folks reaching out to me who believe that all their models HAVE to be painted to the highest degree - and I want to show them there are choices. Thanks for watching!
All depends on the army for me. My Blood Angels take forever to paint, but with all their details, a speedily painted marine stands out like a sore thumb. My Necrons on the other hand look about the same no matter, so I only spend the extra time on the HQ or specialized units
Spot on advice here. Painting tends to always take longer than we think it will and its helpful to set expectations. I've gone with a compromise of speed and quality. I'm more than satisfied with my paint job as it's not just slapped on, but I'm also happy that the model is done and I can move on to something else. And it's helped me to actually get faster and I've improved over the year as well. Win win
spot on. Thank you for making these videos, listening to this makes it easier to give myself permission to be ok and not great and enjoy the process.
My mate hates painting but loves the gaming side of the hobby, it's up to the individual how detailed they want to go and tips like these are great to help those who just want a quick neat paint job so they can play with painted stuff ASAP.
I got to a level I am happy with and then I trained myself to paint at that level faster and faster, but while doing this I realized that once you get faster at the same level you improve your painting automatically.
I am a total speedpainter when it comes to swarms, but i take my time when i comes to larger more detailed models. Also, using bloodsplatter and Moot Green as a slime splatter can help cover up mistakes
Some great tips there. Tabletop miniatures want to be on the tabletop - get them painted and get playing! If it's a Kill Team then by all means emphasize quality on each mini. If it's a 2000 point Astra Militarum army then speed paint away!
I'll be using some of these tips on a current project. Thanks Adam!
Mix your own colors and washes!
I started Tyranids as we 'miss' them in my group.
I bought acrylic thickening medium from an arts store and mixed destilled water, red, violett and a smallest tad of brown to make myself a 'leviatan wash'.
Similar made myself a 'horn color' from a anthrazit, violett mix.
Wooden lathes with doublesided sticky tape on it, 10 gants per lath and spraypaint sand, then white from the top. Wash with my selfmade stuff. Wash some details again. Paint all horn, add some details, clean up the most messy parts, basing, done.
Totaly OK for the playing table and 50 homagants took just 5hrs net working time.
I've been painting for decades, although I've never really been that good until the last few years, starting out with Warhammer 40k in the 90s. Lately I've been trying to up my Descent Second Edition game by fully painting the pieces and adding walls and a few other visual ambiences and I've pretty much let UA-cam play in the background while I paint. I love a lot of what you say and at times you've really kept me motivated to keep going. Keep preaching brother.
I don't bother painting eyes, unless it's a special model. I've also found zenithal highlighting and washes are a huge time saver.
Eyes are fairly easy once you know what your'e doing. I always paint the whites (off white color) before I even do the skin tone, which is easier to close up the eye than vice versa. Pupils can be tricky. Just remember to paint the pupils from top to bottom of the eye area, slightly closer to the nose than ears. Just dotting the pupil will give the fear face effect.
I've never painted eyes and have never once had anyone remark on it.
One thing that has helps me crank out a lot of models in relatively short amount of time is after base coating I set up an assembly line. Where I have 30-50 models lined up and I paint all of the bits that are the same color. Such as painting the army cloths the main color and by the time that I am finished painting the last model, the first one has dried, then I can choose to put on a second coat or go on to other details such as washes or dry brushing on all the models. By doing this I was able to finish around 40 models in four days!
Thank you for this video. As someone who is just starting out these are great tips to think about.
This is a fantastic video! As much as I love painting minis, sometimes speed over "quality" is needed to get that army on the table. Well done!
Thank you, Uncle Atom. Good stuff here.
Metallic Sharpies are great for doing the raised rims and other details on Space Marine paldrons.
Also, I've got an opaque white ball-point pen from a company called Hybrid, the "Hybrid Gel Grip DX", which, with a bit of practice, can be great for a bit of simple freehand work.
I do my painting in stages . First is I do a quick tabletop standard , so I spray prime say my Ultramarines in blue , then base coat all the flat colours no shade or highlights doing them In a batch painting method then I’ll do an over all shade wash 9/10 times with nuln oil gloss then when that’s dry I’ll base the model usually texture paint . Then once I’ve done a squad this way I may do more that way or I’ll take them to a good tabletop standard so ill layer over all the previous colours leaving shaded areas untouched . Then once I’ve done this I’ll highlight. I find this is the best way for me and I can get lots of models done really quick and I don’t feel daunted. Also at the end Once everything is done I.e paint transfers I use paint on varnish to take the gloss Shinyness away and protect my models .
My tactics that have really helped my cut down on the time it takes me to paint a miniature have been chosing a wise undercoat to spray on the figure, learning how to drybrush the right way, and realizing that if a space marine is fighting for his life on Mars, he isn't going to look mint condition. I think the cleanliness of the paintjob and time taken to complete it are inversely proportionate, but cleanliness doesn't always equate to quality, and I absolutely didn't want my Iron Hands looking like they just stepped off of a shiny Dark Horse comic page.
I would recommend washing after dry brushing the highlights if you apply heavy dry brushing (or high contrast dry brushing), it will blend the color in better. Especially on organic materials like cloth and skin etc. On mechanical things I would always do it Base coat - Wash - dry brush.
I love making speed painting hacks, heck I try to hack to get a "table top pluss" look, and will add some details that are over that sometimes too. But I found that I want to get minis painted and on the table fast, rather than having them look AMAZING! The result is still models I am very proud to put on the table, but that I finished within a reasonable amount of time.
When painting a unit (like a squad or Blood Bowl team) I often use one model to test my planned color scheme and make notes of the colors and washes used. I can then batch paint the remaining models following my notes from the test model. I find this a good way to ensure I like the end result on one figure before committing to the whole batch.
I find building a horde army improved my painting skill. My Guardsmen are relatively low detail, but the characters got the love. For my vehicles I went with different paint schemes for a lot of them. I figured that canonically guard regiments shouldn't be combined arms unless they're scratch regiments. I play Cadians, so any differences in their paint jobs can be explained by them being survivors of cadia lumped together to make a functional regiment. Half of my tanks are light green and brown, half are castellan green and tan. My chimeras are just castellan green and my basilisks are castellan green and tan, but have more complex camouflage patterns. This keeps the troops lower quality paint job look like it makes sense thematically. Of course Creed is going to have more detail than some dude holding a lasgun. Of course my earlier paint jobs when I had less skill make sense, they're different regiments lumped together.
Dry brushing is the best piece of advice you could give. Another hack to get an Old rusty metal on large and small models is to prime black then a light spray of brown then dry brush with dark metal. Very useful for orks.
Airbrush is the single most important tool for getting good looking models done fast imo. Pre-shade (forget the correct term for highlighting/shading underneath the coat), basecoat, zenithal highlight, wash, done. A couple things like putting the Black Templar shoudler pads on after painting helps a lot too - prime the model black and shoulder pads white, much easier and get a better result.
Painted my first miniature yesterday (tau pathfinder) and somehow speed and quality both flew out the window. 7 hours and one ugly grunt later, I finished. 7 hours of paint alone, it was already built and primed. My first thought was "well I guess I know who is dying first."
There is another tip as well I'd offer people than can produce very good looking results without things looking cheap or sloppy: the right kind of weathering. Models standing on dusty or earthen terrain look good with weathering on their lower half and it helps blend them into the base. Weathering is usually not hard or time consuming.
The bonus for batch painting lots of troops fast, is that if one plans ahead it isn't necessary to pick out lots of small details or cut-in cleanly around the lower parts of a model. Diluted brown washes and brown paints can be used around edges and seams, flowing into the base. This weathering would cover up what would normally be painted in those areas anyway.
A related tip that I don't see enough - remember that shade washes pool along corners and hide color transitions - they disguise the edges where one color meets another. You don't have to spend a huge amount of time cleanly cutting in with a color around all the edges, if the edge is recessed and a shade wash is just going to cover that seam of color up anyway.
-Base coat
-Wash
-Drybrush
-Play
Brilliant video. That realisation that I am my own worst critic. Need to lower my expectation and get to dry brushing / washing more. Great channel in fact. Nice to see someone my own age doing this. I really need to try that wet palette trick too!
One of the reasons your videos are my favorite is that you have a really good speech pattern and cadence that allows me to watch at 1.5x speed without making it hard to understand.
Weird complement I know.
I was interrupted about five times trying to watch this so I might have missed this point but, the first thing I would say in support of Uncy Atom is that use the hacks and stuff for your line stuff and go high detail on your HQ & Monsters/Vehicles (Although as a Space Elf, I have numerous vehicles to get my troops into shooting range). The second point I would make is I agree with his premise that you base/undercoat for the colour you plan. i.e. I use a dark brown when by troops are a red and for my Orks funnily enough. I use black or dark grey for my SE because my tie in colour for the army is tin bitz. The question I have for Uncy Atom is buildings. I have only ever successfully completed one building as a terrain piece and I went full out to do it, pulling out my old tech drawing board to plan the lay out and pre-list the colour scheme. That was for an armies on parade job but generally what gets me is the weathering. Any tips for that? I have the furnace sets to do at the moment.
i can paint a full spacemarine to my best quality in a day usually. I like to precut out my pieces & put all the parts for each marine into baggies before I start, this includes any extras for distinct personality. For me it cuts down on decision making time while painting. Instead you have it all sorted before hand. You just have baggies full of ready to clean, glue & paint models, since I started doing things this way its been a big help. ...lol I clip baggies of 5 marines together, do those 5 in a row then move on to the next 5 or whatever else I want to do next. by presorting them first you get a good impression of how theyre going to look finished & also you will have an idea of what paints youll need by what parts are in each bag :) I think this might help with any shame you have laying around too, if its in a bag ready to go it gives you more incentive if its half way started & bagged up & waiting. lol idk
Hi Atom! For speed painting tips. I HIGHLY recommend the "How I Paint Things" channel's videos that have "Speed Painting" in the titles. Like his Ultramarines video etc. He is great with little tips how how to cheat the appearance of edge highlighting etc. His whole channel is great too with painting guides.
I can never compromise my artistic vision! It is my blessing and my curse.
You can do a mix of both.
1. I do the rattle can spray and keep a pot handy of the same color for touch ups throughout.
2. Shading second
3. Dry brushing the main color which you spray(primed) with a slightly lighter color is a huge time saver. Then edge highlight with an even lighter color. At this point I do this to the whole set and then break down into 3 units at a time for the other half of the work.
4. Paint additional base colors 3 units at a time
5. Shade those additional base colors 3 units at a time
6. Highlight those additional base colors 3 units at a time
7. Do terrain on bases
8. Varnish all units once the terrain bases are all done.
*This works well for me on batches of 20 or so. Important to break it down to 3 at a time after the first 3 steps. Otherwise, it feels like a grind with no progress. It's psychological. Stay motivated!!!! Oh, and use a wet palette. I find this process to be the best compromise after getting back into the hobby after a 20 year hiatus.
Good topic! This is something I need to learn. I'm always fighting myself whether I should highlight every single belt on an Ork boy and for that reason I got a "hobby burnout" couple of years ago. I love to spend time with characters and vehicles, but with four armies there's no way I'm going to be able to finish them if I spend hours for each troop model.
I wish I knew this when I started my tyranids swarm list for over 150 models that are ment to die and be removed quick
My best painted models are my cultists because I enjoy them more than I enjoy painting marines.....
.... But watching 24 hours of work be removed as a volley kills a dozen of them in one turn kills me inside.
Several years ago when I still played 40k (3rd edition) I had a self created chapter I call Storm Angel's. Their color was predominantly grey like storm clouds. I got to the point that I could knock them out in under an hour by using a primer, a wash,and a dry dry brush. The devil is in the details.
Great tips man love your work you helped me greatly with this hobby learning from the best
I've been getting back into painting again after getting pretty burnt out feeling last year. I often feel extremely overwhelmed by all the models I have that are unpainted. Over 600 old 80s citadel Dwarfs alone, forget about all of my other fantasy armies, 40k, other miniatures games. I've probably painted 100 models in the past 7 years and each one has taken me around 8 hours or more to finish. That's really not good enough. I'm trying to learn ways to speed things up. I really want to look at my miniatures and feel proud rather than ashamed. With so many to do, I think I need to give myself a time limit or maybe limit myself to only a basecoat, wash and drybrush, with the only details being for eyes. It can be hard to stay motivated, especially when most of the wargames I'm interested in, no one around me plays. But I've been very productive in my painting so far this year and I want to continue stepping it up.
Metallic Sharpies are useful for doing the trim on shoulder pads and other metallic details on minis.
I started the hobby trying to paint white because I liked how the Metalica forgeworld scheme looked. I shouldn't have to tell you that it was rough, but I did learn how to paint white beautifully and quickly. I feel the same way about other models. I personally prefer focusing on quality, and getting the technique down, as speed comes with experience.
This is exactly the video I needed right now. Thanks!
Quick tip for speed, all basecoats first, single black or brown wash, a squad at a time. High contrast highlight colors from your basecoats. Allows a single highlight to give the illusion of multiple layers. Black and brown washes work well over any colors.
This gets a lot of minis done to table top standard quickly and allows you to go back later and try different techniques to bring out more details if you want.
I would say it is good practice to write down the colours and steps you take for your army. It may be quite some time until you reproduce it, so having a simple list would really help.
For anyone just getting into the hobby, Necrons are one of the quickest and easiest armies to paint and get on the table. So glad I started with them. Now working on a Blood Angels army and it's nice to be able to take my time and put in the extra quality. If I didn't already have my Necrons to play with, I think I would be discouraged with how long my Angels take to get table ready
This advice goes double if you paint 15mm or 6mm figures. I will prime near the primary color, for the primary color apply a shade lighter but not worry about full coverage, then base coat the other colors. A brown wash over the whole figure usually works (with some color schemes black might be better, but I'm generally working in more earth-tones), then go through and highlight over the base colors with drybrushing. Add flock to the base (you've painted your textured base along with the figure, right?) and a thin spray with a matt varnish.
From 2 feet away it actually looks like I'm good at it.
cheese and rice THANK YOU!! its about time i found a video on how to paint miniatures quickly, granted now i have to buy a rattle can of every color under the sun, but base coating with a primer, wash, dry brush, then do all the details, that make way more sense than any other channel, looking at you Squidmar, ninjon, and Miniac. great channels but seriously having a 4 step process and each step has like 3 mini steps is just too much for someone who needs to pain a zombie hoard or a goblin army.
Thanks for the video, expecting too much from myself is my biggest cause of demotivation when trying to get an army together. I'm gonna try and speed paint my next saurus warrior and see how I feel about it compared to spending a few hours on a single one, I'm positive it'll still look good on the tabletop as you mentioned.
love your videos man I wish I could show you some of my models I started back in August and planning is key 40 poxwalkers was a pain
I want quality, but I have difficulty holding my motivation up. But your video gave me some back, so here I go again!
I think every painter who just wants to play the games with painted minis but want to have the minis look really good, almost professional in quick glance, should learn to paint with Glazes over underpaint. Zenithal prime the minis, boost the shadows by drenching the whole mini in black wash, dry brush it with white to enhance the edges and bring back highlights that the washes dulled, and then paint it with paints that have been thinned to be very transparent. Glaze medium is the best but any medium should work. Even water works although it tends to make the paint too thin and runny that floods the details and dries unevenly. There, the model is mostly finished with darker shadows and highlighted edges without you enhanching them manually. Downside is that you have to be accurate (much like with Citadel contrast paints) when painting because mistakes are hard to paint over thanks to the thinner paint. Also yellow (and red to lesser extent) is still a pain in the ass, even more so because the paints are transparent, but if you paint one layer of pink glaze (or such warm color) and then do the yellow glaze then you will be fine. The results look insanely good considering how little work you have to do.
Great video as always, although I have to say that with nurgle, simply priming it white and then applying two layers of green wash is perfection. The model will be half way done in about 5 minutes and looks properly nurglish.
Love this video. About to start on some Cadians had to come back to get your hacks.
My biggest tips for painting fast if you are struggling with time:
1. Use an airbrush. If you dont have one, buy one. Seriously what are you doing? It might seem expensive, but think about what an hour of your life is worth? (Usually what you make an hour can be a good starting point). How much would it be worth to save hundreds of hours a year with an airbrush. You should always use the biggest brush possible, and airbrush is that. Fast zenithal priming + light glazing with an airbrush of main base coats and you are 90% done to tabletop standard. Super smooth highlights and shadows made for you.
2. Over highlight. Gloss varnish before washing. Almost eliminates coffee staining, if you are fairly careful with wash. No reason to go back to clean up and reapply highlights.
3. Minitair ghost tints. Just glaze on, and be done :)
3. Before you start painting, commit to the quality (what details on the mini will you skip, will you do the eyes or not, etc), and be ABLE to stop when you are roughly there. Be ok with subpar quality for YOUR standards. This is a really hard one for me.
I highly recommend Hobby Cheating Series on youtube for hacking your painting.
One bit of advice I notice seems to always be left out of these "speed vs quality" videos; just because you have painted your models quickly to a decent to good table top quality, does not mean you have to be done. I will speed paint/hack/cut corners on my board game minis to get them on the table. But after a few game plays and some free time, I will pull them out and "upgrade" some blends or add tighter highlights or edge blend. After some months or even a year of this slow addition of detail, I will have a higher-than-tabletop quality paint job.
A pot of Tamiya Olive Drab got me through an entire reinforced company of Imperial Guard in an afternoon. 120+ miniatures done and I still got compliments on my army!
Dipping?
@@Redskies453 No. OD helmet and limbs, left the flak armour undercoat black, flesh on the face and metal on the gun. One colour at a time for the lot. It was like factory work.
I made the mistake of priming a deathwatch kill team with white primer, and then primed a single model with black for a quick contest entry. I am never making that mistake again. Definitely going to prime similar to the base coat.
Shoulder pads an awkward colour? You can always paint them before you stick them on the model. Base colour as undercoat works well. Spray, base coat, wash, dry brush original base coat, detail highlight....all you need for "table ready" miniatures, and then you can take leaders and develop them up further later.
Only iff the pauldrons are seperate pieces, I reckon.
This is the way to do Black Templars for sure. Unless you just want to be painting five coats of white ove the black shoulder pads!
I tend to work on the squad SGT with more detail. Then go with a more standard approach for rank and file guys.
I know my limitations and that I will never be a great painter so getting the figures onto the table is my goal. I discovered dips and using the primer spray the right base colour and that enables me to cut through my unpainted figure mountain quickly and get to play with them quicker
I like to put more effort into bigger fancier models or important models like HQs. But for like standard troops I try to cheat a bit. Like with my Tau fire warriors: I'll try to do some basic highlight stuff on the actual armour, the gun, the helm but I'll be a bit lazy with the back and then the clothy stuff will just be black with some drybrush.
I don't mind the highlight bits honestly, thats usually when the model is near completion and it fills me with Determination. I kinda hate the basing and layering though. I've considered airbrushing but it looks kinda expensive to just start and I don't know if I have a place to really do it so I've been putting it off.
You are great, uncle atom... love your advice.
Great video, something I struggle with. I dont mind spending more time on high quality mins that I will display at home (KDM, etc), but I have a huge problem spending waaaay too long on painting board game minis. I just get obsessed with getting all the lines perfect, good coverage, picking out details, etc, stuff that my friends NEVER even notice, but there are always amazed at my paint jobs. But as non-painters they would be just as amazed if it was sloppy-ish basecoat/wash/drybrush. I need to learn to be ok with non-perfect crappy board games minis that are just going to live in a box, and get played with twice a year.....
Liquid Masking is also great for stuff like shoulder pads. Prime the Shoulder pad white -> apply liquid masking over the pad -> Prime /paint black.
I've done hard time batch painting greenskins and high elves for warhammer. Let's be honest it's a grind. I respect anyone who gets there minis on the table without them looking plastic.
You can get some decent looking models with bit of dry brushing and ink washing.
Now I tend to prefer indevidual reaper minis. Taking a bit more time make em look nice.
If your models have allot of flesh. Use a brown undercoat.
Armour black undercoat.
Ect. Getting the right undercoat can save you alot of graft.
There are such great things you can do with the bases now. I find basing the models a real pleasure. An average looking model with a nice tidy basing technique will be fine in any game. It covers alot of sins. Find I like this stage more an more because it is the finish line.
Just used the Martian iron earth for first time on my Titanicus bases. Really look great. I love it.
Thankfully the days of goblin green and a dip in some model railway flock is behind us.
Some times I just go: All the base colors, then a wash that goes with all those colors and call it "Done". This works well for "dirty" units like Chaos Cultists, or skaven, that you need so many of that they end up blending together anyways.
Uncle Atom is the uncle I never had but wish I did. I only had uncles that I wasn't allowed to be alone with!
You can eventually get faster at quality paints though. Not to mention the old adage,
"Taking the time to do it right the first time, saves time over doing it twice"
I have been guilty of speed-painting entire armies to get them onto the table in time for an event or demo or tournament. But I have always found myself either regretting it, or stripping the models and repainting them at leisure. I reckon that I could finish - from box to table - as many Guardsmen in 3 days as I could assemble in 1 day; but they're gonna look like butt.
Day 1 you clip all the pieces apart and mount them on sticks.
Day 2 you spray or airbrush everything the base color. Helmets green, arms and everything else khaki, guns black if you can. Paint in your flesh, contrasting plates, etc.
Day 3 assemble, garden-sand bases, dip. No drybrush.
Tabletop mini=speed painting. Display mini=detailed painting.
Give the base the most detail and love. It's the largest portion you will see at a distance when playing.
Your advice on color primer is very nice, but you forgot to mention that one should always prime with a white or black primer (grey even) before you prime with a color primer. A lot of the color primers are not primer per sei, they need that undercoat to make the color primer stick, this is especially true with GW color spray cans.
A nice advice on speed painting glowing weapons are basecoating blue, drybrushing a lighter blue and a very thin and subtle white drybrush :)
For my Orks I followed these steps:
1. Zenithal priming: white spray on top of a black primer.
2. Only GW washes. No paint. It's very fast and does the shadows and also the highlights, thanks to the zenithal priming and because there is no paint underneath, just gray to white so the wash almost renders like a glaze on surfaces to highlight.
3. At this point the miniature already looks very good, but if you want to take some more time you can add more highlights, with glazes or edge highlighting for example.
Nice idea. I was looking to start an Orc army. I will try this. Thanks.
great information and video thank you! these are the best mini painting vids!
Only add white to your midtone if you want your model to look more white. Think of white as another color and it always makes things look washed out which might be what you are looking for or it might not. To maintain the richness of the "material" you are trying to paint you have to understand that you should first look for an analogous color that still has a higher level of saturation but is brighter than the mid tone. Which is the opposite of adding white which has no saturation or chroma. Granted you don't always have to use super saturated colors on everything unless you are painting space/murder clowns ;)
Your method is great for speed painting, but I kind of had more success switching the steps up a bit. First I prime in the base colour. Next I drybrush the highlight, but make it lighter then i want it to be and put it everywhere the light would hit. Next just wash everything. You get rid of most of the 'grain' and powder of drybrushing and sort of highlight everything at once. Works especially well with the new contrast "washes" gw puts out. Its literally just 3 steps before starting detail work. Depending on the model I may even paint some of the details that need the same wash as well, like metals.