Do You Need to Be Good at Art to Paint Minis 40k

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I'm trapped at dwelling house right now, aforementioned every bit you are, considering of the coronavirus pandemic. While I'thousand stocked up on supplies, and accept family unit and streaming idiot box to continue me decorated, many of my favorite video games just don't sit well with me at the moment. It's times like these that I usually turn to board gaming with my friends, simply social distancing requires that we stay apart.

So, I've taken to painting miniatures. It's been a wonderful opportunity to residue my body and articulate my mind, and getting started wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Best of all, you can actually become some amazing results with just a few basic techniques.

Where to begin? Kickoff yous need to notice some minis. If you have a modern tabletop game in your collection, yous might take unpainted miniatures sitting in a box already. It seems like just virtually every major Kickstarter board game entrada includes dozens of unique sculpts. While it tin can be hard to get folks to sit downward with you lot and learn a new game, at present might be the right fourth dimension to crack open those boxes and paint those monochromatic miniatures.

The miniatures from Scythe are remarkable little works of art. Those mechs besides look thou with just a basecoat and some simply drybrushing.

Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon

Painting minis is likewise a great way to plow through your excess of podcasts. I learned to pigment a few years agone, and all it took was one box of Warhammer 40,000 minis and a few dozen episodes of Welcome to Nighttime Vale. Moreover, painted miniatures are a great way to spice upwardly 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 not use this weird window of time to pick upward a new hobby, one that can easily fit into whatever living infinite? I've written lengthy guides on the field of study before, but hither'south a quick rundown on what you demand to start painting minis, and some quick tips on where to get educated.

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Finding a workspace

You shouldn't need all that much room to get started painting miniatures. You'll want a comfortable chair, of course, and a sturdy table. But too consider your lighting. Shadows tin play with your perception of miniatures and their details. That could crusade you to miss a spot, but information technology tin also easily atomic number 82 to eyestrain. Consider getting a few movable lights mounted on arms. I use two, each one outfitted with 1600-lumen daylight bulbs.

Also, get a agree of your favorite coffee loving cup, paper towels, and some water. Everything included in this guide — except the glue — cleans upward easily with water if you spill it on a hard surface.

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Assembly

Fully assembled miniatures from Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars: Legion.

Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon

If your miniatures don't come pre-assembled, you'll need to spend some time putting them together. That can exist equally elementary as shaking the bits out of a plastic pocketbook and gluing them together (as with Star Wars: Legion from Fantasy Flight Games). For about others, you'll need to cut the pieces free from their plastic sprue. For that, you lot'll need a hobby knife, a cutting mat, nippers, and some glue.

105 Piece Precision Hobby Knife Kit

• $eleven

Prices taken at time of publishing.

I prefer hobby knives with breakaway blades, mainly because there's less for me to lose. But for the toll, why non get both kinds? This kit also comes with a cut mat, which will keep you from damaging your table.

• $xi at Amazon

Beadalon Nipper Tool

• $11

Prices taken at fourth dimension of publishing.

You might be compelled to dip into the toolkit and only take hold of a pair of pliers or a wire cutter. Don't do that! Nippers take a especially shaped edge then you can become correct upward against the models without damaging them.

• $xi at Amazon

Games Workshop Citadel Plastic Glue

• $half dozen

Prices taken at time of publishing.

Don't be fooled by the proper name. This is non actually glue; information technology'due south cement. It's a chemical that melts plastic pieces and fuses them together. Well-nigh, only not all, miniatures require this stuff. Read your directions to encounter if you need cyanoacrylate — Super Glue — instead.

• $6 at Amazon

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Priming

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

I recommend the pre-primed miniatures from WizKids, which come up ready to pigment right out of the box. The visitor sells minis from tabletop standards like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, as well as brands like My Fiddling Pony and Transformers. On the ones I've seen, the details are a lilliputian softer than I'd like, simply you tin can't trounce the convenience.

If you're just starting out, then practise yourself a favor and become something medium-sized, like the beholder from the Dungeons & Dragons Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures line. Information technology has lots of texture and is a keen platform for beginners.

Otherwise, allow me to recommend a basic black primer from Games Workshop'southward Citadel line. I've used the Army Painter rattle cans before, only I've gotten very mixed results.

Spray pigment tin be egregiously expensive online. If your local hardware store is open, you can probably find something much cheaper in that location. Simply be sure to read the characterization and make sure it's good for plastics and compatible with acrylic pigment.

• $28 at Amazon

I've gone through a lot of rattle cans in the last few years, and it's always a drag to spend a ton on a dainty tin can of paint and so throw it away later a week of use. I recently bit the bullet and invested in an airbrush. While not recommended for beginners, it's really non equally intimidating equally I originally thought — certainly something to consider down the road, if miniatures painting sticks with you.

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Get-go painting

The 2 big players in acrylic hobby paints right now are Games Workshop and Vallejo. Both sell basic sets of paint that are great for beginners. The Vallejo kit comes with 16 colors to Games Workshop'southward 11, only the Brits throw in a great paintbrush to make up for information technology.

• $twoscore at Amazon

Whether or non you lot finish upward with the Games Workshop paint prepare, do yourself a favor and become ii of the company's medium layer brushes — yous might wreck i while you're learning. Also grab one of its medium dry out brushes, equally well as some brush soap.

• $7 at Amazon

Now it's time to begin painting.

Option 1 would be to scour the net for guides and videos on painting whatever miniature you've elected to get started with. But, if you'd rather go your own way or stick to the short listing of colors that you lot've got on mitt, there's an app for that. It's chosen the Citadel Color app, and information technology's available free on the App Shop and Google Play.

Say that your miniature has some leather bits on it. Click on Brown in the Paint By Colour guide, and yous'll be greeted with several options for how to accomplish the look you want. (If y'all went with the Vallejo paints to a higher place, here's a handy conversion nautical chart.) The aforementioned goes for virtually every other color and texture in the rainbow. All of these guides rely on three bones techniques: layering, dry brushing, and edge highlighting.

Layering is fairly straightforward. Y'all're blocking out the colors on the miniature, painting details from the bottom up. Details that are deeper into the surface of the model — the surfaces of armored plates, for example — get painted first. The details sitting on top of those surfaces — leather belts or decorative elements — go painted next. That mode, yous're able to correct your mistakes every bit you go along.

One time you get the bones colors on your miniature blocked out, you'll want to do some dry brushing. That's where you lot use a brush with barely whatever paint on information technology at all. Once again, Games Workshop is on mitt to give you some great guidance at its YouTube aqueduct.

Finally, you'll likely want to practise some border highlighting. That'southward where you take a lighter colour and trace around the edges of a model in a very intentional mode. Everyone's instinct for edge highlighting is to discover the smallest brush they tin can, but that's non actually the best fashion to practise it; your medium layer brush volition work but fine. Bank check out this video from Scott "Miniac" Walter on YouTube for more than information.

Between painting sessions, yous'll also want to be sure to clean and maintain those brushes. The best guidance I've found for that is on YouTube, and it likewise comes directly from the Miniac. In addition, his video includes some great advice for loading upwards your brushes with paint and getting a expert, clean line.

Over again, this is just 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.

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What have I gotten myself into?

Real quick, though: Let's consider for a moment that perhaps my well-intentioned guide has had the reverse consequence. After reading all this, you definitely don't want to paint miniatures.

That's fine.

Perchance y'all just want to build miniatures. A practiced place to start is with a prissy Gunpla. They're robotic Gundam figures that are poseable, which adds to the complexity of the build. But nigh of them come in multicolored plastic kits that don't really crave any painting. Go yourself a decent hobby knife and some clippers, and you're off to the races.

If you'd like to stick to gaming, I recommend Games Workshop'due south Adeptus Titanicus or the Warhammer twoscore,000 line of Knights. Both lines have models that are very expensive, but they're besides poseable, with hips, knees, and elbows that let for some interesting options. They will definitely benefit from a nice coat of pigment after, but for you, peradventure that's just a unmarried color and a dry brush treatment that makes it looks like a statue.

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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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