Miniature painting

Act 1: The Tools

Painting requires a few basic tools that you can buy just about anywhere.

First of all, you need brushes (B in the picture). These brushes should be in sizes: 2, 1 and 00 (or 000 if prefered). That’s all you need to start with. More brushes can be bought if desired, but I rarely use any other brushes than these.

Drybrushing.

For Drybrushing (explained later) you’ll need a pair of cheap brushes with fairly stiff hairs. The brushes I use are called cat tongue brushes (A in the picture), because the actual brush looks a lot like a tongue.

Paints.

Always use water-based paints. Water-based paints are easier to mix, to thin and your brushes will be much easier to clean than with any other type of paints. You can use the paints supplied by miniature manufacturers such as Games-Workshop or Harlequin Miniatures or any type of acrylic paint. Painting tips on these pages are explained using Games-Workshop paints.

Water

You will need two jars of water to clean brushes in after you’re finished painting with a color. There need to be two jars, because one you will clean brushes in when you painted metallic colors and one for normal colors. This is necessary because metallic colors have little bits of shiny metal in them, which you don’t want to accidentally mix up in your other paints. If you have only one jar refresh the water after you’ve painted metallic paints.

Also have some cloth or paper handy for drying brushes after cleaning them. Something like paper handkerchiefs or toilet paper will do.

Working-area

You need a clean working area. This doesn’t have much requirements, but needs to be large enough to paint comfortably and clean enough not to smudge your models.

Light

Light is a very important factor. The best light sources are the so-called daylight lamps, which produce a evenly light source. TL-light is also good, because the length of it also ensures an evenly light source.

Power (or Super) glue

For assembling metal models you’ll need some powerglue.

Plastic Glue

This is plastic glue. It melts away a small portion of plastic, which hardens again in a few minutes. When you use it on a plastic model it will harden almost as strong as if it was cast in one piece.

Pieces of Rod and a drill.

You’ll need some pieces of rod for assembling the miniature and a drill to make holes.

Sand, static grass or flock.

One or more of the above for the bases of the miniatures. The sand can be any type of sand, you can even shuffle it out of the garden and leave it to dry. The static grass is available from most model railroad shops and you can also get flock at these places. Games-workshop also has a variety of basing materials (including the three materials above).