Miniature painting

Act 2: Techniques

There are a few basic painting techniques for painting miniatures. Most of them give a similar result, but the degree of detail (and neatness) varies among these techniques.

Normal Painting.

Normal painting is just as simple as painting a color on the model. Nothing more, nothing less. There are just a few simple things you need to know when painting miniatures.

First of all you need to water down your paints. When the paint is too thick you’ll almost certainly ruin the detail of your miniature. Watering down the paint will result in the fact that you will have to use several layers of paint to completely cover an area on the miniature, but there’s nothing to do about that and is of course better than ruining a miniature.

The second and most simple technique of painting is drybrushing. For this technique you might want to use an older brush or preferably the ‘cat tongue brushes’ explained in the FIRST!! part of the painting section.

Also you don’t want your paint to be to thick as this can result in a very dusty look on the model with blobs of paint in stead of an equal coat.

First fill your brush up with paint. Then wipe your brush across a clean piece of white cloth. Don’t stop until the brush stops emitting paint onto the cloth. When you use a white (or at least light-colored) cloth this is easier to spot (unless of course you’re drybrushing white). When there’s almost no paint left, brush over the model. Because there is so little paint on the brush it will only stick to the raised parts of the model allowing you to create an easy shade effect.

For example if you would want a red coat you should base-coat with Scab Red, then drybrush the first layer with Red gore and a final layer with Blood Red.

Blending is a technique used to create more gentle highlighting or actually have a piece of the model start with one color (e.g. red) and end in the other (e.g. yellow). This technique normally isn’t fit for rank and file troopers as it takes quite some time and effort to get the desired result.

Blending is simply done by thinning your paint with water. Thin the paint to an amount where you would need about 3 coats of paint to cover up the base-coat. First apply the base-coat. This should be the darkest color you want visible. E.g. for a red coat you could use scab red as a base-coat. Now paint a coat with thinned down paint (see above) while the first coat is still wet and leave a small amount of the base-coat showing. This is where the thinning the paint comes in handy, because now you have more time to actually do the painting before the paint dries out. It also makes the paint a bit transparent which means you don’t have to mix paints that much and a good blend requires as little as three colors.

Sometimes you will have thinned down the paint to much, in this case thin it down a bit more and go over the whole deal (except the base-color) again (Better get the paint right the first time eh!)

If you’ve got the final highlight like you wanted it but it looks a bit unreal and actually the edges of the different paint jobs are clearly visible just apply a coat of red wash and redo the final highlight with the pure color.

Normal Shading is done similar to blending, but uses the colors straight out of the pot in stead of adding water. This way you can paint more quickly, but need to mix paints.

First apply the base coat (which in our example is still Scab Red) next mix The Scab Red with Blood Red and apply this. For the next layer apply more and more of Blood red to the mix until you put a layer of Blood Red on it’s own. Next apply a wash of Red ink and paint a final highlight of blood red on its own.

Of course the various techniques described above can be used in conjunction with each other to create various effects.

For example is you want a dramatic and old looking robe on a model you could do the following. (Oh yeah, I’ll paint it Brown this time)

First apply a base-coat of Scorched Brown. Then paint the first highlight on with Bestial Brown. Next apply a brown wash over the whole thing. Then mix Bestial Brown with a little Bubonic Brown (roughly 3:1) and blend this as the next high light. Further add Bubonic Brown to the mix for the following blending layers until you reach pure Bubonic Brown. The final highlight could be a 1:1 mix of Bubonic Brown and Bleached Bone, which is drybrushed on (after drying of course). You now have a brown cape that has very deep folds in it end an old look because of the drybrushing of the final highlight (which is never in a 100% straight line).

Contouring (Black Lining)

Contouring represents the fact that between the places where areas of a miniature meet (such as between the sleeve and the hand of the model, or the Shirt and trousers) there is a deep shadow (Look at your hand, it doesn’t actually ‘blend in’ with your shirt does it?). This is best represented by a small black line on the point where these two areas meet, which is called contouring.

There are two ways to achieve contouring.

1) Leaving a black line visible when painting

2) Adding it afterwards with a fine liner pen or something similar.>

I use a combination of both, as I don’t always leave lines at al the places they should be. When adding them later use a pen that is black and that has a size of about 0,25mm.

If you want to create really dramatic miniatures try and exaggerate this line (best done while painting). And also leave (or add) lines where normally there wouldn’t be any such as on the face in deep wrinkles or on clothes. When you do this correctly and also paint the miniature in dark colors you can just imagine him walking down a semi-dark corridor in the twilight of Mordheim.

Wet brushing

I don't think there's an official name for it. But some people call it wet brushing. Wet brushing is a combination of normal painting and drybrushing.

The technique is simple and effective. If you have a part of a model which has a good texture you can apply it (Dragon scales, monster teeth and some others). What you do is fill your brush with paint like normal and then rub a bit off, so it doesn't drop paint all over the place.

Next go to your textured surface and place the side of the brush against the surface. It now performs a similar function drybrushing does, only with more paint. When rubbing it from side to side a bit, you'll only tough the higher area's and not the lower ones. In effect, the teeth get painted, the rest of the mouth doesn't.

Metallic paints shouldn’t be undercoated white! They’ll look better on a black undercoat. Metallic paints can be highlighted like any other except for the fact that the first layer shouldn’t be of the same color.

For silvers a layer of tin blitz should first be applied then a coat of chainmail of boltgun metal or any roughly the same equivalent. The next color should be the actual silver you want the model to become. After this apply a mix of black wash with a small amount of brown wash added. The final stage is to highlight with the original silver color.

For gold a layer of any bronze should be painted on first. Next a coat of Burned Gold followed by shining gold. This is then given a wash with a mix of black wash, a small amount of brown wash and an even smaller amount of green wash (be very careful not to use to much because the green will stand out!). Next highlight again with Shining Gold. Any sharp edges (like spikes of blades) can be given a final highlight of Shining Gold mixed in equal quantities with Mithril Silver.

Base-coat: Black

First paint a highlight layer of Bestial Brown. This layer shouldn’t cover all of the black areas. Some black should still be visible in the recesses of the model. Next step is to paint the bone with bleached bone using a blending technique.

When you are better at painting you could try to paint it al on in such a way you leave small lines of black/ Bestial Brown showing along teeth to give them a more realistic feel.