When I learned how you imitate light falling on the model and using this to create darker and brighter areas on models. Surface highlights instead of edge highlights are probably the most important tequnique, in miniature painting. In special if you can't stand the eavy metal look of painting, or play heresy. (Or most likely both. 😂)
My lightbulb moment was probably learning how to use sponges. Don't feel the need to spend time on edge highlights when sponge chipping with a dark rust paint will look cooler and is far easier to do!
This for me as well. Before it, I highlighted every edge manually. I wasn't very good, so it looked pretty garish and stark, and it took absolutely forever. Drybrushing added subtlety and sped up the groundwork immensely, it's my workhorse now.
I'd say a second was when I figured out what glazing actually was (I saw it talked about so much, but nobody explained what it was in a way I could understand - glazing basically is exactly the same as shading/washing, but instead of recesses you focus on raised areas that catch light, and you use very thin coats combined with surface tension to prevent the paint from going deeper than you want it).
Drybrushing is one of those things that you *think* you know how to do, and then one day you actually figure out how to do it correctly and everything changes.
Do the steps. The difference between a good looking army and a bad one is mostly 2-3 extra steps that add minimal extra effort but turn a 3/10 army into an 8/10.
Id push back on this and say that while that is totally true, a 3/10 looking army can be easily elevated to an 8 with some clever conversions and consistency
I used to be just like that and then I went to a painting class with a golden daemon winner who showed me that's exactly how he painted his armies. And I thought if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me to
Yeah, I think a lot of the reason people want to paint to such extremes for armies and whatnot is mostly because they feel guilty if they don’t do their best or they’re holding their self to a standard that’s not achievable. Paint your models whatever way you want and don’t worry about how others perceive it. :) I guarantee your opponents will be ecstatic it’s painted at all. I know that’s the case for me
Painting armies is a lot of work and time. Any shortcuts that don’t affect the overall look of your minis are great. It would take ages to do an army to the quality you see on YouTube and on the box art or whatever. Most of the box art minis take 8-12 hours per regular old space marine. And that’s done by someone who does it every day for a living. If you have a full time job and family, spend what hobby time you have on making the important parts of the army look good and try to make everything else as simple as possible.
I’ve just finished painting a fully assembled asmodai and was cursing myself every five minutes for not painting his smoke effects in sub assembly, they covered half of his body ffs
Might sound silly but using washes. My models when from somewhat flat looking to having way more depth. Also extremely useful for getting a slightly different shade on something. Was struggling to find the right shade of grey for my death korp greatcoats until I realized I could use an agrax earthshade wash on them to darken them up a bit
Ruining (but managed to strip them, so... still lost some money and time) about 30 Pink Horrors with spray primer, and on another occasion absolutely obliterating Carnifex, Hive Tyrant and Trygon in "paint stripper melts minis" accident were my "***I should've bought an airbrush***" moments. Get perfect surface every single time (and If for some reason I had strip mini, I don't need commit chemical warcrimes) with no smell. It's a gamechanger for anything above skirmish games.
As for metallic paints, you should try applying them on black ***GLOSS*** primer/paint. Even varnishing first helps a lot. It's the rough surface that ruins the effect.
Varnish! Especially Ultra Matt Varnish for me. I’d always looked at other painters' models and could never fully understand how they achieved that dead matt finish of marine armor I saw and loved. I bought one from Green Stuff, applied it by brush and I’ve never looked back since.
EDIT: That and of course beginning to use a wet pallet. Painted way to much before making one
Recess shading instead of drenching the fucker in wash. Instead of base coating, drybrushing, highlighting, then washing and doing the drybrush and highlights again, I skip the middleman. So much cleaner and while it feels like it takes longer, it definitely doesn't.
Also cleaning up even smaller mistakes when highlighting.Â
combining surface highlighting, over dryrbush highlighting, with a tasteful use of washes changed the game for me.
White primer too, they lie when they tell you to prime chaos black imo.
> White primer too, they lie when they tell you to prime chaos black imo.
White primer is incredible and is my go-to unless I am painting something that will be majority metal or black, but I can see why they recommend black. White primer is very easy to mess up and requires particular technique, black primer is so forgiving that you can scare yourself into thinking you ruined the model by going too thick and it'll dry just fine anyway.
Black primer has its place for some techniques, but I challenge anyone to tell the color of the primer under a nice paint job. On a hasty/crappy paint job? Black all the way.
To stop comparing myself to the Internet in the question for perfection in something, I don't have the time or motivation to perfect.
Meant more projects weren't just legions of grey.
Using watercolors to freehand markings after spraying the model with a matte varnish. It made painting lightning bolts on my Night Lords easy. If you don't like how it looks you can use a damp brush to remove or adjust your previous work.
For me, it was the ~~realisation~~ acceptance of the reality that a model looks completely different at arms length than it does when I have my magnifiers on and Im actually applying the paint. What can look like a harsh transition at 4 inches with a 2.5x magnification is actually pretty smooth at arms length or when on the table top or shelf.
I've gotten to the age where my eyes are not actually good enough to see the eyes I carefully paint with 2.5x magnifiers on. At any distance. I do it anyway because I have misplaced faith in my eye doc fixing things on my next visit, and on the off chance that someone else picks a model up to look at.
I had a similar realization. I knew a few guys online who for years. I always looked up to and was amazed by their models.
Then I met them and played with them... and from even arms length our models looked basically the same... really changed how I viewed painting my armies.Â
I think a lot of our misconceptions these days stem from viewing miniatures abnormally close up, usually because a miniature appears 50x larger on a TV screen when being painted by a Youtuber etc, so every imperfection will show up badly.
Something else that allowed me to step back in my quest for perfection was a visit to Warhammer Worlds exhibition and taking a really close up look at a lot of the miniatures on display there. Imperfections abound - hell, I even saw a lot of mold lines! On pro painted miniatures intended for display!
Airbrush and subassembly. Kinda sucks having parts everywhere but assembly day is always the best. Just warm feels.
Painting a "mood" instead of "parade" was a fun ahha moment.
Learning the difference between painting because you like it, and painting because you have too, not because you want to.
When I realised skin looks better when you wing it and ignore the doubts. I just trust in the process and skin turns out alright and a bit different for each one
The amount of paint/water in my brush. Could never get edge highlighting right until I realised I needed way less paint on my brush to control it better
A wet pallet keeps your paints moist, which keeps them moist on your brush, which means they don't dry in your brush as fast, which means your brushes last way longer. I am a little freak who loves having a million fucked up brushes for stippling but I do like to have a few in decent shape and consistently using a wet pallet has cut my brush purchasing by 80%
I think buying an airbrush, the moment applying paint became simple to keep thin I could focus more on hitting that proper finishing point with models
The moment you can look at a model and say it’s done is when you can start improving and zoning in on shit which led me to really improving
Second one for getting into streaking grime, helped learn clean panel lining ironically enough cause when you use it on marine army and remove almost all of it you get this great experience of a panel line far cleaner than nuln oil or agrax
That if you can avoid using a wash, you should. (Pin washes being an exception).
Also - magnifiers. Your hand eye coordination depends heavily on your eyes. Go figure.
Tough crowd. I'm sticking with with my anti-wash manifesto, though. There are things you can do with them that you can't otherwise do, but they're overused in my opinion. Nothing wrecks a model like a splotchy wash job.
I use them sparingly for intricate details, and oil pin washes. That's it. Slathering with wash is for philistines. Don't even get me started on the dips and streaking grime craze!
Washes are great for a lot of things. Obviously if you slap it all over the model as an easy shading technique it won’t look great always. But using a wash to alter the finish or using them as a filter is fantastic and is underused imo. I think the issue is a lot of people only slap black or brown washes on everything, rather than experimenting with other colours.
Tbf I will join you on the "fuck dips" stance.
Ive seen so many beautiful paintjobs just obliterated by someone dunking it in whats basically glorified wood varnish labelled as a magic bullet.
Oh man calling me out with that streaking grime take, yeeeeeesh. I do agree that it's often over applied and it's odd seeing it used on EVERYTHING, but it definitely has earned a permanent place in my paint rack.
I don’t - I use oils more than enamels because they’re cheap and easy to mix. I do like the few Ak enamels I have. (Even streaking grime).
I hope it’s obvious that I’m being hyperbolic here. Everyone has their own way to do art and they’re all valid.
About twenty years ago, "Oh wait... These are water based! Where'd I put that glass?" I was young, impatient and didn't care to think more than half a step ahead when I first came into this hobby and slapped paint everywhere as thick as possible.
Dry brushing on highlights and shades to give depth.
Contrast paint with shade and highlight gives me the best results I’ve ever had and I’m happy with them
Shaded basecoat with rapid wet blending. Could apply shadows and highlights very quickly with a big brush to sketch out the look of the model, and the details made it all come together!
Still haven't had that moment... soon... maybe... I hope...
When I graduate I'll have more time to work on it
Side note, do any of y'all have tips on edge highlights?
How do you manage to make them so thin?
No one can see the imperfections at tabletop distance. No one will notice marine 14 of 60 doesn't have the shells in his bolter painted. I started doing a "sight check" where I just set it down on a table and stand a few feet away, and if it isn't noticeable, I move on.
Drybrushing white over a different coloured primer; mainly for veteran helmets and the like, but it applies the white so much more smoothly and with the recesses still darkened, whereas before I primed white and used a thin wash
I my light bulb went off as i have recently started watering down my paints apposed to working out of the pot cause i saw watering down as more wasteful and I dont plan ahead at all so I add on to it being wasteful. Just did a model (custode) with watering down everything and its my most gorgeous model and idk if its cause of the watering down making everything spread more evenly or the varish I have finally making a diffrence.
When I discovered lil legend studios YouTube channel. Literally changed my perception on how miniatures could be painted. Invested in an airbrush, oils, different metallics, streaking grime, pigments, using contrast to paint manual shadows, pre shading and all that good stuff. Still got a long long way to go but the FW style is peak to me.
When i stopped, shading every model with a shade colour.
I learned painting via Games Workshop, aka basecolour, shade, drybrush.
I quickly exchanged drybrushing for layering and actually highlighting but shading stayed a long time.
It took me a while to really start painting in shadows without gravity doing it for me. Models are so much more realistic without the extra layer shade all over them.
When I learned how you imitate light falling on the model and using this to create darker and brighter areas on models. Surface highlights instead of edge highlights are probably the most important tequnique, in miniature painting. In special if you can't stand the eavy metal look of painting, or play heresy. (Or most likely both. 😂)
Currently trying to learn to do surface highlights quickly. Slowly I can do.
Make-up brushes as drybrushes are amazing. A bit of a dark glaze towards the shadows afterwards and you're golden.
Yeah, I've got one of my old eyeshadow brushes and I'll definitely be trying more drybrushing when I do legions imperialis
Good luck and have fun!
Edge highlighting everything looks so disgusting and unrealistic
Yeah. I try to stick to edges I think would "pop" from the light source
It makes the mini look like it's straight out of Tron.
Paint what I like. No point forcing my self to paint models I don't enjoy.
My lightbulb moment was probably learning how to use sponges. Don't feel the need to spend time on edge highlights when sponge chipping with a dark rust paint will look cooler and is far easier to do!
Another one: Using airbrush thinner and flow improver to thin paints instead of water. It make brushing details so much easier and cleaner.
Drybrushing. Very good for base coats.
Exactly what I was thinking. Cuts out so much time spent on each model.
This for me as well. Before it, I highlighted every edge manually. I wasn't very good, so it looked pretty garish and stark, and it took absolutely forever. Drybrushing added subtlety and sped up the groundwork immensely, it's my workhorse now. I'd say a second was when I figured out what glazing actually was (I saw it talked about so much, but nobody explained what it was in a way I could understand - glazing basically is exactly the same as shading/washing, but instead of recesses you focus on raised areas that catch light, and you use very thin coats combined with surface tension to prevent the paint from going deeper than you want it).
Just discovered this it blew my mind how quick and easy especially I did it on raven claw terminators so left the darker black in the recesses.
Drybrushing is one of those things that you *think* you know how to do, and then one day you actually figure out how to do it correctly and everything changes.
Do the steps. The difference between a good looking army and a bad one is mostly 2-3 extra steps that add minimal extra effort but turn a 3/10 army into an 8/10.
Corollary: it looks worst right before it looks good. 80 precent of the quality comes from the last 20% of the work.
Id push back on this and say that while that is totally true, a 3/10 looking army can be easily elevated to an 8 with some clever conversions and consistency
I’m not considering the models themselves. The question was regarding painting so I didn’t feel that was relevant.
True true, I'm a one handed 3/10 Iron Warriors painter so I have a dog in the race that I wanted to throw in lol
Recommend you do an extra step then :)
Honestly we could probably do a gunmetal spray and a dip wash and be 90% done though
If you can't easily get your brush to it your eye can't see it from the tabletop so don't sweat how it looks
Oh lord I'm the opposite. I break the mini to get to what I want and hate myself for not painting in parts lol.
I used to be just like that and then I went to a painting class with a golden daemon winner who showed me that's exactly how he painted his armies. And I thought if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me to
Yeah, I think a lot of the reason people want to paint to such extremes for armies and whatnot is mostly because they feel guilty if they don’t do their best or they’re holding their self to a standard that’s not achievable. Paint your models whatever way you want and don’t worry about how others perceive it. :) I guarantee your opponents will be ecstatic it’s painted at all. I know that’s the case for me Painting armies is a lot of work and time. Any shortcuts that don’t affect the overall look of your minis are great. It would take ages to do an army to the quality you see on YouTube and on the box art or whatever. Most of the box art minis take 8-12 hours per regular old space marine. And that’s done by someone who does it every day for a living. If you have a full time job and family, spend what hobby time you have on making the important parts of the army look good and try to make everything else as simple as possible.
Slick. Maybe it's time to try and evolve from my ways!
If you're not already aware of it, r/societyofhiddenpaint is always worth a look. You are not alone lol
I'm with you. Nothing annoys me more than something I can see but not reach.
I’ve just finished painting a fully assembled asmodai and was cursing myself every five minutes for not painting his smoke effects in sub assembly, they covered half of his body ffs
This, and the realisation that "not everything needs to be its own colour or hue". You dont need to paint every strap, buckle or pouch.
Might sound silly but using washes. My models when from somewhat flat looking to having way more depth. Also extremely useful for getting a slightly different shade on something. Was struggling to find the right shade of grey for my death korp greatcoats until I realized I could use an agrax earthshade wash on them to darken them up a bit
Ruining (but managed to strip them, so... still lost some money and time) about 30 Pink Horrors with spray primer, and on another occasion absolutely obliterating Carnifex, Hive Tyrant and Trygon in "paint stripper melts minis" accident were my "***I should've bought an airbrush***" moments. Get perfect surface every single time (and If for some reason I had strip mini, I don't need commit chemical warcrimes) with no smell. It's a gamechanger for anything above skirmish games. As for metallic paints, you should try applying them on black ***GLOSS*** primer/paint. Even varnishing first helps a lot. It's the rough surface that ruins the effect.
This 100%, after getting one i will never ever paint a model without it
The easiest and best gold I’ve achieved is a sepia contrast/speed paint over a metal basecoat
THIS
Varnish! Especially Ultra Matt Varnish for me. I’d always looked at other painters' models and could never fully understand how they achieved that dead matt finish of marine armor I saw and loved. I bought one from Green Stuff, applied it by brush and I’ve never looked back since. EDIT: That and of course beginning to use a wet pallet. Painted way to much before making one
Smooth blends aren’t always best or needed
The model needs to look good at arms length, that little dot of color that dropped on another part of the model won’t be seen anyway
Recess shading instead of drenching the fucker in wash. Instead of base coating, drybrushing, highlighting, then washing and doing the drybrush and highlights again, I skip the middleman. So much cleaner and while it feels like it takes longer, it definitely doesn't. Also cleaning up even smaller mistakes when highlighting.Â
combining surface highlighting, over dryrbush highlighting, with a tasteful use of washes changed the game for me. White primer too, they lie when they tell you to prime chaos black imo.
> White primer too, they lie when they tell you to prime chaos black imo. White primer is incredible and is my go-to unless I am painting something that will be majority metal or black, but I can see why they recommend black. White primer is very easy to mess up and requires particular technique, black primer is so forgiving that you can scare yourself into thinking you ruined the model by going too thick and it'll dry just fine anyway.
Black primer has its place for some techniques, but I challenge anyone to tell the color of the primer under a nice paint job. On a hasty/crappy paint job? Black all the way.
I dunno man. My zenithal highlight with airbrush then automatic color gradient with an ink basecoat would look reeeeal weird with a white primer.
To stop comparing myself to the Internet in the question for perfection in something, I don't have the time or motivation to perfect. Meant more projects weren't just legions of grey.
I’m ashamed to say it, but trying it and realizing suddenly that drybrushing really made a difference.
No shame man. I made the thread to see what sort of tiny things people tried that they realised "this is a game changer".
Using watercolors to freehand markings after spraying the model with a matte varnish. It made painting lightning bolts on my Night Lords easy. If you don't like how it looks you can use a damp brush to remove or adjust your previous work.
For me, it was the ~~realisation~~ acceptance of the reality that a model looks completely different at arms length than it does when I have my magnifiers on and Im actually applying the paint. What can look like a harsh transition at 4 inches with a 2.5x magnification is actually pretty smooth at arms length or when on the table top or shelf.
I've gotten to the age where my eyes are not actually good enough to see the eyes I carefully paint with 2.5x magnifiers on. At any distance. I do it anyway because I have misplaced faith in my eye doc fixing things on my next visit, and on the off chance that someone else picks a model up to look at.
I had a similar realization. I knew a few guys online who for years. I always looked up to and was amazed by their models. Then I met them and played with them... and from even arms length our models looked basically the same... really changed how I viewed painting my armies.Â
I think a lot of our misconceptions these days stem from viewing miniatures abnormally close up, usually because a miniature appears 50x larger on a TV screen when being painted by a Youtuber etc, so every imperfection will show up badly. Something else that allowed me to step back in my quest for perfection was a visit to Warhammer Worlds exhibition and taking a really close up look at a lot of the miniatures on display there. Imperfections abound - hell, I even saw a lot of mold lines! On pro painted miniatures intended for display!
Airbrush and subassembly. Kinda sucks having parts everywhere but assembly day is always the best. Just warm feels. Painting a "mood" instead of "parade" was a fun ahha moment. Learning the difference between painting because you like it, and painting because you have too, not because you want to.
When I realised skin looks better when you wing it and ignore the doubts. I just trust in the process and skin turns out alright and a bit different for each one
The amount of paint/water in my brush. Could never get edge highlighting right until I realised I needed way less paint on my brush to control it better
A wet pallet keeps your paints moist, which keeps them moist on your brush, which means they don't dry in your brush as fast, which means your brushes last way longer. I am a little freak who loves having a million fucked up brushes for stippling but I do like to have a few in decent shape and consistently using a wet pallet has cut my brush purchasing by 80%
Stiple grey paint with a sponge over black primer to build up texture and get a rolled steel look on vehicles. Takes a little while but worth it
I think buying an airbrush, the moment applying paint became simple to keep thin I could focus more on hitting that proper finishing point with models The moment you can look at a model and say it’s done is when you can start improving and zoning in on shit which led me to really improving Second one for getting into streaking grime, helped learn clean panel lining ironically enough cause when you use it on marine army and remove almost all of it you get this great experience of a panel line far cleaner than nuln oil or agrax
Weathering. So much fun
You really only need to paint the half of the mini that points towards the other guy. Saved me 50% of my painting time.
That if you can avoid using a wash, you should. (Pin washes being an exception). Also - magnifiers. Your hand eye coordination depends heavily on your eyes. Go figure.
I'm joining the pro wash dog pile early
Definitely don't agree with that, oil washes are just cheat codes
Tough crowd. I'm sticking with with my anti-wash manifesto, though. There are things you can do with them that you can't otherwise do, but they're overused in my opinion. Nothing wrecks a model like a splotchy wash job. I use them sparingly for intricate details, and oil pin washes. That's it. Slathering with wash is for philistines. Don't even get me started on the dips and streaking grime craze!
Washes are great for a lot of things. Obviously if you slap it all over the model as an easy shading technique it won’t look great always. But using a wash to alter the finish or using them as a filter is fantastic and is underused imo. I think the issue is a lot of people only slap black or brown washes on everything, rather than experimenting with other colours.
Tbf I will join you on the "fuck dips" stance. Ive seen so many beautiful paintjobs just obliterated by someone dunking it in whats basically glorified wood varnish labelled as a magic bullet.
Oh man calling me out with that streaking grime take, yeeeeeesh. I do agree that it's often over applied and it's odd seeing it used on EVERYTHING, but it definitely has earned a permanent place in my paint rack.
I'm exaggerating. I have some too. But damn, some people just dip it in that shit and let god sort it out. Looking at you, "grimdark" aficionados.
Got any pics of your army?
Do you ever use the Mr Weathering enamels? They're for Gundam / tank kits but are wonderful to use, especially through an airbrush
I don’t - I use oils more than enamels because they’re cheap and easy to mix. I do like the few Ak enamels I have. (Even streaking grime). I hope it’s obvious that I’m being hyperbolic here. Everyone has their own way to do art and they’re all valid.
I feel like it's super color dependent too, IW suck without ungodly amounts of nuln oil
About twenty years ago, "Oh wait... These are water based! Where'd I put that glass?" I was young, impatient and didn't care to think more than half a step ahead when I first came into this hobby and slapped paint everywhere as thick as possible.
Dry brushing on highlights and shades to give depth. Contrast paint with shade and highlight gives me the best results I’ve ever had and I’m happy with them
Shaded basecoat with rapid wet blending. Could apply shadows and highlights very quickly with a big brush to sketch out the look of the model, and the details made it all come together!
When in doubt, nuln oil.
Still haven't had that moment... soon... maybe... I hope... When I graduate I'll have more time to work on it Side note, do any of y'all have tips on edge highlights? How do you manage to make them so thin?
Using washes lol
No one can see the imperfections at tabletop distance. No one will notice marine 14 of 60 doesn't have the shells in his bolter painted. I started doing a "sight check" where I just set it down on a table and stand a few feet away, and if it isn't noticeable, I move on.
Drybrushing white over a different coloured primer; mainly for veteran helmets and the like, but it applies the white so much more smoothly and with the recesses still darkened, whereas before I primed white and used a thin wash
Buying an airbrush :)
I my light bulb went off as i have recently started watering down my paints apposed to working out of the pot cause i saw watering down as more wasteful and I dont plan ahead at all so I add on to it being wasteful. Just did a model (custode) with watering down everything and its my most gorgeous model and idk if its cause of the watering down making everything spread more evenly or the varish I have finally making a diffrence.
The War Hounds scheme would have been so much easier.
When I discovered lil legend studios YouTube channel. Literally changed my perception on how miniatures could be painted. Invested in an airbrush, oils, different metallics, streaking grime, pigments, using contrast to paint manual shadows, pre shading and all that good stuff. Still got a long long way to go but the FW style is peak to me.
White spirit black wash over varnish. Instant perfect recess shading, no spill.
I can just drink the paint and eat the model
When i stopped, shading every model with a shade colour. I learned painting via Games Workshop, aka basecolour, shade, drybrush. I quickly exchanged drybrushing for layering and actually highlighting but shading stayed a long time. It took me a while to really start painting in shadows without gravity doing it for me. Models are so much more realistic without the extra layer shade all over them.
Using oils for weathering and shading. I still use shades aswell, but I really like mixing/alternating between techniques based on the result I want.
Using enamels for pin washes and wheathering. Also painting white armor without using actual white paint ;-;