If you've been following along at home with the last
Like I mentioned before, miniature painting is a stupidly deep hobby and it's super easy to get lost in the details if you let yourself. If you're like me, you like the idea of mastery, but let's just accept that unless you're some kind of mini painting wunderkind, you aren't going to be cranking out stuff like this or this or this if you've started recently. That said, here's some stuff I found helpful and finally we're going to talk about gear.
Online Instruction
I walked you through a simple value sketch and glaze thing. I cribbed that from Vince Venturella and I'm not gonna lie, it's what got me over the hill of finishing my first fig. He uses it for speed painting; I use it for just about everything. If you didn't follow the link in the previous post, here it is again. Don't worry, I'll wait. The same techniques can be used for all kinds of advanced stuff, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Vince has a series called Hobby Cheating which I found super extra duper helpful when starting. If some of the crap I've written here sounds similar to what Vince says, well, that shouldn't be a surprise. Also, bejangles is just a fun word.
If you're coming at mini painting from the table top crafting world, you probably already know about Jeremy at Black Magic Craft. If so, you probably already know about his series on mini painting. His recommendations are all solid IMO. And if you don't know about BMC, his terrain is killer and it's worth it to watch a few of his videos. We came at minis from opposite directions. He started with terrain and craft paints and got into minis later. I learned to paint on minis and eventually (begrudgingly) got into terrain building later which is probably why I hate craft paints so much.
Miniac runs a damned good youtube channel about painting. Like Vince, he's a high end painter and his stuff is often tilted to that side of things. His tutorials and explorations tend to be structured and he also, occasionally, does some actual science. His treatment of non-metallic metals is awfully good. And if you need just one more, I'd throw in Next Level Painting. Kenny's tutorials are all over the board but his results are awfully good. Not coincidentally, all of these folks use airbrushes (more below).
These (obviously) aren't the only channels out there, but they're a pretty good starting point for new painters. There's also (obviously) a pretty big reddit community around mini painting but you probably already guessed that. If you aren't used to being critical of your own work and want to improve, look for folks who can give you constructive feedback on your painting.
Airbrush
I agonized over buying an airbrush. I don't like unitaskers. Folks told me that they're fiddly, cantankerous, hateful things that make a bunch of stuff way easier if you can get them to work correctly but they almost never work correctly. And you have to clean them religiously. And sometimes they still won't work. I ended up buying literally the cheapest combo kit (airbrush+compressor) I could find on Amazon. You can buy cheaper ones today. I justified this by being lousy at rattle can priming/highlighting and living in a state that rains a lot.
Did it work out? Kind of. It is a fiddly, cantankerous, hateful thing. It likes to not work and it's really easy to break it and if you're not careful you'll get it in a mode where it'll be a pain to deal with. To get around this, I clean mine obsessively and I thin my paints probably too much. Cleaning the beast is not for the faint of heart but it isn't that bad if you only have to do it once or twice per session.
That said, I think it is hands down the best way to prime figs and apply a zenithal highlight unless you are a rattle can maestro (I am not). Right now it suits my needs and while it keeps working (knock on wood) I'm happy I have it. Once, I even put several ounces of black crappy craft paint through it to black bomb some dungeon tiles. It was a mess, but it worked. I'm slowly using it for more and more tasks, some of them not painting. See, it's not a unitasker! I will most likely buy a nicer one in the not so distant future.
Once you get going and if you're serious about painting, I do recommend buying one. I do think buying a cheaper one is the best choice unless you're willing to be ultra careful. They are fiddly and you will likely break it or lose a tiny, tiny key part, or bend the awfully thin and painfully sharp needle. Breaking my $20 Master's is far less painful than breaking, say, a $300 Iwata. It's your money--spend it how you like.
Brushes
The great brush debates have raged for countless aeons...or maybe several score years which is about how long mini painting as we know it has been a thing. Do you need a fancy expensive endangered Russian grizzly weasel hair brush? Lots of pro painters use super cheap synthetic brushes and lots of pro painters use fancy weasel hair brushes too so that's no help. Which is best? You're going to have to figure that out for yourself, I'm afraid, but first I'll tell you a cautionary tale of woe and despair.
I struggled with cheap brushes that I didn't like for far, far too long and it negatively affected my enjoyment of the hobby. My fits and starts with mini painting over the years weren't super positive so when I picked it up again Fo' Realz(TM) last summer, I didn't really want to invest a lot in gear. I wasn't sure I was going to like it any more than I did the last N times and it felt more like a thing I had to do more than something I wanted to do. I'd already dropped good money on the paint starter kit and I wasn't super ready to put more money down.
I bought cheap synthetic brushes in 2014, golden taklons on someone's recommendation. I pretty much destroyed them in a couple weeks. This made me super worried about dropping $25 on a Kolinksy Sable if I was going to destroy that in a small number of weeks too. So I bought slightly less cheap and slightly fancier brushes. These were supposed to be natural red sable, one step less endangered and one step less expensive than Russian grizzly weasels. They were actually synthetic and I pretty much destroyed those in a few weeks too. Damnit.
Mostly out of desperation, I bought 4 each of Princeton Siberia Series 7000 size 4 and Blick Masterstroke size 4 from Blick's online store to get over their "free shipping" threshold. Both of those brushes have been awesome and both were under $8 each. I really, really like using them and they aren't super spendy. They hold a tip well, they aren't extra floppy, but they're also not stiff like most synthetics. Outside of stuff like painting terrain, applying washes, super fine detail work, and dry brushing, I pretty much use these all the time. So, do you need a fancy expensive brush? Shit, man, I don't know you, but it made a big difference for me.
I bought cheap synthetic brushes in 2014, golden taklons on someone's recommendation. I pretty much destroyed them in a couple weeks. This made me super worried about dropping $25 on a Kolinksy Sable if I was going to destroy that in a small number of weeks too. So I bought slightly less cheap and slightly fancier brushes. These were supposed to be natural red sable, one step less endangered and one step less expensive than Russian grizzly weasels. They were actually synthetic and I pretty much destroyed those in a few weeks too. Damnit.
Mostly out of desperation, I bought 4 each of Princeton Siberia Series 7000 size 4 and Blick Masterstroke size 4 from Blick's online store to get over their "free shipping" threshold. Both of those brushes have been awesome and both were under $8 each. I really, really like using them and they aren't super spendy. They hold a tip well, they aren't extra floppy, but they're also not stiff like most synthetics. Outside of stuff like painting terrain, applying washes, super fine detail work, and dry brushing, I pretty much use these all the time. So, do you need a fancy expensive brush? Shit, man, I don't know you, but it made a big difference for me.
Paints
My starter kit was the older version of this one from Army Painter. I think it's a fine kit to learn on and a not super expensive way to build up a collection of paints. There are a few colors I really like (Oak Brown, Angel Green, Dragon Red) and a lot more colors I don't like (all of their metallics, any of the yellows and just about anything light). Their quickshades are awesome, but you can buy those separately.
Army Painter paints have a couple...er...attributes worth noting. First, they are stupidly hard to shake well enough to mix because when properly mixed they are quite thick. Mine are almost always separated, though I did buy them like five years ago. I've taken to dropping stainless steel ball bearings into each dropper to help mix and they're still hard to shake well enough. Second, if you work with glazes like I do, you have to be super extra careful not to over-thin them. At best they'll go glossy which is usually not what I want. At worst they stop being paint and aren't usable and the ratio to non-paint is not consistent across colors. Last, and I think the worst part, is that quality seems to be all over the board. I've found the colors I like and I tend to use those a lot. Everything else feels like it's just taking up space.
...and then I bought an airbrush. Army Painter paints do not like being forced through airbrushes. While not as bad as crappy craft paints in this department, I do not recommend using these in this way. So I had to buy new paints. Vallejo's Game Air and Model Air lines are made for airbrushes, and no, I have no idea what the difference is. Better yet, you can use them with a not-airbrush and because they're thinned enough to go through an airbrush, you don't need to thin them. These are higher quality than the Army Painter paints for the most part and I'm probably going to replace my existing paints with Vallejo as I progress. While not meant for airbrushes, I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Vallejo's inks which I like a lot. The normal blue (azul) is probably my favorite color of any paint I own. Vince has a really good breakdown of different paints by brand if you're interested.
I also bought two packs of Badger Minitaire paints mostly because Vince talked about them. Badger makes airbrushes so, naturally, these are airbrush paints. The pigment is super fine, so fine, in fact, that it's often hard to get them to mix properly. Luckily, the ball-bearing trick works for these too, so I got that goin' for me. Their color line is a lot more limited than Vallejo's and like the model air/game air paints, I sometimes use these with a paint brush. The two sets I got were their normal paint line and their ghost tints which will require their own paragraph.
I think ghost tints are washes, and can be used for really sweet effects. They are fairly thin and go on with a light gloss. I haven't used them all but I have loved the handful I've used. Just for fun I once put a light coat of plasma fluid on a select area of a mostly-metallic figure I was finishing. The effect was so nice that I slapped it over most of the metallics on the figure. Another anecdote? Sure. I was looking for a nice red effect to stick in a gnoll's yodeling mouth. Have I mentioned how much I love gnolls? In putting a drop of "fresh blood" on my old home-made wet palette (more in a bit) I accidentally dropped a bit on my cutting board. It dried pretty quickly as acrylics tend to do and when I noticed it, I immediately started to look for where I'd cut myself--it was that convincing.
Most mini paints benefit from being thinned. Remember that we want very thin coats so we don't cover up detail. A wet palette will help with this by osmosing water into the paint over time. If you use a container that has a seal (and you should) you can close the lid when you're done and the paint will keep for a few days. Save money! Paint better! It's a win-win! But it's better than that! You can build your own!
You can find all kinds of tutorials for building these on the cheap. I started here. In fact, I built multiple of them. I started with a container like this (it was like $4 and came with lunchmeat in it--good for holding all kinds of hobbying). I then stuck a couple kitchen sponges in the bottom, cut a square of parchment paper (these have a grid for easy cutting), poured some water in the bottom and started painting. I switched to a larger, shallower tupperware with a piece of sponge cloth cut to shape before I put money down for a Sta-Wet. Note: if you hate super goopy craft paints half as much as I do, the same trick can semi-hydrate them to approximate something usable.
Why did I buy what I already had? I got super tired of reaching up and into the container to get at the paint. This is made doubly bad by being terrifically nearsighted and not being able to paint with my glasses on. On the upside, it's a significant magnification from "normal". After about two months, I got real tired of bumping my brushes on the edge of the container. The Sta-Wet is super shallow and cost me $10. Seemed like a win. Note: the paper it came with isn't for mini-paints. Use parchment paper instead.
I had one problem that sucked with the Sta-Wet. Other than quite often poking through the parchment and spilling paint into the sponge, the sponge also tends to gather mold. This makes it smell funny and will eventually start to look funny. Sometimes it's just paint. I started trying to resolve it with flow improver which I think is a mind anti-bacterial. I never tried dish soap because I hadn't thought of it until just now. My solution? A few bits of copper. Note that we think of modern pennies as being copper but they're mostly made of zinc. I had some heavy gauge wire which I stripped, curled up and stuck in each corner and I haven't had a mold problem since. Note that some paints smell funny all on their own.
Army Painter paints have a couple...er...attributes worth noting. First, they are stupidly hard to shake well enough to mix because when properly mixed they are quite thick. Mine are almost always separated, though I did buy them like five years ago. I've taken to dropping stainless steel ball bearings into each dropper to help mix and they're still hard to shake well enough. Second, if you work with glazes like I do, you have to be super extra careful not to over-thin them. At best they'll go glossy which is usually not what I want. At worst they stop being paint and aren't usable and the ratio to non-paint is not consistent across colors. Last, and I think the worst part, is that quality seems to be all over the board. I've found the colors I like and I tend to use those a lot. Everything else feels like it's just taking up space.
...and then I bought an airbrush. Army Painter paints do not like being forced through airbrushes. While not as bad as crappy craft paints in this department, I do not recommend using these in this way. So I had to buy new paints. Vallejo's Game Air and Model Air lines are made for airbrushes, and no, I have no idea what the difference is. Better yet, you can use them with a not-airbrush and because they're thinned enough to go through an airbrush, you don't need to thin them. These are higher quality than the Army Painter paints for the most part and I'm probably going to replace my existing paints with Vallejo as I progress. While not meant for airbrushes, I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Vallejo's inks which I like a lot. The normal blue (azul) is probably my favorite color of any paint I own. Vince has a really good breakdown of different paints by brand if you're interested.
I also bought two packs of Badger Minitaire paints mostly because Vince talked about them. Badger makes airbrushes so, naturally, these are airbrush paints. The pigment is super fine, so fine, in fact, that it's often hard to get them to mix properly. Luckily, the ball-bearing trick works for these too, so I got that goin' for me. Their color line is a lot more limited than Vallejo's and like the model air/game air paints, I sometimes use these with a paint brush. The two sets I got were their normal paint line and their ghost tints which will require their own paragraph.
I think ghost tints are washes, and can be used for really sweet effects. They are fairly thin and go on with a light gloss. I haven't used them all but I have loved the handful I've used. Just for fun I once put a light coat of plasma fluid on a select area of a mostly-metallic figure I was finishing. The effect was so nice that I slapped it over most of the metallics on the figure. Another anecdote? Sure. I was looking for a nice red effect to stick in a gnoll's yodeling mouth. Have I mentioned how much I love gnolls? In putting a drop of "fresh blood" on my old home-made wet palette (more in a bit) I accidentally dropped a bit on my cutting board. It dried pretty quickly as acrylics tend to do and when I noticed it, I immediately started to look for where I'd cut myself--it was that convincing.
Wet Palette
People like to say that a wet palette will improve your painting more than almost anything else. I don't know if that's true. I do know that it improved mine and even better than that, it made me stop worrying about wasting drops of paint I only used three or four brushstrokes out of. We've all got our own neuroses.Most mini paints benefit from being thinned. Remember that we want very thin coats so we don't cover up detail. A wet palette will help with this by osmosing water into the paint over time. If you use a container that has a seal (and you should) you can close the lid when you're done and the paint will keep for a few days. Save money! Paint better! It's a win-win! But it's better than that! You can build your own!
You can find all kinds of tutorials for building these on the cheap. I started here. In fact, I built multiple of them. I started with a container like this (it was like $4 and came with lunchmeat in it--good for holding all kinds of hobbying). I then stuck a couple kitchen sponges in the bottom, cut a square of parchment paper (these have a grid for easy cutting), poured some water in the bottom and started painting. I switched to a larger, shallower tupperware with a piece of sponge cloth cut to shape before I put money down for a Sta-Wet. Note: if you hate super goopy craft paints half as much as I do, the same trick can semi-hydrate them to approximate something usable.
Why did I buy what I already had? I got super tired of reaching up and into the container to get at the paint. This is made doubly bad by being terrifically nearsighted and not being able to paint with my glasses on. On the upside, it's a significant magnification from "normal". After about two months, I got real tired of bumping my brushes on the edge of the container. The Sta-Wet is super shallow and cost me $10. Seemed like a win. Note: the paper it came with isn't for mini-paints. Use parchment paper instead.
I had one problem that sucked with the Sta-Wet. Other than quite often poking through the parchment and spilling paint into the sponge, the sponge also tends to gather mold. This makes it smell funny and will eventually start to look funny. Sometimes it's just paint. I started trying to resolve it with flow improver which I think is a mind anti-bacterial. I never tried dish soap because I hadn't thought of it until just now. My solution? A few bits of copper. Note that we think of modern pennies as being copper but they're mostly made of zinc. I had some heavy gauge wire which I stripped, curled up and stuck in each corner and I haven't had a mold problem since. Note that some paints smell funny all on their own.
Handling Devices
I super recommend having a handle to hold your fig as you paint it. Doing so prevents some paint from ending up on your hands, helps prevent hand cramps, and might just keep your fig from winding up on the carpet. Minis and paints are cheap, but carpets, sadly, are not. Also, it's really lousy to pull carpet fibers off of partially dried paint.Lots of people have said lots of things like using dowels, blocks, corks, bottles, and other random things. I used empty foil roll cut to length with cardboard squares hot glued to both sides containing a few pennies for weight. They worked...ok. You could spend like $8 on a Games Workshop thing if you really want to, but if you haven't already figured it out, I'm cheap. If you saw the previous post, you already know that I use empty spice jars. They cost about $7, have a good weight, fit well in a hand, and come with spices in them. A wad of blu tack secures the mini during painting and away you go. I've got a collection of about a dozen of these with more on the way which is handy for batch painting.
Fin?
Interspersed with stuff I picked up from other people in this almost-series is some practical crap and experience I picked up all on my own. This post pretty much exhausts these learnings so this might be the last of the long-form posts containing practical stuff for a while. This is my way of giving back to the folks who helped me out on the journey. Hopefully someone out there will find something helpful here too.
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