Speed Painting

By Assistant Doc Ed Heidal

Well you just bought that boxed army and painted one figure out of and it took you 4 hours to get a nice high light result on it, BUMMMER right? Well this tip is here to help you get a nice result with little time input. This should be done to 5-10 models at one time. The main style of painting here is dry brushing, dry brushing is done by dipping your brush into paint then wiping the paint off on to a paper till it is almost dry then with heavy, medium, and light stoke types against the model. You can practice this by gluing some sand to paper then paint it and try different amounts of paint left on the brush and how much pressure you apply. 

Step 1: clean any flash from the models that came from casting

Step 2: glue all parts together, keeping any big multi-part models in 2 to 3 parts, then pinning them together latter. Pinning is done by drilling small holes in the model with a pin vise, and using wire and glue to hold the model together.

Step 3: is to then glue the models to its bases

Step 4: prime the models in a thin coat of black primer, be careful not to prime models to heavy as you may cover up some detail. Priming is not necessarily undercoating and a little primer goes a long way.

Step 5: is to base coat the models with black paint or a color that dries to almost black, so if you want a red, yellow, orange, or flesh models use the darkest brown you can find. Though as you get better at painting you’ll want to base each part of the model with different dark colors of that color.

Step 6: heavily dry brush each part of the models separately the color you want each part, armour blue, boots brown, skin flesh, etc. Only leaving black line or spots to show the detail.

Step 7: is to now go back and use a lighter color of each color you choose or mix white to that color (2 parts base color to 1 part white). Use a medium dry brush stroke this time, as you want some of the first to show.

Step 8: is to now go back and use the lightest color of each color you choose or mix white to the color (2 parts base color to 2 parts white). Use a really light dry brush stroke at this point but don’t worry if you think you have it to light.

Step 9: Now for the ease, make an ink of all your base colors you choose, this is done by adding clean water to the paint, usually 1 part paint to 3-5 parts water. I tend to use 5 parts of water but this might take more then one coat to get the results you need. Paint the ink of the color over that area on the models, this will darken up any colors to light but will allow them to show through also. Now let them dry over night is best. Try your best not to splash into the other areas. But if you do touch it up with the light color and re-ink it.

Step 10: black line any parts that meet with light colors like flesh meeting with a red glove. This is done with a black ink, you’ll need a fine detail brush to do this.