Painting Mechs For Dummies

By Assistant Doc Ron W. DuBray

Here I will try to layout the easiest and fastest way to get good painting detail from a mini, without knowing how to paint.

I will assume you’ve assembled the mini and I won’t go into that. The first steep is to cover the mini in a thin coat of Black paint. Some think it’s to dark for bright colors but I will soon prove them wrong for theses guys are to be Yellow.

 See fig.1

#1

Step two is too dry-brush (see end of page) the whole mini with white paint to bring out all the natural high points. I use a ½” flat brush for this and slowly add white until I get it looking like fig.2. Make sure the brush is dry enough not to fill in the black low points.

#2

(Dry brushing is a technique were you wipe most of the paint out of the brush onto a peace of paper as to make the brush almost paint less, then lightly pass the brush over the surface of the mini leaving a small amount of paint on it.)

Step three is to dry-brush your base color just like you did the white, and make sure your brush is dry enough not to fill in the low points. You might have to do 2 or 3 coats to get the color your looking for. See fig.3

#3

Step four darker mane colors this is done with a thinned out paint to blend in with the first color also using a dry-brushing move by lightly passing the brush over the mini so the thinned paint does not fill the low points. I also added the brown specks at this point. See fig.4 and 5

#4

#5

Step six in this case was to do all the things I wanted black. The black was thinned to about 40% water so not to be monotone, leaving high and low points. See fig.6

#6

Step 7 is to bring even more high lights into the black and the rest of the mane color I use a 1” brush with a very dry mud like color (it’s a very light tan) and lightly dust the whole mini with it. See fig. 7

#7

The 8^th painting step is to pick out all the colors that you want to add

Also using a thinned out paint to keep the high and low points. I also used a small brush with silver on some of the corners to look like chipped paint.

#8

At this point I fill the base with white glue and cover it with flock, then paint the sides of the base. The last thing to do is spay a coat of clear on the whole mini and it’s a job well done. This whole process takes about 2.5 hours of work after you get to know how to do it. It is also faster to do 2 or 3 minis at a time for the first one is dry by the time you are done the 3^rd.

#9

I hope there was information you could use in you’re painting endeavors and you give this technique a try.