I suggested Vivaldi or Wagner for the music and Morgan Freeman for my voice, but they had to use what the College had in its library.
Okay, the basics are clippers, an x-acto knife, brushes, and paints. For plastics, a set of flush cutting clippers will save you a world of pain. For brushes I use cheap nylon brushes, I do most of my painting with a number six but you'll also want a 3 and a 000. One mistake beginners make is using too small of a brush. They come to a point for a reason. Some folks love a sable brush. I do if I'm drawing in brush and ink but miniatures painting is hard on brushes and I'm not a fan of trashing $30 brushes.
Paints come in various qualities. Most miniatures painting paints are really good: smooth, and highly pigmented. If you're a beginner that doesn't matter so much but if you want really good results you need really good paints. Craft store and dollar store paints will do for learning. I mostly use Army Painter but Games Workshop and Privateer really do make better paints, more expensive but better. Many people love Vallejo but personally it's too thin and a bit glossier than I'd like.
White Dwarf magazine still does okay painting tutorials. The basic approach is clean up the mould lines and flash, paint on a base coat, pick out the details, shade and highlight.
Good modern plastic and metal figures don't have many mould-lines, but second tier companies and resin figures often do. The X-Acto blade with a curved top is handy for this as it can be pushed along like a chisel. Plastic figures are often in more parts and need assembled. Model cement is great for plastics and terrible for everything else. Many people prefer a brush on liquid cement as tube control is a learned skill. Super glue gel is good for most other things. Metal kits often have larger gaps which are best joined with two-part epoxy.
You can spray on your base coat and Army Painter has a great line of spray primers. If you're not painting sports cars or space marines, you'll want a white, grey, brown, or black base coat. White is best if you're using cheaper paints as they won't be opaque enough to cover a dark base coat.
You can paint on a base coat. For more complex models brushing it on gives better coverage. I use acrylic primer with a bit of Future floor wax to thin it down. Don't try this at home.
Primer matters more on metal figures than plastics. Soft plastics like toy soldiers should be base coated with Krylon for Plastic spray paint. Reaper Bones and many board game figures are Vinyl and should absolutely not be painted with Krylon For Plastic as it reacts badly. Plastics and resin figures often need washed with warm soapy water and allowed to dry before base coating.
Most painters use acrylic paints, these have little to no odor and thin out with water. Artists acrylics work but require more skill in thinning and getting the right consistency. Enamels like Testors model paints don't need a primer on metal but require spirits to thin them and stink enough that your wife will send you out to the shed. Really top notch painters use oil paints which stink less than enamels and are thinned with linseed oil but will still get you kicked to the shed. Don't bother with oil paints they take forever to dry. If you're doing non-metallic metallic and light sources and worrying about really consistent blends that'll hold up under a magnifying glass and painting one or two figures over the course of a year, oils are fantastic but if you're painting stuff that people will play with and touch, don't bother.
You want to mostly use flat paints not glossy ones. They just look better and show detail more clearly. If you're using cheap paint it'll be a bit glossy. Army Painter (whee look at me schill) has good dull coat you can use to tone down the gloss. Start painting with the skin and work up to the large areas and then the details. You actually want to overlap your layers as nothing looks worse than a white patch between details and its easier to pick out raised details. Shading and highlighting can really improve a figure as can lettering, patterns, tattoos and other painted detail but those are a bit advanced for this thread. You can do a simple wash slopped all over the figure with really thinned out burnt umber paint that will sink into the recesses and give a simple dip effect without the glossiness of varnish or floor wax dips.
Originally Posted by David Johansen
I suggested Vivaldi or Wagner for the music and Morgan Freeman for my voice, but they had to use what the College had in its library.
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