"What's your painting production method?" Topic

I tend to go into binge mass production.
The last few weeks I have been mostly basing and priming.
Last night I finished basing 30 stands of Yank paratroopers for Flames of War. Previously I had done a mass of weird support troops for Early War Russians.
When I settle down to paint, I will do all the flesh for dozens of units in a night. Then I will spend a night doing red. Or blue. Or drybrushing flesh or horses. Or basing and terraining.
The concept of sitting down and doing a figure from start to finish in one session is foreign to me.

But for now I am done with basing and priming. (Well I still have a night's worth of spray priming.)
Now it's back to painting neglected projects, a color at a time.

So, choice 1)

1) Mass production in massive lots.

I'm doing Warmaster in 12mm scale just now, one brigade at a time so 4 units, 6 strips each all mounted with blue tac on painting sticks.

For cavalry I basecoat all the horses in one unit the same colour, light brown, dark brown, dark grey and light grey. This coat covers the base as well as half the mounted figure. Then I do the same colour across the whole brigade, all the flesh, all the armour, all the coloured sleeves, all the legs and so on. Lastly the various unit disinctions if any.

Finally an ink wash and a day later a coat of varnish, base the following day and onto the next brigade. That way I can easily do a brigade a week and still have time for other projects and game playing.

Mass production, usually 12 cavalry or 36 infantry at a time. One color for all then next color. Faces and hands first, then coats, pants etc.

I do a hybrid of mass and single production. I spray prime dozens of figures at a time (and I almost always prime with the predominant color), block in the main colors in groups of ten or so, and finish detailing them one at a time. This saves time on the tedious chores, and allows me to focus on the detail individually.

Mass production always. Company of 20 mm figures, usually.

2) Bite-size. One unit at a time.

I paint as many figures as fit on part of a newspaper at a time. I paint one color on each of four figures at a time. Then I do another color on another four figures, and so on. This takes about an hour to work through all the figures I'm working on if they're 28mm. Then I take a break. I'm taking a break now. In a bit, I'll get back to painting for about another hour. The time period is important as I suffer from a bad back. I can only sit for so long. However, I find that this method allows me to paint a large number of miniatures in a very short amount of time. At least when compared to nearly all my fellow hobbyists hereabouts. Of course, the fact that I'm disabled means I can, and do, devote more time to painting miniatures than almost everybody I know. Also, I find doing a mix of figures at once can be a good way to avoid loss of interest in a particular subject. Just now, for example, I'm painting a mix of 28mm Japanese WW2 infantry, along with some German and American 15mm WW2 vehicles.

Mass production here. Currently working on the following GHQ models – 15 Honey Tanks, 10 PZIIJ, 2 packs of Afrika Korps infantry, and 1 pack of heavy weapons. That is fairly typical of what I work on at once.

MASS, mass and more mass. Currently the Old and Middle Guard in 15mm. Roughly 250 figures on the table. That is typical for when I binge paint. I have 2-3 colors left on them before the Dip

I do about 50 figures at a time. In theory they get one color at a time. Of course, I notice the spots missed after cleaning the brush, while painting a different color.

A dozen (28mm) at a time is the best I have ever been able to manage.

The concept of sitting down and doing a figure from start to finish in one session is foreign to me.

I did it so often in the old days, it's hard to get that far beyond it, even for cookie-cutter troops.

Now, I will clean, model, and prime tons of minis in a sitting.

If painting units, one color at a time. Eventually I will finish one figure or base of figures to see the final result, then paint the rest of the unit using that method. The problem comes if I finish a figure but then don't finish the unit, as I don't always take notes on colors, washes, etc. I have several units like that right now.
M

The more figures I paint, the slower the rate. It's a psychological thing.

Although I do more on occasion, I like 6 foot or three mounted at a time.

Same…

Use base colors on a batch of a dozen or so at a time…

Flesh, base colors, then flat black, then browns, etc…

Generally mass production, same colours on large numbers of things simultaneously. For 15s my ideal batch size is around 60 figures at a time although I've done up to 200 in one go. These usually map on to specific units, so there are explicit deliverables at the end.

For filling in, I'll do two figures or twenty, depending.

Once I've done the current batch of tanks I've got a 300 figure project coming up, which I think I'll break down into significant subunits.

1 base at a time. Start to finish

Paint half the squad.

Leave them on the shelf for months.

Realize I don't have any more of at least one of the colours when I pick them back up.

Send everything off to someone who knows how to paint!