"Dialing Paint Quality UP (or DOWN)" Topic

If you can loosen up your paint quality requirements, you can get these projects finished.

Two questions:

[1] Do you do dial up/down your paint quality at different times?

[2] Why?

[1] I dial my quality up and down for different projects. Often times this doesn't manifest until after priming/block painting. I will change like – how many colors I use, how much effort in blending/varying shades, which details are painted vice impiled (wash, drybrush, etc.), level of detail on stuff like faces, exactly what needs to be touched up or not.

[2] I don't know. It doesn't seem to follow a pattern based on – what the minis are (RiF vs character figures), when I need them (eventually … this Saturday), or even external stressors. The only consistent standard is if I making something for someone else I will detail the Hell out of it until my eyes bleed. (That could be charity or ego, but probably is a varying mix of both.)

Thanks for creating a discussion thread on this point.

I know paint quality is a very personal issue. I also know that posts on tackling the lead pile, is a recurring theme on TMP.

I voiced my viewpoint to a mini's gaming friend, around 5-10 years ago, that if he painted to a lower standard, he'd get more figures on the tabletop. I said,

Who will know?

He replied,

I would.

It was a short conversation, that was…

The new Speed Paints, and even the older dark wash techniques, can get armies painted to a standard which looks good on the tabletop, 3+ feet from our orbits, in very little time! I average 5-10 minutes per figure. It seems like most mini's gamers spend 1-12 hours per figure… Folks seem unable to bring themselves to paint to a lower standard, and so their lead piles continue to grow.

In answer to your specific questions:

[1] Do you do dial up/down your paint quality at different times?

Yes, but only on larger figures, like dragons, or occasionally leader figures, or unique monster figures.

[2] Why?

Because they are one-off's.

For the rank and file, line troops, I do those assembly line style, organized by pose: same paint, same brush stroke, on each figure, within each group -- it saves an incredible amount of painting time! I mix different poses on 2- and 3-figure stands, to make them appear to have some variety. In a large unit size, with multiple ranks of figures, they look pretty good with mixed poses -- they do not look like musket era formed troops, or modern parade ground marching troops. If they have some distance between their bases, as opposed to base-to-base Units, they look even better.

Cheers!

No mini is ever finished – just abandoned. I can always do more, but choose not to.

I use the same paint quality throughout--mostly Citadel and Vallejo. However, the quality of my painting is generally better on better sculpts, on favorite units--which are not necessarily elite units--and in "horse and musket" periods, where one can never be too well-dressed on the field of battle.

Worth noting that scale makes a difference too. Well painted in 6mm is not, to me, the same thing as well painted in 28mm, or in 2mm.

Bingo Robert. Some sculpts just cry out for extra attention while others are less inspiring. Unusual or interesting poses usually merit extra attention, especially in a mini diorama situation on a particular stand.

The really small scales reward uniformity and consistency across the whole, making for a very different approach. Either the entire army will look good or it won't

I stay consistent. The majority of my paints are now craft paints, due to the number of shades available. I "up" the quality by adding a few drops of gloss or matte varnish to the small batch I'm using so that it doesn't flake off after it dries. It's the colors that are important… ;-)

I agree with flashman14, except I don't abandon it, I grudgingly accept it.

For additions to old armies – which is the bulk of what I've painted in the last ten or fifteen years – I generally try to match the style of the original figures. So quality goes up and down depending on which sins I'm revisiting.

For new projects, I had a general trend of increasing quality until we got kids, at which point I started to prioritize speed instead.

That said, thanks to Contrast-style paints and my own improving skills, what I paint for speed now may well look better than what I painted for quality in the noughts.