"Best Painting Tip?" Topic

We all want better-looking figures—but most of us would also like to finish an army before old age overtakes us.

Over the years, many of us discover one technique, tool or habit that genuinely speeds things up or improves the final result.

What's the single painting shortcut that made the biggest difference for you?

It might be:

a favourite wash or dip
drybrushing
Contrast/Speed paints
zenithal priming
batch painting
better brushes
a wet palette
painting in a particular order
a particular paint range
something completely unexpected?

For me, a select use of Contrast Paint – not whole figures but a belt here or a cloak there.

And you? Not necessarily your best painting trick—but the one that most improved your results, your speed, or your enjoyment of the process.

Paying someone to do them.

^ That's what I was going to say.

Good enough is good enough.

Don't obsess with touch-ups, especially in the moment.

That good brushes make a difference and that larger brushes with fine points beat any 4/0.

It's not one technique but a combinations of options. Using contrast/ speed as washes is IMO better than plain over white. Use triad build up with another two colors. Better brushes always make it easier and batch painting makes the units flow. I paint batch/ assembly line style where the whole unit build up at the same time so when the last piece of webbing is painted the unit is complete. But the best technique is to vary what you paint.
If you're doing a large infantry unit of a brigade and it's made up of 3 units. Just swap out every unit between cav, infantry, vignettes. If you ge burnout or jammed up swap periods for a unit or two. Keeping it fresh is the best technique to me.

What a good painter told me in 1969--"give everything a good white undercoat, and keep painting until you don't see any white."

After that, use washes and dry brushes as much as possible, and don't fool with detail which can't be seen when they're on the table.

Just sit down and do it. You know what works for you.

Paint what you want, when you want, take breaks often, and stop when you are tired.

Paint to please yourself. relax it's a hobby!
Paul

3 foot rule – Figures and units are viewed on the table from 3+ feet away. Anything which is not noticeable from that distance does not need to be worked on.

For me, techniques used depends on the subject being painted. A 6mm figure demands a treatment often at odds
with a 54mm figure. There is a factor that is not usually
addressed and that is water. Any time you use a water-based paint, you need a good-sized container for water. A muddy shot glass just won't cut it. If you use dirty water, you will go lose your driver's license, or at least be struck blind.

For me it's the advice from The Yarkshire Gamer to just knuckle down and get on with it – I'm a dreadful procrastinator.

I have to agree with CAPTAIN BEEFHEART:

Scale, and even genre may dictate very different painting methods.

Things that help in general: clean brushes, one of those pop-it toys with all the little paint wells (very useful if painting multiple figures at once). Media to add to paint, regardless of paint, it almost always pays off to have some media to mix with it. A good chair. Good lighting.

Don't get sucked into lots of touch-up work where you accidently slopped over the line. If you slopped over because the brush has multiple points, get a new brush (I'm cheap that way).

Varying what I paint is good. After three or four months of painting Celts or Pathans, it is time to switch to a month of Chinese Warlord troops.

Thinking about what you are painting, looking at other's work, and generally watching the world around you give you new ideas to try out, and keep painting interesting.

Grelber

Another for the 3 Foot Rule.

Paint for Effect

Paint when you're in the mood. Good music, something to drink, no distractions. That's when I do my very best work.

A possible addition or reinforcement to the above-"paint like no one is watching." Odds are no one else may ever see what you have achieved/failed to do-so you are generally in it for yourself. You can feed or crush your ego on any given project, but it is YOUR project

Do ONE more layer of highlights.

There is no such thing as a badly painted figure, just one that has not been touched up enough.

It only has to be good enough to keep you happy, don't imagine others disdain with what you are proud of!

My best tip: don't take painting tips from me. It takes me a year to paint a unit.

The best painting tip that I would give is get the best lighting source(s) that you can afford, and natural light is the best if you can arrange it.

I discovered acrylic inks a year after I started painting, and they save a lot of time making figures look "nice". I started with (and still use) artists' acrylic inks (mostly FW acrylic ink), but Citadel Contrast paints, AP Speedpaints, Vallejo Xpress Colors, AKI Quick Gen paints, etc. are all the same thing.

If you just block paint everything anyway they gain you nothing, but if you like shading and highlighting, the inks do a lot of the work for you in one or two coats, and they can also be used as a color wash to tint a color area darker, bluer, greener, redder, etc.

For vehicles and science fiction, where the base model is often a bright or "military" color (grey, brown, tan, olive green, or if SF red, blue, yellow, green…), consider priming with a clear primer, then just hitting the detail points with other colors.

For creatures and people (in whatever form), paint in "blocks of color." Ease off of detail. What you can see at arm's length, or looking down on the table, is quite sufficient. Don't worry about undersides and deeply recessed areas. Leave ‘em dark— you'll never see ‘em anyway.

The original, Dip Technique, using Minwax Polyshades urethane stain. Cheers!

Use the right sized brushes for what you are painting.

Switching to water-based acrylics, and later a wet palette.

We all want better-looking figures—but most of us would also like to finish an army before old age overtakes us.

Over the years, many of us discover one technique, tool or habit that genuinely speeds things up or improves the final result.

What's the single painting shortcut that made the biggest difference for you?

Bottom line, if you want to finish painting more figures before you die, cut loose your high-quality painting requirement 'boat anchor' which is holding you back.

I look at my figures on the tabletop, more than three feet away, 98% of the time. I hardly ever look at them closer than three feet (2%, at most). I paint for the 98 percentile, while ignoring the 2 percentile where my lower painting standards are obvious.

I have a war gaming friend who paints the eyes on 15mm figures! He is meticulous in his painting. Several years back, he painted up a 28mm figure for his PC in our mutual RPG sessions: 12 hours of painting on one, singular, 28mm figure! It was magnificent…

Me, I do assembly line painting with simple block colors applied, followed by the classic Dip Technique.

Now for the fun part…

This same person has complimented me, repeatedly, on my figure painting results, for the past several years!

In the end, unpainted figures will provide you with very minimal joy, if you pass away with them unfinished…

Get them painted, game with them as much as you can!

For all of us, our days are numbered, and that number grows smaller every hour of every day. Collecting figures is only a small part of the fun of building armies. Painting them, and hopefully gaming with them afterwards, brings far more joy than just collecting them ever will -- at least, it does for me.

If you want to get your unpainted figures onto the gaming table, loosen up, let go of your high quality painting standards… Then, grab some dice and get busy gaming with them! Cheers!

Wise words, Sgt Slag.

I appreciate excellently painted figures and will go out of my way to admire them. However, most people do not look that closely. They'll glance over a table crammed with miniatures, take in the overall effect—figures and terrain together—and compliment the spectacle.

Individual perfection can be rewarding, but tabletop impact often matters more.

In the end, I'd say: paint for yourself.
If painstaking detail gives you pleasure, wonderful. If getting an army finished and onto the table gives you pleasure, equally wonderful.

The real reward is enjoying the process—and then enjoying the game.

+1 zulupaul. I paint to a standard that pleases me even if i dont get them all done.

A wash and drybrush. Transforms a piece of junk into a work of art.

Coupled with a decent and consistent basing.

They will look better in play.

We once played an F&IW game in which the Native figures had been primed white and given a burnt Sienna wash. That was it for painting them. We were a good hour into the game before we noticed. These were the big Redoubt 30mm figures.

This taught me not to sweat so much about perfect paint jobs on gaming pieces.

I save the really good paint jobs for select character figures.

Trust the process. The miniature isn't done until you feel it is. Somewhere along the line you are going to think ‘ugh, this looks awful' but if you trust the process, keep going and keep refining, it will get there and look good.

As a kid I would get to that point of it looking unfinished and give up. When I learned to trust the process, I found I am a much better painter than I gave myself credit for.

Practice.

Drybrush. Watch Artis Opus on YouTube. Drybrushing can make great minis epic, and poor paint jobs good enough.

For this last weekend I had to rush some tractors for a Quar armor game. Resin printer is down (sigh) so I whipped up some FDM prints. All one color plastic, yuck. I Painted the treads, that helped. I dry brushed in a light tan and boom, acceptable mini.

I think if you're going to learn just one skill, it should be dry brushing.

To answer the original question

All of the list has been useful to me and I wouldn't abandon any of them. Probable washes was the thing that really changed the, admittedly way before contrast paint came out

However, they are all "tactical", and I would also recommend a strategic approach

What do you want to get out of painting miniatures? Any answer from "hate painting" to "more fun than gaming" is completely valid and should be used to create a style of painting that makes you happy

If you don't like painting, pay someone or buy painted stuff from ebay. Generally a little touch up and better basing can transform an ebay army

Look at other peoples' armies on the tabletop (with and without your glasses). What appeals to you? What stands out? Might be colour scheme, level of detail, contrast, basing etc. Most people will delight in telling you how they achieved a particular effect

From these observations you can figure out the level of detail and effort that will make you happy (no one else needs to be happy). Ignore anyone who tells you that your painting is bad. Different scales are going to require different approaches

John