Report from ReaperCon 2006

Robert Cruse - Painting Grunts Good

I added this class after I arrived, and I'm glad I did.

There were two of us in addition to Robert in the class, so it was good, personal instruction. His previous class in the same room had been on using an airbrush to prime miniatures, and I wish I had signed up for that one as well! - but I guess I'll have to wait until next time for that.

Do check out his website, as he has some good references on NMM and using an airbrush. He is a contributor to Darkson Designs' painting book.

The thrust of this class was how to turn out an army quickly, but make it look good. Here's what he showed us:

• Prime the figures black for fantasy, or grey for historicals (because it will give a worn look to the uniforms)
• Then get a color palette, preferably one that has 20 or so slots in it, and lay out your paints that you want to use. Lay your colors out, going from dark to light. (In the examples he showed us, he used 6 segments of the palette. Lay out the colors like this, with the amount of the dark color shown at the top of the table and the light color on the bottom:

• Now, mix the colors up in each segment, and thin them (remember, I heard this a lot all weekend!)
• Take 5 to 10 miniatures that are posed in a similar fashion, and work on them in one shot. Take one part of the miniature (face, legs, cloak), and work through all of the models in that one part. This is not assembly-line painting as you will be doing the shading as you go, not just blocking out colors.
• Starting with the dark color first, work your way through the miniatures with each color in order (that is, color 1 on 10 miniatures, then color 2, and so on), working towards the highlighted areas as you paint.
• Glaze when finished, if you want a smoother transition.

This is similar to regular blending, but it's blending on speed. The result is pretty staggering, as the figures turned out looking like a lot of time had been spent on them individually, and they were done fast.