Painting your own miniatures can be a very daunting prospect. My own journey with the hobby began when I was 8 with the Lord of the Rings Two Towers starter set. The results were, shall we say, less spectacular than what I would have hoped.

Painting is definitely a skill. Like any skill it requires some patience and a bit of practice. The problem that a lot of budding hobbyists soon find, however, is that they don’t know where to begin or what the basic skills even are.

This article is going to run through the basic skills that underpin the work of any hobbyist. Competency in these core skills will allow anyone to produce results that they can be proud of placing on the gaming table, while also maintaining a nice time investment to results ratio.

0. Tools

Not necessarily a building block, but something to keep in mind, is that miniatures painting is made immensely easier by having an array of brushes and a good selection of paints. Brushes and paints are effectively your tools. Often times, simply having the right tool for the job makes all the difference. But, much like a tool box, you can build this up over time, buying paints and equipment as you need it, so don’t stress.

1. Undercoating

Undercoating (or priming) is the application of a single flat colour to the entire model before you begin the rest of your painting. Undercoating is exactly like putting primer on a wall before you paint your house. An undercoat allows the paint that follows to adhere to the model properly and provides a base tone to the model.

Here is my first piece of golden advice. You can undercoat by hand using a paint brush, or you can get a spray can. Undercoating by hand is a bitch to do, takes a lot longer, and invariably provides a worse result. Get the spray, love the spray.

Here’s a helpful video guide on how to undercoat models by spray painting them.

2. Thin Your Paints / Paint Control

I’m personally quite lazy about this, but one of the main mistakes that new painters make is that they apply the paint too thick.

Similar to heavy makeup, thick paint looks amateurish and obscures detail. Thinning your paints refers to the fact that most paints require you to mix the paint with a controlled amount of water or medium so that it flows nicely and doesn’t go on too heavy.

Some painters, and generally the better ones, thin their paints on a palette or paint pad. Lazy ones, like me, just mix the paint on the brush by dipping it in water. Don’t be like me, I’ve acquired terrible habits in this regard because I didn’t have someone telling me what to do when I was starting out. I am telling you what to do, use a palette and be a better painter for it.

Again here’s a lovely video guide.

3. Basecoats

Once you’ve undercoated your models (and the models have dried), you now need to apply the main colours to each area of the model. Before you start painting your models you should have a think about what colours you want to use and how you want to have the colours fit together. The general rule of thumb is to have two main colours and then often what is referred to as a spot colour to break things up.

In the above commando we can see I have two main colours. The brown leather, and the desert yellow. This model works perfectly fine, although the model does have a slightly ‘samey’ look to it because the colours blend together slightly.

Because I wanted the model to be more striking, I’ve applied the blue/grey colour to a small area of the model (hence why it’s called a spot colour) to make it more visually distinct.

Applying base colours is effectively doing the model equivalent of a colouring in book. You want to take care to paint between the ‘lines’, but don’t worry too much. If you mess up you can either paint over the mistake with the correct colour later on or, if you’re quick enough, you can take a clean brush and dab it in some water before using the brush to remove the mistaken paint.

Keeping in mind our second guideline, it’s better to apply two thin even coats rather than one thick one. As you develop confidence in your thinning abilities you can reduce it down to a single base coat. Taking your time here really pays dividends because a good base coat sets up the whole model.

Here are some of my models with their base coats applied (barring the guns):

4. Washing

Once you have applied all of your basecoats (and they have dried completely) you’ll want to wash the model. Washes or shades are a special kind of paint, normally referred to as a technical paint, that are more oily and behave more like a liquid than your average colour paints. The job of a wash is to run into the recesses of the model and apply natural shading to it.

A good shade is often referred to as skill in a bottle, and for good reason. Learning how to shade effectively (and it’s not hard) will improve your models immensely.

Here we can see the same models after they have been shaded:

The difference between the two is dramatically noticeable. We can see that the shade has pooled into all the recesses creating nice, natural looking, points of contrast, and has made all of the details on these miniatures stand out.

I applied a heavy wash on the Fleet Troopers, basically lathering the models in the shade paint. We can see how this has darkened the overall models; not much of a concern given the grimy look of my infantry but something to keep in mind when painting models on which we want a cleaner look.

Princess Leia below, for example, has a much lighter wash applied. The effect is still noticeable, but a lot more subtle.

5. Highlights

Once you’ve shaded your model (and the shade is dry) you can stop there and the model will be finished to a perfectly good standard! Or, you can apply finishing touches like highlights. There’s a multitude of ways to highlight a model, and lots of different techniques to do so.

The simplest way, which I recommend for the majority of models, is to either take the base colour (which will now appear lighter than the darkened shaded colour) or a colour that is one step lighter than your base, and then apply that as what is called an edge highlight.

Edge highlights, as the name suggests, apply a thin band of the highlight paint along the raised edges of the model. This heightens the contrast from our wash, and really makes the model pop.

You can compare the shaded models to these highlighted models. When you look closely you’ll be able to see thin lines of paint. But, and here’s the key, the human eye tends to automatically blend these things. A lot of miniature painting is just using the way the eye works to do the work for you (incidentally this is why models generally look much better in person rather than in photos).

The more thin layers of highlights you apply, the more natural the effect is (see for example Leia’s jeans above). Though in the majority of cases a simple, single, edge highlight will look great.

Additional: Drybrushing

Not so much a building block as it is simply a very handy technique.

Drybrushing is the opposite to how you normally paint a model (and requires a brush with a firmer flat head style of bristle known as, shockingly, a drybrush).

When you drybrush you take a small amount of your paint, do not thin it down, and then run the brush over some tissue or other material until only a light amount of paint appears when you brush with it. You then take your drybrush and effectively “dust” the area where you are drybrushing. This will pick out the raised areas and edges of where it is applied to.

Drybrushing is an especially effective technique for things like fur, chain mail, or other high texture surfaces (as seen on the chainmail of the Ork below). Much like salt in cooking though, it is always better to go too light with your drybrush than it is to go too heavy! Remember, you can always apply more.

Additional: Basing

Basing is largely dependent on the environment you intend your model to be in. Nearly all hobby stores will have simple starter basing kits, but I also strongly recommend Citadel’s basing paints. These paints have grit mixed in that create a textured look when applied to a base. This can then be easily washed and drybrushed to finish the base.

Additional: Protection

Your models should be protected, especially if you’re playing with them as paint will chip and be damaged with handling and use. To prevent this you should apply a matte varnish. Matte is important because otherwise the varnish will make your models shiny. Varnish can be bought as a spray can like an undercoat (which I strongly urge you to use if you intend to varnish your models).

Conclusions

In a nutshell though, those are the five building blocks that will allow you to paint models to a consistent standard that will look fantastic together on the tabletop.

Undercoat your models with a spray, apply basecoats with appropriately thinned paints, wash the model with a shade paint, and then apply a simple edge highlight. You can see this process start to finish below:

I look forward to seeing your forays into this wonderful hobby of ours!

– Intel Officer Luke