Don't Panic!

Hari has started painting his amazons.

Since I can't give him advice personally on how to paint miniatures, here's a simple little guide to the basics of painting and shadowing of miniatures. Maybe that can be useful to Nico and Patrick too.

The following describes how I paint my models, but of course there are as many other ways as there are painters. Still, i believe my technique to be a good compromise between effects and time, resulting in rather good-looking models obtained in a reasonable amount of time.

Here are the basic rules you should stick to:

1) Undercoat well! The spots that are missed by the primer-spray should be undercoated with paint and brush.

2) Three shades minimum! I ALWAYS paint at least 4 layers (= shades) on every model, for every type of zone.

e.g. The leather parts get 4 shades of brown, the skin parts get 4 shades of skin-colour etc...

You can paint only three layers to save time, but at the expense of realism. You should never paint less, lest you regret it in a week time.

3) Darkest colour first! ALWAYS start with the darkest colour and work your way up to the brightest.

4) Shrink the layers as you go. Every new layer you paint onto the model should be smaller than the previous layer, thus creating the wanted "3-dimensional" effect.

e.g.

5) Drybrush metal parts! Parts that are to look as though made of metal, should NOT be painted as described above, but should be painted by "drybrushing" (explained later).

6) Dip the brush carefully. Try to avoid paint going up to the metal part. It makes the brush last longer without loosing it's tip.

That's about it.

Let's see an example. I painted an orc arm here, but it is the exact same technique with EVERY miniature. Only the colours change.

Here I used 3 colours for the skin. Light green, dark green and black. I used black to make my dark green even darker (= 1st layer!)

Step 1: Undercoat.

Thick brush for drybrushing and thin one for the painting of the skin.

Step 2: drybrushing weapons.

- Paint/Undercoat the part in BLACK.
- Take some "rust" paint onto your (thick) brush and wipe off 80% of it into a piece of cloth (or other).

- Now brush the weapon with vigorous strokes. Make sure some of the black undercoat still shines through. Don't take too much paint or you will clog the detail of the miniature!

- Reapeat the same only with "metal" colour, and stroke more gently. You should now see both, very little black AND a little "rust" shimmer through.

Step 3: Painting the skin.

As described above, paint the layers.

1. 90% dark green + 10% Black

2. Pure dark green (smaller areas)

3. 50% dark green + 50% light green (even smaller areas)

4. 10% dark green + 90% light green (only highest areas, like knuckles etc...)

Below I did the same for the orc's wristband, only with 3-4 shades of brown. Tadaaaa!

For human skin you would rather have used Brown and Pink. Starting with pure Brown and finishing with pure pink. The intermediate shades would be mixes of those two.

e.g. The layers would be as follows:

1. Pure brown.
2. 40% brown + 60% Pink
3. 10% brown + 90% Pink
4. Pure pink on the nose, cheeks, fingers...

The percentages should depend on the paints used, and on what you think looks good. There is no ideal recepie. Be creative!

I hope this helps.