Love mini painting, wish I got to do it more. I’m working on a laser-cut rack for all my vallejo paints, I’ll remind myself to post a link to the file when I’m done.
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You should also look into the Army Painter Method. They have developed a range of products to try and make painting much faster with still get decent tabletop results. It’s basically a colored spay primer, base-coating, a dip in a tone wash, highlights and basing. Done.
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Oh, please do. I’m looking for such a rack. What will the diameter for the holes be? I have a combo of Citadel, Vallejo, and Army Painter paints.
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At home, so I’m eyeballing my crappy photos, the diameter for the Vallejo’s is about 1.25 inches, and the diameter for the Citadel rack (which is much more basic) is 1.5 inches for the holes. Each rack stores 50 tubes, but the vallejo one can’t fit bigger kinds for obvious reasons.
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You can find a laser-cutting process video for the vallejo rack, and a photo of the complete citadel rack- at my instagram, which is artshoptech.
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That’s true, I can just start over. That gives me enough confidence to try it out!
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Get some cheap minis that you can afford to burn, water your paints down and experiment. Basic wash and dry brush techniques are surprisingly easy.
Undercoat in matt white, paint the key regions in appropriate colours, cover it all with a dark wash and then highlight the shiny bits with drybrushing. You’ll be surprised how well it turns out.
Metal is just black with silver on top or vice-versa. You can tweak the “heroic-ness” of it by fiddling with the amount and order of the black and silver. Muscle or cloth is just colour with a bit of black or brown wash on top. Anything too small to do with precision, catch with the drybrush.
I suck at painting, but I can still do this:
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Tangentially related… This youtuber’s channel. He is an obsessively talented diorama and train set creator, and once you get past the relentlessly repetitive background music, his videos are hypnotic to watch.
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RE metal miniatures, John McEwan is still churning them out. These are REAL old-school minis, smaller and cruder than what we get today. But man, the variety! I like his 20th century sets: You can pit KKK guys against G-men, Chinese warlord troops against gill-men.
http://tin-soldier.com/roleplayfigs.html
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That’s a healthy attitude. I hope it works out.
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19 3/4 years of worrying about the next acquisition / downsizing made me save like crazy and learn to live on a budget, so when the reaper finally caught up with my career I don’t have to worry.
And I have the perfect excuse NOT to buy into the next BONES kickstarter. Sooooo many to paint.
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And they’re doing another Kickstarter in August… Arghghghgh
I’m in a similar situation, but wihout the miniatures.
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I still have the first figurine I bought. I am quite sure it has lead in it. I played that character on one long campaign, and used it for a few others. I never painted it because it was easier to imagine what ever clothes or armor or other cosmetic changes that happened in the game with a simple unpainted representation of that character. Like a wireframe rendering.
I am quite sure that the figurines were made locally or at least packaged locally, as a huge lot of old school ruff figurines, plates, and the like showed up at the art reuse store, a place where people can drop off high quality recyclables and reusables for others to use. I picked up a few of the odd ones for the X-mas tree.
I just hated the idea of my figurines being painted, somehow it always seemed garish, wrong. A painted figurine seemed to limit imagination. A painted character seemed too not represent changes ethnicity, race, etc… (but not gender- in most cases that set as it was cast.)
Lastly, figurines were/are expensive. Paint was no less expensive, driving up the cost significantly.
I did fix the painted numbers on my polyhedral dice.
[EDIT] I loved this article and the photos people have posted. A well painted figure is an art piece, but I still won’t paint any play character figurines.
I’m through. Going to have to get disciplined about ignoring Kickstarters, even ones by friends.
Specifically, lead 'cause some crusading politicians were looking for an easy target. Handling and painting lead minis is not hazardous.
Oh I had to 'splain it to lots of other gamers that there is a difference between swallowing the mini vs putting the filings on your cornflakes as the latter will readily get absorbed and the former will just pass through you.
Still pewter was stronger even if a pain in the ass to cut up and well sorry not going back after working with plastic now.
Most importantly, if you’re just starting off, a painted mini will look better on the table than a naked one no matter what your skill level. And you’ll only get better from there.
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The best starting point would be a basin of warm, soapy water and a cheap toothbrush. You really need to give minis like Bones a really good wash to remove any lurking release agent from the molding process. All the best with your project. My pile of minis has outgrown any attempts at painting it.
I don’t know about other places, but the EU brought in RoHS because of concerns about leaching in landfill waste.
