First painted mini. Help me improve?

[Scubi]

Hey there, here is the first mini I've painted. It was a lot of frustrating fun. (ha)
Comments and suggestions welcome!

[Primarch]

Well it looks like you got the paint where you wanted it to go, which is a great start. It's probably a little late to say this, but red, yellow and white are the hardest colours to paint (The pigment in the paint doesn't give as good a coverage as other colours).

The next step is probably to try using washes. As the name implies, washes are a very watery type of paint. Usually you paint the basic colours on the mini, apply a wash (all over or just in selected areas depending on what you're doing), then go back over the model in the basic colours and detail colours, making sure to leave some of the wash showing in the recessed areas. This adds depth to the colour and is a quick way of making details stand out.

[Scubi]

Well, truth be told, I got it all over the place and painted over the places where it had spilled over. haha

I'm working on a Lokhurst heavy destroyer and that requires a wash for the green glow.

Any tips on getting white (Citadel's White Scar in particular) to go on smooth? I'll put a photo of the destroyer later, but the BIG gun looks a little chalky after the green wash (Tesseract Glow). I'd like it to be smooth if possible..... Tried watering it down, but still..... crunchy? Does that make sense?

Thanks for the advice!

[Karantu]

Regarding White Scar, one way to get a nice coat of it is to paint up base coats of increasing lighter colours before you paint something white. So for example if you used a black primer you could do something like Mechanicus Standard Grey -> Administratum Grey -> Ulthuan Grey -> White Scar.

From my personal experience I found that the best way to paint White Scar is to avoid it entirely and settle for Ulthuan Grey instead. It still needs thin coats and a relatively light base coat to look good on larger surfaces but for something like the Lokhust Heavy Destroyer's weapons you could skip most of the layering. Anyway, try experimenting and find out what works best for you.

White Scar is still probably useful for highlights and other minor applications. Also if its crunchy, as in there are large particles in the paint it could be that the pot of White Scar you have is dried out or a little defective. But like I mentioned above, I wouldn't bother with trying to find a good pot of White Scar since it's infamously hard to use anyway.

[Konrad]

"Jobs a good un" as the boyz say. Surprised to hear that a Citadel paint comes out chalky. You would think you pay that sort of a premium.....I only have a smattering of new Citadels, so not sure how they all work. I have been using a giant bottle of Americana craft paint I got at the hardware store about a million years ago for my whites. They have Vallejo at Volks, maybe that would work better. My general impression is I wish I could put GW paint in a Vallejo bottle.

[The Other Dave]

I'd say that's a very solid start - honestly "staying between the lines" is about 80% of the work in miniatures painting.

Just looking at it, my biggest advice would be something that's cliche at this point, but thinning your paints a bit and going for a couple thin coats instead of one thick one will go a long way to improving the look of the mini - you can see how there are some brush strokes visible in the red in some places. Just how much to do it is something that comes with practice, but it's something to keep in mind.

I agree with the general consensus that white, whatever the manufacturer, can be very hard to work with. A very light gray or off-white will "read" as white on a painted mini, and those colors rarely have the chalkiness problems that are common to whites from most manufacturers, and also allow for some highlights with pure white when you start trying that. (I'm a Vallejo guy, and would recommend Sky Gray and Pale Sand respectively, but the Citadel lines certainly have analogues.)

I'll give a quick plug for Contrasts too, although they can be tricky on large flat surfaces like marines have. They work quite differently from acrylics, but can produce very nice results quickly and with not much effort.

[Primarch]

I don't usually use white straight from the pot either. You need multiple layers and it still won't cover well. As others have suggested, start with a grey base colour and then work up towards white.

Vallejo paints are available from Hobby Shop Volks in Kamimaezu.

My usual recipe is to get all the non-white parts of the mini done first and then put a layer of Vallejo Light Grey on the parts that will be white. After that I mix the same light grey with my white and go over everything again. If need be, I can add pure white to the top edges.

For example, there is no straight white in this picture.


For yellow I use the same trick but substituting Vallejo Heavy Gold-Brown for the grey.

Using a couple of thin coats (aim for a milk-like consistency) generally gets better results than 1 thick coat. That said, let the layers dry before applying each coat. There are some cool things you can do with paint while it is still wet, but once it starts to dry applying a second coat too soon can result in a lumpy texture forming. (Your brush moves the 1st layer of pigments around and they build up in places).

Speaking as someone who is not a good painter, my personal advice would be:

-Keep a record of colours used, rough mixture ratios and where you applied them. This makes it easier to repeat the process for the next mini. I have a small notebook and pencil on my painting desk.
-You will make mistakes. Keep a cheap but reasonably well-pointed brush on hand along with some fresh water. If you are quick, moisten the brush and carefully 'erase' any small errors.
-If you spot a mistake later, go over it when you've finished the mini.
-Keep two cups of water next to you. Use 1 cup for rinsing dirty brushes and 1 cup for clean water to mix with paint.
-Use cheaper brushes for bulk painting, washes, dry-brushing, contrast paint and any metallic colours. Use your good brushes only for painting smaller areas with regular paints.
-DON'T leave brushes standing in the water pot. In fact, don't let them stand on their tips at all.
-Rinse your brush regularly and get into a good paint-rinse-dry-paint habit now.

And most importantly:

A painted mini, even one that has mistakes, is 1000 times better than an unpainted one. There are some fantastic painters out there, some of our forum members are amazing with a brush. Don't get stressed if you can't do what they do, they've had years of practice. Find your own sweet spot between the time you want to spend and the result you can accept.

[Scubi]

Awesome advice. Thanks all.

I'll look into other paints at Volks and other places.
When it comes to white being chalky, maybe I just need to shake it for an hour or two... Who needs a shake weight when you have paint!?!

Again, thanks to all who have chimed in and I will try to use your advice going forward.

[Jye Nicolson]

That's way better than my first mini, or honestly any of the couple of hundred I've done since so great start!

I'd second Dave's suggestion to check out Contrast paints, they're not quite magic (and skill makes a big difference as you can see in the difference between his results and mine) but they come damn close, especially on detailed areas.

Edit: note you do have three shades/washes in the box that terminator came in, so giving them a try might be a good next step.

[me_in_japan]

I’m late to the party here, so I can mostly only echo what others have said. What you’ve done looks fine to me. And I don’t mean “for a first mini”. There’s plenty of folks who’d be quite happy to put that on the tabletop (including me.)

Using pale grey in lieu of white is solid advice. Certain colours just don’t play well (white, yellow and red being the main culprits) and so it helps a lot if you’re putting them over a colour which is similar-ish. For example, put yellow over a warm ochre, and red over a orange-brown. White goes over basically any really pale color you have, with sand and grey being the most common. Later on you can dick about with what kind of white you prefer (eg a warm, sandy white, or a cool blue-grey white, or whatever) but for now just “white-adjacent” is where you want to be. Note that all of the above will necessitate multiple layers of paint, and so (as Dave pointed out) keeping your layers thin is very important. If the paint is thinned enough, your multiple thin coats will dry about as fast as one thick coat, so it doesn’t gain you any time benefit to paint using thick paint, and you risk losing detail and adding visible brush strokes.

Overall, though, your paint placement is good. You said you made some mistakes then fixed them. Well done - you have discovered the secret of awesome painters the world over

One thing I’m kind of keen to preach about is not being tied to any given manufacturer or shade of paint. GW, Vallejo, scale 75, P3 and others are all very comparable in terms of quality, with the only differentiator being how much paint you get for your buck. They all mix together quite happily, and each range has some unique colors or characteristics that sets it apart. The exception is Tamiya, which you’ll see a lot in hobby stores here. It’s good paint, but uses a different base to the other ones I listed, and is mostly intended for airbrushing. It certainly has its uses, but don’t mix it with the other brands or you’ll get an icky mess.

Which brings me to my last point - get used to mixing your own colours. It’ll serve you well in the long run. By all means keep a notepad of what colors went on which minis (this is useful for painting armies, that you might come back to a year or more later and think “what blue was that again?”) but don’t feel tied to any single shade or tone. The human eye is a fine thing, but the difference between GW Ultramarine blue and some-other-blue-I-eyeball’d-and-mixed-myself is really hard to discern.

In order to get comfy with mixing, I’d highly, highly recommend a wet palette. You’ll need a plastic tray (like you get meat on at the supermarket, assuming you clean the hell out of it. Ferrero roche trays are also perfect, and conveniently come with chocolates in em, too ). A shallow Tupperware would be fine, too, but has less yum-factor

So, take the plastic tray, put a folded paper towel in the bottom of it, and add enough water to make it pretty wet without dripping everywhere. Put a layer of unwaxed baking sheet on this paper towel. This is your mixing surface. You can put little blobs of paint on this and mix em as you see fit. I find adding a small pool of water in the corner of the palette is handy for mixing, too. This set up encourages mixing colors, experimenting with gradations, and general experimentation. I honestly can’t recommend it enough - it’s a real game changer. (Btw, the reason it’s good is that then baking sheet draws water from the kitchen paper as your paint evaporates, thus keeping the paint wet for days at a time. It’s awesome. But don’t leave it for days at a time in the summer. Not in this country. I did that once. Never again )

Those technical points aside, I’d say for your next step you could consider adding some shading and/or highlighting. There’s an easy way to do this, or the hard way.

The easy way (which I do recommend) is using washes. Either buy some citadel contrast paint or mix some inks with a bit of water, and carefully (avoiding excess) paint it over the base color. It will settle in the recesses, and as it dries leave a gradated shadowed area in those recesses. You can then go back with either your base color or even a lighter shade and put some highlights on the most-sticky-outy-bits (knee pads, shoulder pads, knuckles, face). This will result in a very respectable table top mini.

Or there’s the hard way.
*edit* which I’m not going to talk about. Honestly, I wrote a couple paragraphs on the topic, but rereading them it’s clear that it’d be trying to run before we can walk. So, let’s just summarize the hard way by saying “spend an eternity placing every shadow and highlight manually” and leave it at that for now. We can come back to this later, if you can be bothered

So aye - mini number 1 is looking pretty damn good, in my opinion. The next thing to consider is shadows and highlights. Good luck, and keep on painting

-Dave (yes, I am also called Dave. He’s the other one.)

Ps - you’ve probably noticed by now I tend towards very wordy responses. Feel free to ignore em if they get boring