This past month, I’ve failed my Army of the Month Challenge. Sometimes, life gets in the way of painting an army per month, specially when you go at it haphazardly. Which raises the question: When it comes to painting, are you a pantser or a plotter? Continue reading “The Pantsers & Plotters of Painting”
When the hobby becomes a chore, what is a gangsta to do?! Continue reading “From the Pros: Kickstart Motivation”
You know what’s better than cranking out a brand new fully painting army and rolling up to the club to play it? Doing it in half the time. That’s where tag team painting come in!
You don’t have to spend a lot to get a ballin’ hobby setup. Here’s how I made one for the store for well under 75$! Continue reading “Setup a Paint Area – Master your Mancave”
If you’re tired of wandering in the hobby jungle not feeling fulfilled, checkout my guide to getting out of that hobby rut and start painting with a purpose!
Continue reading “Paint With a Purpose – Be a Hobby Champion”
Cleaning up your hobby desk is the literral worst. You lose precious hobby time, it’s boring and more often than not, it gets messy again 3 days later. The. Worst. But no more.
Returning 40K veterans are swarming with the 8th edition. And in the far future of the 41st millenium, they all seem completely clueless. Rather than let you wander like a lost child in the woods, I’m here to help you get a grip on this Newhammer with my favorite hobby ressources.
Like the Magic the Gathering maniac who spends his fortune on cards and can’t spare a dime for sleeves only to find himself out of value because his cards are no longer near mint, this highest standard of cards quality, much the same can be said on the gamer that buys endless miniatures and paints but never buy his tools.
And to this I say: NO MORE! All you need is 10%
Don’t be a fool, buy good tools!
One of the very few rules I have about painting in my leisure time is to spend 10% of my gaming budget on tools. Not 5%, not 50%, 10%.
Tools, whatever they may be, make your life easier and your hobby far more enjoyable.
This 10% takes into account everything. It’s large enough of a number so you can afford the common things right away, like glue or fresh Xacto blades, or save it over a couple of months to get something big like a new camera to take pictures, a fancy new airbrush or straight up buy a new chair for your desk.
Whatever floats your hobby boat.
On the other hand, 10% is also a restraint, keeping you from going overboard. You don’t have to buy every single thing and doodad all the time, even if you can ( Money ain’t no thang, player ) Keep the 10% ratio to keep you grounded with buying what you need instead of trying to get everything.
The best part of this rule is it takes away all excuses.
Ever noticed that a lot of folks that complain that buying an airbrush set is to expensive often have 2000$ and more worth of miniatures. Yet, a good airbrush setup costs barely more than 150$.
To make thing simple, or how I started myself, is to keep track of everything that I complain about ( to myself most of the time) or that I feel like I’m missing when I paint.
The first thing I 10%-ed out on was a Tamiya Electric drill, because I was bummed out of drilling bolter barels in metal grey knights.
Let’s say you’re new to all this, you want to spend your 10% the folloing way most likely:
1- Hobby Tools – Cutters, X-Acto, Glue, Cutting Mat
2- Painting supplies- Paint Starter Set or couple of colours, Colored spray primer, brushes
3- Because you now have the essentials and can get going, look at what is missing and go from there.
Hate assembly with a passion? Look for new tools and toys to make what you hate simpler, like a flash remover or an electric drill.
Not having fun with painting and what to get done fast? Quickshade and Anti-Shine Spray.
Do these steps as your budget allows you and you’ll always be one step ahead of your hobby needs.
Until next time, no excuses, hobby like a champion.
I often preach the gentle art of slamming 3 colors on a miniature and leaving it in that state for months if not years.
And while this may seem like the lazy man’s approach to a fully painted army, it is not. In fact, it’s part of most competition painter’s approach to miniature painting, and it’s called color blocking.
It’s also the best thing ever to have fully painted armies in no time.
Read on to block out with your brush out!
Color blocking and you, a simple guide
Color blocking is doing all the base coats on your model before moving in with the shading and highlighting.
In competition painting, this method is mostly used to get a general feel of the colors and make sure they all fit with one another. It’s quite frustrating to paint a belt buckle filled with details for an hour only to realize it would’ve looked better in silver rather than gold.
Another reason for color blocking is because glazes and oil paints take forever to dry, so working these steps on multiple areas in a row is much smarter than waiting half a day between each coat of paint.
This is a great trick to learn if you are stepping into the competition painting game and want to slightly speed up your super high end painting experience.
This is fine for Mr. Pants, first name Fancy, that paints for competitions, but how can regular-toy-soldier-playing-joe like you and me can use this?
This trick works on our armies too, as blocking all the colors will usually tell you if your scheme is going to look tight.
Color blocking is the perfect tool for army painters as it can be used as it fits right in the 2 main goals of our painting approach: having a playable 3 colors army and not wasting time.
So the general idea is to do all your air brush parts, then lay on 2 of the main colors, usually guns and either faces or belts and accessories.
Once this is done, you have a playable army that is well on the way to become a much better finished product without having to start over.
You are going to paint these colors anyway at some point, so we make the most out of it by getting something playable in return. And if the army changes, you wasted a whole less time with having only 3 colors on those dudes that you are not gonna plan, and your new additions will get up to speed much quicker. Win, win, win situation.
Some sort of step by step
To showcase this, we’ll use the afore mentionned 3 colors Plaguebearers
These dudes are easy enough to paint, because there are like 5 surfaces total on them: Skin, Eyes, Sword, Teeth and Guts.
The 1st step is the skin. A fine green that we do in full. All the airbrush, and also washes and everything and we’re not touching it again, ever. So, airbrush a basecoat, a highlight. Then shade with brown, then highlight again with the airbrush.
Now the actual color blocking. Sword with Typhus Corrosion, Guts with Red. We can paint bases with dark brown and call it a day right here. Bunch of Stinkies ready to take on the field.
But we can also finish blocking it out. Teeth in bone, eyes in bright green.
And Voilà!
Now it may not look like much, but when done on 40 models at a time, it works magic. Fully Painted Magic.
Are they done? Absolutly not, but they are playable in every event/tournament ever and look fine like wine for summons.
Next time, just pick a color, and finish that color on all of them. Drybrush orange, drybrush silver, Wham Bam! Swords are done. And so on.
Until next time,
No excuses, hobby like a champion!
