There’s a big tournament next week and your models are all but assembled What’s a gamer to do? Enter the art of the quickie.
Paint for Points: The Art of the Quickie
The Paint for Points articles series originally appeared on the blog Torrent of Fire. Since that site is no longer around, I have re-uploaded here. These articles are about painting for tournament players, with the checklist in mind.
Like many, I’ll be attending Adepticon in a couple of weeks. Yet, here I sit, with barely any models started, let alone finished, for the tournament.
Fear not, I have done this countless time, and more often than not with great results.
How do you achieve such a feat in such a short time?
Here’s my method, broken down in steps with little notes on the why/what/when/how drunk of each tip. There are many ways you can achieve this. The quickie is really what this is all about: having max results in minimal time.
Given time, I intend to break down every step in excruciating detail for you.
1. Colors, much like buttholes, are meant to be tight.
This is an underrated time-saver.
Pick a really limited palette.
Pick one way of doing brown, and paint everything that’s brown in the army in that fashion. Not Rhinox Hide boots, Skraag Brown Belt, Doombul Brown gun strap. Doing 7 tones of brown takes more time for lesser visual impact overall.
2. Spray and pray.
Use whatever spraying method you feel comfortable with. This is the epitome of the quickie job, the ultimate time saving step. Whether it’s airbrushing, Army Painter’s Color Primer, Tamiya spray paint, whatever you left unassembled and can spray the right color saves you an insane amount of time. This is a good example of an army done with more time spent airbrushing than using an actual brush. The details are minimal though.
3. Step by step.
Paint everything that’s the same at the same time. Let’s say you paint five Drop Pods, because Chip’s list speaks to you. Paint the inside of all five Pods before moving on to painting all 25 doors. Then paint all 100 of the shoulder pads. And so on.
4. Base for day(z).
Do all the bases you need at once. If you can swing it, before the models are on them. This is not the greatest hobby time of your life, but it saves an insane amount of time, and is easy enough to do mildly drunk or while binging a show or movie you’ve seen countless time.
5. Daylight saving time.
Ages ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Warhammer was played with sticks, before I was a commission painter, I used to paint an hour every day.
Always after going to the gym. Granted, you can paint two hours everyday if you skip the gym, but the point is, find some sort of schedule that fits your lifestyle. One hour a day of hobby time beats 12 hours scattered through a bunch of daily tasks and distractions.
Plan your work; work your plan!