Are there any guides to painting Epic/6mm models I should know about?

Commander sims has made some excellent youtube guideline videos

Have a look for mickey's minis on youtube

Personally I just practiced a fair bit, used small brushes, and worked on bracing my hand to keep it steady.... I think I'm getting better.... no magic tricks just practice and washes!! Lots of washes will hide a multitude of sins also good consistent basing works wonders

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What kyussinchains said. Think of it this way: let the model's detail do the work for you. I use a combination of dry brushing and washes on most of my stuff. The former catches the raised detail, the latter gets the recesses and softens up the boundaries between shades. Once you've got the overall color, picking out the small details is relatively easy.

For me it usually boils down to prime, base coat, dry brush lighter shade of base, wash, dry brush again, pick out details. Plus, since these are military vehicles and figures, more small/flashy details aren't necessarily realistic. For armies like IG, drab is the order of the day (tastes vary of course).

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Get some very small brushes - go into an art shop and buy the smallest brush they have (my smallest brush says its a 10/0 on the side if that helps) and a selection of ones bigger than it.

For precise work hold the model in one hand touching something solid like a table whilst using the other to paint it, to stop hand shake messing up your aim.

Generally just practice and try and you'll improve as you go.

Is there any place I can get replacements for my hobby knife end? Games Workshop seems to be using a different knife now.

Depends what sort of end it has.

I have these sorts of craft knives (GW used to sell these at vastly inflated prices compared to normal but then later switched to their own design):



If it's this sort then the standard blade is a swann-morton 10A, though there are a great deal of shapes and sizes that fit the knife e.g. curved blades, ect. You can buy small or large packs of the blades online.

Honestly, the techniques aren't that different from painting 28mm models. The models may be smaller, but the detail isn't really all that much finer. Painting one 6mm vehicle is much like painting one 28mm infantryman.

I guess the main thing to remember is that you aren't trying to paint a28mm model that's 1/5 the size. Think of it instead as being more like painting a small, detailed part of a 28mm model and paint it the same way as you would of it were attached to the rest of the model.

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Thing is I wasn't exactly great at painting 28mm models either.

So if I want a model to be mostly red, I would spray it white, paint it red, then add the rest of the colors? Also, how do I spray so it wont have bumps all over it? Unless that is how it is supposed to look?

Edit: And the knife I'm looking for replacements for is this one.



Double Edit: And this is am basing what I want my squats to look like.

That's one way. Use washes to fill up the recesses with darker pigment, followed by dry brushing to re-brighten the highlights. How many successive dry-brushed highlights you use is down to your patience and continued sanity.

Currently, on some marines, I'm using a base color, followed by a black wash, followed by a dry-brush of the original color, followed by a second gentler dry-brush with a lighter color

Do this at least a squad at a time or you'll really wear out your patience.

As for the "bumps" from spraying, you should not have any. Make sure you hold the can several inches away from the model. Also, make sure you begin spraying into open space to one side of the model, draw the spray over the model, and then do not let your finger off of the button until you are past the model. This way you avoid the droplets you can get as the spray starts or stops. Do several passes in several different directions until you have an even coat.

And make sure you start with a smooth primer coat. A good primer is a must. Armory primer is rather cheap, but can be very hit or miss with a smooth or a bumpy coat. Games Workshop primer is disgracefully expensive, but has never let me down. There are many others as well. If your primer coat turns out bumpy, just soak the miniature in brake fluid overnight, scrub it off, and start over. You can't "fix" a bad primer coat with painting. You just have to start over



Can you replace that with an exacto blade. If not, exacto knives are dirt cheap, and packs of replacement blades are available in any hardware or craft store.



Cannot wait to see it!

-S'Cipio

So if I am painting red, I use a red wash, blue wash for blue, etc?

And if I don't exactly feel comfortable I'd successfully spray my models, can I just give it a base coat of white, and it would have the same effect?

Don't get too excited yet. It's going to take me a bit just to get all my hobby tools in order, let alone get all the models.

Man am I going to be buying a lot of paint. I already bought the main colors I'm going to be using, but now I also have to get some white, black, gunmetal, skin color, brown(Because what kind of squat doesn't have a beard?), and washes for all of that. Might be a month before I even get my first model done. (Well that and I am going to be buying most of em from England, so lots of 2-3 week waiting periods.

I am definitely not the best painter or even in the top half of the contributors here.

Some of my pointers would be:

Don't worry on the final finish to start off with, just enjoy your painting. Depending on the final finish I will undercoat in black and work up in lighter colours for dark finish models and undercoat in white for lighter/brighter finishes.

If I use white I will tend to wash the model in a diluted black wash to give it some definition and then paint my main colour with a slightly diluted mix. From here I follow up with picking out details with quick brush strokes. After all these years I still haven't got the hang of dry brushing (too heavy handed) and weathering just doesn't work either for me.

To get the original squat guard finish I'd suggest using the white & diluted black wash for the undercoat. Followed up with the yellow (light brown) and brown wash before picking out the red flak jackets followed by a thinner brown wash. However, the best way is to find the way that works for you.

Oh and at 6mm it is better to strip and start again rather than paint over as you can lose details very quickly.

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I don't really know half of the stuff you're saying. Back when I played 40k I was the that one dude who never got around to painting his models. (Mainly due to not understanding the difference between highlighting, undercoating, and the like. )

When I paint I undercoat black then put on the main colours.
I then give the figure a wash then a quick highlight over the raised areas.
Remember these 6mm figures will be looked at mainly from a distance and en masse.
Start off painting your rank and file then when you get to the main figures you should of had a bit of practise or try and get some test figures.
You can practise your painting and then strip back and start again.
I am no where near a great a painter as some on here but these are some of my units to give you an idea of what I mean
Regards
Sean

I'm going to sound blasphemous to the competent painters here but I got back into wargaming only recently and hadn't painted in about a decade. I wasn't that good at it before giving up the hobby anyway.

But, I paint to what I call 'gaming quality'. By which I mean my opponent and I are going to be about 2 feet away from the models for the vast majority of the game so paint them to look good at that distance. Belt pouches won't be visible, faces will be splotches of a different colour etc.

A well painted army is a wonderful thing to behold but if you're just starting up I'd be more concerned with getting a consistent colour scheme and painting style for the army and the formations as a whole rather than worrying about getting to great quality.

I painted Imperial Guard (http://oi60.tinypic.com/2mh7vx1.jpg)

To do this I:
1. no basecoat (I tried with and without, after leaving and coming back to the table I couldn't tell which models had been basecoated then painted yellow and which ones had just been painted yellow over the metal)

2. paint the entire model, head to toe (exception: vehicle tracks) in Desert Yellow (http://www.blackhat.co.uk/coat_darms/paintcolours.php)

3. paint brown stripes, irregularly, across the yellow painted sections (exception: not on the infantry, too small for it to matter) using Tan Earth (see link above)

4. with a thin brush paint a thin line of black through each of the brown stripes (black line thinner than the brown stripe, black line does not fill the entirety of the brown stripes)

5. paint tracks/wheels/etc. black

6. paint anything you want silver in silver (I chose Boltgun Metal)

7. for infantry paint hands/faces

8. for infantry paint helmets in a different colour (I painted all officers/commanders with orange helmets and then members of different formations with blue/red/green/brown helmets to differentiate which ones belonged to which)

9. let everything dry properly and paint a single light-medium density white drybrush all over. The purpose is to give a semi-blending of colour and break up obvious edges - basically so it doesn't just look like a series of flat colours

10. if infantry glue them to a base and use a textured paint to base them, pick a basing scheme and stick with it! If you went for a camo look (I went for desert camo) make sure the base matches the camo scheme!

actually you want a darker wash, army painter do some very nice colour washes for this purpose, their red wash for example has quite a bit of purple in it, which actually shades red very well, just be aware that a wash will darken your colour so you may want to start with a lighter base colour with that in mind (for red it might be worth mixing some orange in to lighten it even if you want a deeper finished colour) also there is a difference between washes, inks and glazes, in some cases you can actually skip a base colour, spray white and then use an ink, it will pool in the recesses while running off the raised edges



spray primers are better at sticking to bare metal/plastic than most paints, they're also massively quicker and generally more evenly covering



you can never have too many paints!!, also well worth trying out a few different brands, GW are okay and come in a nice range of colours, but I find them annoyingly thick and quick drying (I've lost track of the amount of times I put a tiny bead of paint to do a gem or tiny detail and it dries on the brush before it gets to the model!) many people use Vallejo as they're cheaper, thinner and come in dropper bottles which allow you good control with mixing and thinning, I've used Reaper master paints and LOVE them, they're some of the best on the market but not easily available in the UK, now I mostly use a mixture of army painter and P3 which are both great

Also worth discussing brushes while we're at it, GW are okay but I find their quality control to be dreadful I've had a few very good GW brushes, but I've also bought a load which don't hold their point and shed bristles like you wouldn't believe I've invested in some Rosemary & Co brushes recently and really like them, they're robust and good to work with, this was based on the recommendation of Chico on these forums, I've also got a couple of their expensive kolinsky sable brushes and they're even better

For undercoat, depending on what I'm painting, the army painter coloured primers are aceballs, I've used about 4 cans of demonic yellow on my imperial fists, and used a lot of the wolf grey on my imperial guard, as said above, the trick with primers is to spray long even coats and spray 'past' the model so the larger drops don't get on the model, also shake the primers for at least 2 minutes, it really makes a difference! lots of thin coats is better than one thicker coat, also primers shrink as they dry so don't panic if it looks like you've put too much on, plus you can always go over with another spray if you haven't covered enough

Finally as Tim says, it can be good to start with a thinned black wash over the basecoat to help delineate the model and give you guidelines where to shade

I'll do a step-by-step of how I paint my imperial fists one day, I promise!

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator