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So I've been in the hobby for about a year, doing a little modeling here, collecting there, and a lot of playing. Painted a couple space marine and guardsmen test models here and there to get my painting up to par, but never really had any painted squads. However, these past few months I've tried painting my army bit by bit, sick of showing up at my FLGS with a buncha grey plastics. Problem is, it takes me a long time per guardsman, and if you know guard, you'll know I have a TON of those buggers to paint up.

Takes me about two hours to paint up my guys to look like the attached picture, which I consider right around Table-top quality. Is that the normal paint-time for a guardsman of this quality? Or am I crazy-slow?

Your crazy slow, while the fabric looks very good, your armor and symbols are very plain as if rushed almost. Use larger brushes, cover more area faster, develop high brush control and that way you can push through a dude like in a half hour to a hour. Also use washes, if you havent it speeds up that layering to get good color effects. Try black or brown wash/shade.

I usually spend around 4 hours per mini on my guard.
If you want, you can try shading using dipping.

It goes faster if you paint in batches. Get ten guys going a once, paint one layer of one color on all of them and the first models will be dry by the time you get done with the last.

Washes can help speed things up once you learn how to use them for the effects you want.

When doing any blob army (guard, nid, orks) it's mostly impractical to paint them one at a time, especially if your focus is speed.

 martian_jo wrote:
It goes faster if you paint in batches. Get ten guys going a once, paint one layer of one color on all of them and the first models will be dry by the time you get done with the last.

Washes can help speed things up once you learn how to use them for the effects you want.

When doing any blob army (guard, nid, orks) it's mostly impractical to paint them one at a time, especially if your focus is speed.

This is a great way to tackle large model count armies. It also has the added benefit of improving the look of the army on the table as you go.

Yeah, definitely, it's what I've been doing. I paint all my squads together so that, even if my painting varies a bit batch by batch, they still look cohesive as a unit.

Thanks to all the replies so far; appreciate it.

Two hours a guy isn't bad for a start. My Valhallans (see sig) started out around 90 minutes a guy, but by the hundredth dude I was painting them up in under an hour a man when I was batch painting them. As for your painting, it looks solid! You just need to do a wash on the faces to give them some depth. Also, you've gotta base those dudes! Basing takes almost no time at all if you keep it simple; just gluing some sand down when you assemble the figure then drybrushing it a few times will do the trick. As long as you batch paint (5-10 dudes at a time is ideal) you can get these guys knocked out increasingly fast.

I agree with the above. I am a slow painter myself, but the more practice you put into it, the faster it goes.

No idea how long it took for my guardsmen, since I painted them in batches, but it took for me roughly 8 hours to get 5 engineers done.

Frankly, I've learned over the 18 years since I started 40K, there is no correct speed to paint. I used to take alot longer than I do now and my painting was ALOT worse lol.

Its gets easier and faster the more you do. Once you can figure out a standard template way to paint your men it gets a lot easier as you know exactly what to paint and where to paint and when to paint. Just keep at it and keep it consistent! consistency can break armies in my opinion.

For the scheme you have, you'll find a considerable speed increase if you invest in an airbrush and some Russian Green Vallejo PU primer.

Prime, brown wash (devlan / army painter soft tone WASH not dip), drybrush with a mix of VMC Russian Green and some sort of tan / buff. Then hit the details.

i paint this in about an hour per miniature, but it will be faster when paint in batches. i paint the fabrics with my airbrush (zenithal highlighting) to speed things up a little bit more. if i put myself to it i think i can get this result in 30 minutes per miniature: