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Hello,

I have a couple hundred parts to paint. They are for a terrain set made of black resin parts that fit together. I want to base coat them and then post process add wash to give definition.

What I intend to do is paint them via immersion and then straining. I am not sure whether I can dye them or just use a specialized thinned paint? I have seen people just assemble the blocks to make terrain then paint as assembled then reconfigure them in the future (leaving unsightly black resin surfaces shown). I want to paint them a dull bright grey for stone that will handle a brushed on wash like a champ (the terrain has plenty of definition that begs for this treatment).

Perhaps it is my OCD and lazy sides of my dome uniting and demanding a more comprehensive base coat (that covers all sides pre-assembly) AND a process that is quicker and easier.

I know in my heart this can be done and is likely being done in China all the time. I just want to paint my stuff not go full commercial here and I figured you all at Dakka Dakka have some epic skills so could someone point me in the right directions to find an established process or product?

The terrain I am using is Dungeonmancer terrain. ( http://www.dungeonmancer.com/ )

Any advice or thoughts would be welcomed.

Do all parts have a bottom that you could skip painting? For instance, you want to paint the top as well as the four sides of each floor tile, but probably not underneath them. Same thing for door frames: you want both sides and the top, but not the part that would contact the floor.

If so, you could get a big piece of plywood/mdf/whatever, and stick each of your part to it with double sided tape, leaving some space in-between. Then just spray your grey base coat (airbrush, rattle can, or even a spray gun if you have) from all angles. Afterwards, you can also spray a wash with an airbrush (probably with a spray gun too). It's a bit more difficult but I've seen people on youtube get good results airbrushing washes on a big scale. You can do the details (wood, brass and so forth) with a brush, before or after the wash.
If you also want to drybrush everything with a lighter grey, I'm not sure how you could go about it. But if a somewhat sloppy job is okay, I guess a very big brush could do a quick job.

That's not really what you asked for, but I think it could be a pretty fast way to go about it.

That's basically the whole process behind "dipping" models in a shade. You could google "Army Painter" for some quick tutorials.

In general, if you dip something, you're going to want to shake it off, shake it off. You got to... Shake it off, shake it off. Whoohoohoohoo!

But for realsies, if you don't, you'll get gigantic pools of "wash" and the models will wind up darker than you'd expect. With big terrain like that, I'd honestly suggest doing your base coat then getting something like a 2" brush, and a bowl you can dip the brush into. Give the model a good heavy wash, then go around the model with the bristles pointed "upwards". This will draw off excessive wash into the bristles. Imagine painting from top to bottom, with the handle lower than the bristles. This allows wash to pool in the recesses, while drawing wash off of raised surfaces.

I'd bet you could wash a piece in under a minute, probably half-a-minute. It should take maybe 2 hours to do the whole set.

Thanks for the input guys. The terrain in question doesn't really have a defined bottom very well for doing straight shots with air gun (it does work just involves alot of flipping which I am sure is what most of the other backers are doing if they aren't hand painting it). Imagine it like you have a giant bowl of the small Lego pieces. That is what I am dealing with in the hundreds. Perhaps I bought alot and that's just the price of painting but I really want to dip these parts in a thinned paint product and let them dry on strainer. Then jumble them up and re dip until I have a semi solid base coat.

I know I can use GW Latinum Medium to thin it some. I just have never painted in a fashion like this. I was wondering what concentrations of thinned paint to use. I can pioneer it if need be... but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if someone has this down pat. I am just struggling to find the appropriate terms for this process on the web to find details results that I am looking for. Any additional feedback is welcome and when I do find something I will post it here.

Sure you could do it, but you are likely to get marks and raised paint edges where it touches the strainer and the paint dries. If you are willing to work with that, just get some very light grey matte acrylic paint from your home renovation store and thin with water. Dip it and shake it off good. Set aside to dry. For the wash use a black matte stain/polyurethane. Thin this way down. You might need to do some tests to get the desired consistency/darkness. Repeat the dip and dry steps.

But really, sprays (airbrush or rattle can) would be the easiest, fastest and best looking way to do it. Spray base with medium grey, zenithal hightlight/dusting with light grey or off white. Or just dry brush the highlight.

I've only ever heard of immersion painting in the context of painting metals, google "electrophoretic paint".

I think the problem you'll have with dipping models is that if the paint is too thick it'll clog details, if it's too thin it'll run in to the crevices and not get good coverage (unless you dip it several times in which case it'll also clog details) and either way you're going to have pooling issues and gravity pulling paint away from where you want it. You'd need a product that defies where the liquid naturally wants to go.

Electrocoating works by immersion because it's the electric charge pulling the coating in place, so the coating ends up evenly placed over the surface and can be built up consistently to the desired thickness. Even then it's typically only used for thin protective coatings (which may be colour pigmented), not the final paint layer.

Honestly I'd just rattle can paint them, you can get any colour paint you want in a rattle can. Blutack them to something, spray them, wait a day, turn them over and spray the other side (assuming you can't fix them to an area that doesn't need to be painted in which case you can do it without having to turn them over).

But if you do decide to dip them, let us know how it goes.

I made a shading dip from black latex house paint thinned with water and a small squirt of dish soap. It worked ok, but it was certainly not GW Null Oil. I used it on rescued space marines, a drop pod, and 5 Rhinos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
gakky picture and upside down. :( I make no apologies!

Walmart Colorspray Flat Grey rattle can (not the fill in autobody primer) ..and a card board box to spray into ..Lay them all in spray around let sit a day ..roll them over and do it again ..alternatley if you have an airbrush then Creatix opaque urethane (grey the shade you want) and do the same method ..(I like the color place cause a its cheap and b its thin but gives good to great coverage and provides an excellent primer/basecoat)
ANd I forgot Step one ..Wash in bucket of warm water with a degreasing dish soap ..and rinse thourally let dry over night in a strainer prior to attempting any paint..