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Hi there
I'm curious to know how many hours/minutes you spend on painting, just for one model of infantry.
I spend about 3h to fully paint a guardsman, including the time I wait for the washes to dry.
The more I paint, the more stuff I do (I didn't wash my models last years for example) and the more time I spend.

I joined an example of one of my guards, painted in 3 hours, as I use to do.

So, are you a quick painter ?
What can you achieve in 3h ? How much time do you spend on your infantry ?

In 3 hours I could do an Infantry model unit to a tabletop standard.

This never happens though, I've got essays, lab reports and revision to do so I paint in bits and bobs. It usually takes me days to get a min unit done to the standard I like.

I spend about 35-40 minutes on a guardsman. I spend more time on them if they're an officer or some other special mini in my guard army.

About an hour or hour and a 1/2 maybe. But I'm a table top quality painter. I have shaky hands so if it looks ok from a couple feet away and has 3 plus colors on it I move to the next.

Also your gaurds man looks great

4 weeks on Knights.
2 weeks for a vehicle like a Rhino
3 days for a small creature/character/bike
1 day for a meq
Has to be just right and god forbid I put the Chapter emblem on the wrong shoulder

1.5-2 hrs per model.

2 weeks for a vehicle like a Rhino

when you say this, do you mean two weeks of intensive work, or just something like 1h a day for 2 weeks ?

Also your gaurds man looks great

Thanks but with Forge World, everything looks better

Cultist is about 2-3 hours depending on which version.

Alpha Legion marine is maybe 2.5 hours. Leader is close to 5

Tzeentch terminator is about 7-8 hours

Oblitorators of tzeentch take around 10-12 each

Vehicles I don't know yet but I have a raider that is done being based and has soon metals done on it and some rust, some details and that's been 12 hours already.

My Sorc in terminator armour was about 15 hours.

None of my models are based yet.

15 hours ? That's a lot ! (I think)
Do you go to painting competitions/contests ?
Do you have any picture you can/ you want to show ?

Sometimes it all happens in a blur of paint, youtube videos, chair spinning, and the occasional existential crisis. Few hours later I sort of regain a grip on time and some of my models have more paint on them than before. Sometimes 3 hours goes by and I painted the bulk of a battlewagon, other times its a hand full of Boyz that have their belts painted (along with a massive hand cramp and a mild migraine). Occasionally I find that I painted an entire HQ to good quality standard. And every so often I realize I didn't actually paint much of anything but spent the time watching videos.

Depends on the model, HQs tend to get a bit more love. A standard model takes an hour or two, so i average about one guy a night roughly. Vehicles usually take a few days.

Depends on the day im painting on a work day ill maybe paint for like an hour a night and get maybe one dude done but if I allocate a day to it I onc painted up 3 ravenwing bikes a ven dread and based 5 deathwing termies and like that the entire day was gone before I knew what had happened.

I often batch paint, say 5 Warriors, or 30 Gants, or a handful of Lictors... Sometimes a few magnetized bits. For line troops, it probably averages about 15-20 minutes per model. 40mm based models can be a few hours each... And I have spent 6-24 hours on a single Monstrous Creature before.

40 minutes or so to table top standard. This is batch painting though.
My Dark Angels take longer, due to highlighting robes.

Your guardsman certainly looks amazing, matching the time you've put into it. I can't imagine spending that much time per model on an entire army though, maddening.

The real trick is, once you have developed your skills to an acceptable point, then speeding up the process.

I'm odd when it comes to painting. There are times when I love it, but I usually hate painting.

If I'm doing a bunch of infantry, I batch paint them. Spray a basecoat on, then colour them in with 3-4 colours to make it look like I tried. Works out alright for faceless troopers, and the minimalist approach seems to be alright for vehicles.

Characters and specialists are the things I'll actually put some effort into, but I end up spreading it out over a longer time.

Still not great though. I need to try washes.

I try not to spend more than 20min on a troop. As much as 12hourson my knight titans.
My painting quality suffers a lot for speed painting but I’ll never get a playable army at 2+hours per dud.
You only have to make yourself happy in the end.
I’ve enjoyed reading your responses and looking at the posters galleries

Standard fire warrior/path finder is 4-6 hours for me. So far I've 100+, but about 20-30 of em need to be painted. I feel like I need to put my everything into each model if I want to get better at painting.

I run "blue tide." As a fun list. Our lazer pointers will block out the sky.

So far I've 1500 points if painted tau.

Most models around 1 hr, stuff like Chaos Lords that needs to look spiffy get the 8 hr treatment. Cypher was easy so he took only 3 hrs, Be'lakor was monotone so he took 4 hrs.

Easily the longest time spent was on Horus. 27 hrs to get him looking like he does now. Flawless perfection.

I think I have a partially completed version of him on my phone here, taken with a cell cam so it doesn't do it justice.

I used to do painting competitions and won many locally but this is over 10 years ago, now I just do it because I like to look good while I roll dice.

He still needed a good deal of work from here, I might take a pic of the finished product later if I have time.

Let's see...going on about 4 years now.

I have a pair of devastators on my desk which I have probably sunk about 20 hours into, probably got another 10 hours to go. None of that includes drying time.

This would be about average for me, I'd say. I have a metal dragon thing that I am trying to work on which is about 10 hours in, so far I have joined 2 pieces together.

Perfection is hard.

I am a really slow painter. I enjoy modeling more than painting. I'll spend tones of time magnetizing and customizing models (especially vehicles). Once that's done though, it's army painter base, and quick details to table top.

I obviously spend more time on HQ and such. The problem is I quickly get a diminishing return on invested time due to my limited paint skills.

That being said, after the angels green basecoat, probably about 30 minutes to an hour for marines, 4-6 hours for rhino chasis or speeders, 1-2 hours for bikes (ravenwing command or black knights add about an hour or two), 6-8 hours for HQ models, and my land raider was about 8.

I'm sure most people would cut those times in half for what I accomplish, but I get them to table top as cleanly as I can, and don't get any complaints.

I am totally the same, I love magnetizing stuff and the actual building process - but I can't give up on painting.

I don't play the game though, so maybe that is part of the reason why I don't care about taking forever.

Still, painting is something you learn, don't give up on it - an airbrush is talent in a box (for me at least) and really upped the level of my painting, having a good basecoat and main highlights done means that the only time I need artistic skill is with really small details - if I get them right, it looks amazing, if I get them wrong, no-one will probably notice anyway.

Don't give up on painting dude, the P&M section of the forum has been an amazing resource for me

Infantry? Don't really care, so they're pretty basic. Maybe an hour or so per model (hard to say because I paint in batches of five-ish) for painting, plus whatever time it takes to fix mold lines/straighten warped parts/etc.

Vehicles? Easily 15-20+ hours each, spread out over 1-2 weeks to allow enough drying time for each layer. About five hours of that is the base coat, the rest is detailing and weathering. And, again, that's on top of any cleanup time required to get the kit ready to paint.

Depends on the model. Basic infantry, probably a couple of hours each. Vehicles, maybe about 10 hours. Characters, I can spend between 10 and 20 hours or more.

My problem is it never feels done so infinity and beyond

But on a serious note probably about 2-3 hours a mini.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vankraken wrote:
Sometimes it all happens in a blur of paint, youtube videos, chair spinning, and the occasional existential crisis. Few hours later I sort of regain a grip on time and some of my models have more paint on them than before. Sometimes 3 hours goes by and I painted the bulk of a battlewagon, other times its a hand full of Boyz that have their belts painted (along with a massive hand cramp and a mild migraine). Occasionally I find that I painted an entire HQ to good quality standard. And every so often I realize I didn't actually paint much of anything but spent the time watching videos.

Wel put and exactly how I experience painting haha

I started doing stuff in batches to and it's greatly reduced the time I needed to normally do models. A group of 10 Skitarii Vanguard I can do in about 10 hours or so. Whereas before I did about 1 of them in 3 hours... That times 10... 30 hours. So it's a win win!

I'm probably one of the slowest painters around. A basic trooper will be maybe 3 or 4 hours, minimum.

I can manage tanks a bit faster, maybe 20 - 30 hours each, depending on size.

Dreadnaught/Broadside sized models would be about the same as a tank, maybe a bit less, so 15-25 hours.

A monsterous creature like a riptide would be around 30 hours I guess.

Tzeentch alone knows how long it'll take me to finish 1 Knight, let alone 5.

If only the extra time equated to them looking better, but alas, this doesn't seem to be the case.

One day I'll be able to paint as well as I'd like. One day...

I do my infantry and small units in batches of 5 like an assembly line.

I suppose if I painted one and only one to full completion I could get it done in an hour or two, but that seems pointless. I want some I can field when I play.

On 5 infantry I'll spend about... 6-8 hours.

I paint them proficiently but nothing outstanding. Personally I don't much care for the painting. I like playing and seeing a whole cohesive army. As my shelf and army display area grows with each Tau unit I feel a sense of pride.

I'll likely never be an amazing world class painter, but as long as I have just enough skill to get the basics of what I want done and it to look decent that's all I need.