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-(i am on holiday here)
hi guys

i haves looked at some of your models and i wondered how you do it
so i thought it would be a good idea to share our tips and cheats
heres mine

i drybrush the highlight

send in tips

-SoL

Washes hide a multitude of sins.

^ Exactly what I was going to say.

You muck up blending? HEY, just daube it with something dark and watery!

Paint for at least 1 hour every day

HFN

Drybrush, THEN wash.

Always thin your paint. Never paint straight from the paint pot.

Don't rush. If you don't have time don't paint. Wait until later. You'll thank yourself later.

Watch a favourite TV show, listen to your favourite music, radio station etc.

These things always help to break up the painting. If I'm solely concentrating on painting I tend to make shoddy work.

i do that, helps alot

- Don't be afraid to simplify a color scheme to paint faster. Getting an army on the table is almost always more satisfying than having three gorgeous squads and a bunch of primer.

- Drybrush and wash whenever you can. Anything organic or cloth should get both.

- Buy good brushes and take care of them

- Black primer and foundation paints make painting a lot easier.

- Take a small bottle, and mix a bunch of black paint and water into a thick, black wash. You can also buy any of the magic sauces online, but blast of black wash makes everything look good. Never great, but always good.

- Drybrushing takes practice.

- A good base makes a model look better, and good bases are easy.

- never try to drybrush or wash a flat surface.

- Fewer colors is almost always better than more colors on a model.

EXCELLENT tips here. As far as the "no time? don't paint", however, I would add that you should be prepared to paint in brief periods of time. If you can get everything organized and keep it that way, have a spot where you can just whip it out and paint, then be ready to put it all up. Have a PLAN, it will save oyu precious painting time, that way you can paint when you sit down to it as oppossed to sitting there thinking.

Polonius wrote:- Don't be afraid to simplify a color scheme to paint faster. Getting an army on the table is almost always more satisfying than having three gorgeous squads and a bunch of primer.

Very true. Except for Main Characters.
I like to spend my time making my Boss's and Main vehicles looking good - they are going to be the focus of people's attention.
3 squads of 30 boyz, on the other hand, I paint quickly, get on the battle field quickly, and take them off just as fast!

- A good base makes a model look better, and good bases are easy.

YUP!

- Fewer colors is almost always better than more colors on a model.

This one is vital!
I have seen many a superbly painted figure that does not look as good as a well-painted figure, as the superb painter has added so many colours that you cannot see what is going on, just a rainbow blur, with nothing for your eye to latch on to.

I think the best I can add is:
Practice, practice, practice.
"Ground" yourself. I try to keep either my elbows resting on the table (sorry mum! ), and press my wrists together to "equalize" shake.
Do NOT try to add Wash to figures while tired, in case you accidentally knock over the Blue Ink and have to run around like a blue-bummed-flying-squig with tissues and sponges trying to clean up before anyone notices! (Side note: Do NOT paint on your Mum's Best Dining Table, even with a few layers of newspaper, just in case you spill the Blue Ink)

listen to music or watch something

Get ALL the base colors applied before doing any drybrushing or washing. Use a small brush for drybrushing, so you won't accidentally drybrush everything off to the sides of what you intended. This also applies for washes, and don't put too much ink or wash on the brush, you don't want it running everywhere.
MOST IMPORTANT TIP ON THIS THREAD!!!! Wear old, beat-up clothes when you paint, if you can. This way, if you spill something on them, so what!
And on some figs, like Guardsmen or Orks, give the whole thing a black wash, then a brown wash then a tan or off-white drybrush over the whole miniature. It brings all the colors together so that they look like coherent units on the tabletop.

all these ideas are retty much awesome!!!!! i use most of them and it really helps

Another thing tha really helps is too paint your models in parts, atleast that helps me, i paint the arms separatly from the body, so i paint the arms and te then body and then glue them together, in that way you get too all the small details that are hard to get too with the arms glued to the model

If you want to use GW colors in an airbrush for faster tank/squad covering, mix 50 precent water with 50 precent windex, then take that mixture and use 60 precent of that and 40 precent of the paint. Stays the same color (mabye a tad lighter) and allows you to use them in airbrushes.

A tip on this, mix up alot at once, mabye enough to do your army, that way the paint is all uniform.

Also dipping makes you a good painter! heh

P.S. to get the exact amounts I use an eyedropper, sucks the same amount of liquid every time its depressed, so you can get really close to exact if you say added 6 eyedroppers worth of the mix and 4 of the paint.

http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

"Ground" yourself. I try to keep either my elbows resting on the table (sorry mum! ), and press my wrists together to "equalize" shake.

Breath! holding your breath makes you shake

Biggest tip yet....


HAVE FUN!

if you don't enjoy what you're doing, or it becomes a chore....stop for a while. There is nothing so heinous as feeling like painting is "work."

I didn't see this one...

Do NOT drybrush with paint that has had any amount of water added to it. Drybrushing works best when the paint is taken straight from the pot.

Note: This applies to GW Citadel paints, as I can not speak for other brands.

Try something difficult that you don't think you can pull off.

Then, once you can do that, try something else that you don't think you can do.

And keep it up. You improve as you stretch yourself.

when doing non-metalic armour, use a foundation first, then use a normal color then a wash then highlight

do metallic before foundations

THIN! YOUR! PAINTS!
use a mix of water ~50%/flow improver ~25%/retardant ~25%

Paint the eyes first then you don't have to dread doing it while you paint the rest of the miniature.

Get a wet palette (save so much money on paint) and your blending will improve.

Paint from the inside out; by that i mean paint all the hard to reach parts first.

Use Future Floor Finish to thin you paint; it won't break separate the pigment and binder like water does.

we must resurrect this thread!

i agree i want to see what other ideas people have

I actualyl ahve a question, on my death guard i use pure brown ink, not watered down or anything, and sicne they dotn produce it anymroe and i am running out of brown ink,does anybody have any ideas on anything i vcould use that is the saem colour of brown????

@TheThing

Vallejo brown ink. The single most used colour in my inventory after black and white.

My Tip:

While less colours > more colours is a good rule of thumb, the proportions of colours is more important. The rainbow miniatures (of which there are many off, many claiming to be NMM or somesuch) often have something like 10% of colour A, B, C, D, E, F, G and so on. If you can do one or two "main" colours, (~40-60% of the model) and then go back and pick out the details in a good complementary/contrasting colour, it really makes your models "pop" when picked up and viewed up close.

cheers for the thought but does it havethe same shade of brown so to speak when its dry????

@TheThing

Vallejo Game Colour is colour-matched to Citadel Colour. It should either be the same shade or so close that you can't tell the difference.