Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As the title says just wondered if it was only me that takes ages to paint. I think i'm a slow painter, but i try to paint a little ever night. By the way it takes me about a year.

Can vary greatly depending on the army and the number of minis. Space marines will typically be much faster than say orks.

I know i can paint a marine army faster than my ork army but i just wondered on average. I still think i'm slow

For me it all depends on the ease of the scheme, what colors I'm using, what models I'm painting, and how motivated I am.

For example, 1500 points of my Dark Angels and Mech Guard(my 2 favorite armies) took me 2-3 weeks.

By contrast, I own 2-3k of Tyranids yet only have about 1k painted after 3-4 years. I love the Nid models, I just can't get motivated to paint them. And I HATE painting their scheme, despite that it's almost the same as my Lost and the Damned army(1500 painted in 1 month) yet somehow takes 2-3 times as long to paint on a Gaunt as it does on a Cadian.

It depends a lot on what you're painting, and what level you're painting towards.

If you're line-painting blocks of Marines to a tabletop standard, you should be able to knock out a 200 pt squad every week. That means that you're going to finish 1500 pts in about 2 months, give or take a week or two.

I repainted my Emperor's Children army for the GT, 1750 pts.
Took me 3 months.

2250 of Wood Elves in about 2 weeks...

2000 of Orks in... well its been a few months now.. and they aren't any where near done.. But I just haven't been motivated to paint them.

Where is the 'never' option?

In all seriousness though, considering the amount of free time I have I rarely ever have time to paint. I have had my eldar army for several years now and I probably have about 500-750 points painted. Throw in the Marines and Nids that I'm painting as well and it will probably be awhile till I have a full 1500 point army painted.

When I put my mind to it, I can knock out painted stuff pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure if I tried I could get 1500pts painted in 2 months, particularly if they're built and primed already. I also don't paint to a very high level.

It depends on the army.

I knocked out 3 preds , 30 Assault marines( 3 sgts, 6 plasma), 10 Tac marines (8 bolter, 2 las cannon), 8 Honor Guard, 16 Death company ( 5 power weapons, 11 normals), a chaplain, and a sanguarian High priest, in around 21 hours, course back when i painted this it was 2000 points now its over 3000.

I painted 3 wraithlords, 3 vypers, 30 rangers, and an avatar in around 30 hours, at work no less. once again when i painted this it was in the 990 range now its over 1600 points.

I got 50 ish Guardsmen painted up in about 15 hours.

If we bring in non GW well i have some even better numbers. like the 50 POM models I painted up in 31 hours, and I painted up over 1000 points of circle in about 50 hours.

The real trick is to know how to paint cleanly and clear, I normally use at least 12 to 16 different colours/pots of paints per a mini so I don't paint to table top I normally aim for display quality for basic stuff. You have to use tricks though, you have to understand how to highlight, drybrush; and shade with inks and washes quickly, and you just have to know you will use metalic paints since NMM takes way to long.

Now on the other hand my 2500 points of orks have been unpainted for 10 + years and i still have tons of gaurd stuff to paint, and cryx stuff.

mine may fall into a new "10+ year" since all i have painted so far is a warboss and 2 dreads, havent had much painting time in the last year or so, that and ive been getting lazy when it comes to painting.

I can paint Orks very fast, by dint of long practice. I've had a beasts of chaos army half painted for close to 4 years now though.

I'd say the average is six months, if I'm slogging at it. But my plague marine army took me about 2 weeks, so it can vary wildly.

Finish an army? People do that?!

lambadomy, i think by that they mean fully paint a 1,500 point army

a true army is never finished lol, just a sea of grey and silver.

Is there a 2-3 day option?

I've done a little over 4,500 points (Ork and Tyranids, 246 figures) over the last 3 months.

I think it's more appropriate to ask about hours, rather than weeks/months, because it really matters how much time you're getting to paint. I've had some weeks where I've painted a ton. I did 50 bloodletters, 30 fleshhounds, 8 bloodcrushers, 2 bloodthirsters and 20 plaguebearers in January. In February, I got sick, had social obligations, and was otherwise distracted, and was only able to paint 10 models.

I generally paint at a rate of about 30 points/hour, regardless of how the points are allocated. The more complex models usually cost more points. 30 orks = 10 hours. 10 Emperor's Children = 10 hours. 1 Bloodthirster = 10 hours. And so on.

I tend to paint the big beasties quite fast. My balrog was done in a single sitting, same with all my hordes beasties.
My hordes infantry is taking me an age to paint, because tartans are fiddly.

This is an extremely relative question / poll.

It will vary upon the army itself, quality of work, ability of the painter, hobby time...

Myself for example said 1-2 years because that's about how long it'll take me to finish my Genesis marine army to table top standards. However I'm trying to paint my Ultramarines above table top quality and that I imagine will be 2+ years in the making. :(

So it varies depending on lots of factors, thats true.
I still think i will take me ages to get my army done, lots of green. I just wondered if it only me that was really slow

I've been working on my current Ork Army since about April or May of last year.

I'll be up to 1500 points painted by the end of this month.

I took about 3+ month break though where I didn't paint a single model.

During this time period I also managed to paint two Blood Bowl teams, a Tau Crisis Battlesuit Commander, and 12 Space Marines.

So I voted 9 to 12 months.

Well, I've been gaming for 11 years, and I have about 7000 points painted, so about 636 points per year.

That includes a period when I went a couple years without touching a paint-brush, and a lots of learning.

If I paint regularly, I'd guess about a year.

PAINTING an army can go really quickly. Its all the other crap prior to painting that makes it a real labor intensive pain.

I bought 14 boxes of plastic termies to make a deathwing army. Pretty straight forward right?

Nah. Hellfury HAS to make an easy job annoying and can never give himself a break. It took me a couple years just to collect all the other bits I needed to build them the way I wanted to.

Almost 4 years later, I have only very recently assembled them all (converted, flash lines removed, magnetized, etc, etc) to the point where I now can lay a brush tip to their surface. For 50ish termies the painting is going to be relatively painless. I vote 1-2 months on an above average paint job on 1500 points

Having just come back to 40k, i find that most time is spent earning enough money to actually afford the damned things in the first place. It's so far taken me a couple of months to paint a Farseer, 6xscorpions, 10xrangers, 8xharlies, most of a Maugan Ra and a warwalker.

Still got 20xguardians to do -which probably took longer to assemble than they will to paint.

All depends on how much you want to convert and make really special.

A basic painted army that follows pretty normal paint schemes without any extreme highlights etc is pretty fast. More so if they are like Black legion chaos for example.

I did a 2000 point Guard army in one week not too long ago.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/227725.page#526050

I can normally paint a 1500-1750pt SM army in 2-3 weeks. That includes lining in the armor, basing every model, and shoulder insignia.
An ork army of the same size will usually add a week due to the larger numbers of models.

Lots of factors. My necron warriors, 24 in a night (though they're not the best looking, I'll admit.) Tzeentch Flamers, 2 days per model. Fateweaver, just painting, took a week.

I've got a 1500 point local tournament this weekend, and I've been working on the models, (well, and a few that I'm not planning on bringing to this one) since the codex came out. And I'm almost done...

lambadomy wrote:Finish an army? People do that?!

I think I snorked something out of my nose when I read that!
I'm TFG.

I've been trying to chug out skaven for a while now. I've taken breaks from them and gotten usable OK and Lizards done in the meantime. The sheer quantity of rodents needed gets mind-numbing after a while.

I've finally gotten a "fast" way to crank out rats now, so it ain't so bad. If I get motivated and caffinated up, I can finish a box of clanrats in three evenings.

I'm pretty committed to my rats as of late and when I get burned out, I tinker with some of the non-core stuff or even a terrain piece.

I've been dabbling with empire and beastmen, too. Empire's probably worse, since there's more detail on the state troops. The beasts move along pretty well just using the hints in the army book.

ZF-