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.

So I love warhammer 40k but I am on a super tight budget. As in I use folk art brand paint Becuase I can't afford the games workshop or any other. Also I use the Walmart brushes they work alright but I have Alot of issues in not fine enough brushes or to thick of paint can someone please give me a link or give me a play by play on how to produce eavy metal quality models with what I have to work with? Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Starting fresh myself. You've come to the right place for info. I just completed my first miniature and I've found that using water to thin paint has made a difference. You will have to work on the mix, but it does work.

Also I've noticed using layers has really help overcome my brushes quality. I've got some hand me downs, but using layers and taking my time has helped. Hope this helps some and good luck!

It does but could you offer a short tutorial in layering?

 Rysgame wrote:
So I love warhammer 40k but I am on a super tight budget. As in I use folk art brand paint Becuase I can't afford the games workshop or any other. Also I use the Walmart brushes they work alright but I have Alot of issues in not fine enough brushes or to thick of paint can someone please give me a link or give me a play by play on how to produce eavy metal quality models with what I have to work with? Any help is greatly appreciated!!

A couple tips:

I understand you are on a budget, but invest in a nice brush. You aren't the only one with a budget (I have a wife and two kid plus all the bills that come with them!), you just need to learn how to manage what you spend on the hobby and when. Will a cheap Wal-Mart brush work? Of course, for a few weeks or so and then it's off to buy a new "cheap" brush. Over the course of a year, you will spend more than I need for the one brush I use on 95% of my work. If you take care of said brush, it will last for a long time (years most likely). Same goes with paint. I would love to walk into my FLGS and buy every color of every brand they sell and take them home and add them to the paint drawer. Unfortunately, that won't happen unless I win the lottery or a rich relative I didn't even know about bequeaths his massive fortune to me (neither of which will ever happen). Figure out what basic colors you want and buy those, plus black and white to lighten or darken your main colors. Look on the internet and learn how to mix paint to make new colors.

This will sound harsh but it is probably the most important thing to realize: You will not produce 'Eavy Metal quality models... at first. It is easy to sit at the computer and look at all this amazing models painted by professionals and think, "I could do that." In reality, you (and most of us) most likely won't. However, that is okay. It is awesome to aim high and hope for the best but the fact is, most these people that sell one model for $400+ are serious, professional artists that do this kind of thing for a living. Now don't get me wrong, an amateur like you and I can produce great results too. It is very possible that anyone who tries hard enough and invests enough blood, sweat, & tears into the hobby can be a very successful painter, so never give up. Try incremental steps when starting out painting... try one new technique on every model. For example, research how to wet blend and try that on your next model. Practice zenithal highlighting or non-metallic metal... conquer one thing before moving on to the next one. Eventually, if you take enough small steps it can add up to a giant leap over time.

You picked an awesome time to learn how to paint. With Dakka, YouTube, and the blogosphere, the internet is a treasure trove of valuable information on the hobby. Some sites to consider:
From The Warp
Chest of Colors
GirlPainting
The Painting Clinic

Good luck!

If you REALLY cant paint your minis, go with the quickshade, or if your on a budget, buy some minwax or some other floor polish, the effect is great, and I still have my first dipped army. Ironically I use it the most in games LOL

Do you have any pictures of a dipped army?

I am going to be emulating a lot of what was said above, but add to it as well. To start though, I would like to note that I can reproduce studio quality heavy metal jobs, but am in no means at their level. As I explain later Heavy metal purposefully doesn't go all out on a mini when they are painting it for display on the GW website. I would also like to add that while this may seem daunting at first, it really isn't. Like most skills you should tackle the technical details one at a time.

First, just like in any other thing, you need the right tools for the right job. A wal-mart brush isn't going to get you the control you need for what you want to do, and neither is a paint that is probably designed for a canvas. The brushes probably don't have the snap you need and the paints are far, far too thick. I hate to be the bearer of bad news in this regard but it will be impossible to get the quality and control you want.

There ARE cheap paints out there that work nicely! I suggest looking into buying some Army Painter Warpaints if your on a budget. They can be as cheap as 2.00 USD a bottle if you find the right place for as much paint as you would get in a vallejo bottle, which I will add is almost twice the amount of paint from a GW pot and for almost half as much. they are also just as good as the previous line of GW paints imo.

Now, there are places online where you can get the good brushes (Rosemary and Co, Windsor and Newton Series 7) For cheap. It takes a simple google search to find them,

A few words about heavy metal: when they are painting for GW, they are purposefully not going for their best on the models (There is a big difference when they paint something for the studio and when they paint a golden demon entry!), so in this regard I disagree with the above poster, that level of quality is indeed achievable, which is the idea in the first place. I admit that of late, however, there has been a bit of non-metallic metal in their work and this skill will be hard to learn for a beginner.

I would peruse the internet for miniature painting tutorials.The things you need to learn right off the bat are Color Theory, Shading, Highlighting, Contrast, and Basing. Get these down and you'll have studio quality (But not golden demon quality!) work in no time!

Shortly after all that you should look into: Glazing, Washing, Dry-brushing, sponge painting.

All of the above websites are excellent resources you should take advantage of! I will add another: Ana's site in particular (Chest of Colors) is a valuable resource for people just starting the hobby and Ana herself is a trophy winner of many painting competitions.

www.wamp-forum.com (goldem demon winners have been known to help normal chaps like you and me at this place!)

As far as how to handle the brush and the paint, this is different for each person but there are a few tips the pro's use to make things easier on themselves:

First, even with paints designed for miniatures you want to thin them down.Otherwise you get this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m3p_VuPIS2c

How much you thin them depends on your preferences and the task you are performing. For base-coating I usually use 25% thinner (water will do) and the rest paint. For layering I do a 50/50 mix. For things like non metallic metal you want the paint at the consistency of a wash. Now, i will note that even different golden demon winners say different things about how much you should thin your paints (as observed if you watch enough tutorials) but all agree it should be done.

One thing I do is I pre-thin my entire pots of paints when they get low enough, that way I don't have to do it each time I paint. You have to be careful to keep checking the consistancy of your paints though as even in droppers paints dry out slowly. In GW pots they dry out very quickly.

How you hold the brush is at least as important as the quality of the brush you use. typically, when doing basecoating or layerinng you want to hold the brush like you would a pencil when writing, and much like you don't write with the brush standing straight off the paper you don't want your brush to do this either, it should be at a 45 degree angle or so to the model most of the time.

How much paint you put on the brush is important too. Whenever you dip your brush you should put some of that paint back if possible or clean some of it off. When it goes on the model you shouldn't get pools of paint, if you do your using too much. the exception to this rule is if you are washing your model. This knowledge is especially important when you start to learn layering and glazing, two skills you will need if you are to go beyond studio quality.

I will stop there for now, as I now realize I could be here all night writing tips and tricks.

Thanks for your help when I next get some models I will have to try all these things

I think any paints would be ok as long as you thin them down, i would try to get some decent brushes though, you dont need the best but i certainly would not like to use the cheapest.
Plastic bristles are not goodl

@Spectral Dragon:
I don't think you read what I wrote. I didn't say the OP will never get to that level, I said he won't be there right now. The point of what I wrote was that one cannot just ask how to paint like that and then, BOOM! there is a 'Eavy Metal mini on your desk. It takes time and practice combined with a firm grasp on technique to achieve display-quality miniatures.

For clarity, when I seem someone mention 'Eavy Metal, I don't think of the studio work for the website and boxes. It has been established that GW keeps those minis "simple" to foster the idea that anyone can do it. When I see some say "'Eavy Metal level paint jobs" I think of the material that they put in their Masterclass books. That is work is on a different level that the picture on the box.

Also, I mention Chest of Colors... It was the second link I listed.

@ScottyPuffJunior: Actually, you did imply that he wouldn't:

"It is easy to sit at the computer and look at all this amazing models painted by professionals and think, "I could do that." In reality, you (and most of us) most likely won't."

I was not intending my comment to be a slight, however. I apologize if it came across that way. Some of the work 'HM produces on the site is superb display quality and that is what I thought you were referring to.

I have talked to some of my more experienced friends about budget painting (because I have some hefty car payments and school to pay for) and they informed me that it is best to use the GW paints since they are thick and made for model painting. Now, if you can find some thicker paints at a Michael's or some other craft store, I would suggest those, but I haven't found anything other than just canvas paints which are bad for models. For example, you wouldn't paint with acrylics on a piece of computer paper, you would use water colors or something light like that.

As for brushes, I do have a couple GW ones, but I use craft stores to get most of my painting supplies because it is cheaper even if I get a 20% discount at my game store. The craft stores also have a good selection of different size brushes so I don't run into issues like having to paint a small space with a standard size brush.

This is a very expensive hobby, but when I spend the money I like to think about how more I would spend if I were painting for an art class. It would be scores more than what I spend now.

I thought thick paint was a bad thing?

Consistency and pigment density are two different things... but people sometimes refer to either as "thick". Basically, you want to use professional model acrylics when you can because they have a higher density of pigments (which are what cause the color to coat evenly) than the cheap stuff. The cheap stuff uses a thicker medium with less pigment which leads to streaking and other undesirable effects.

That being said, there are brands of "cheap" paint that perform better than others. Folk Art, Ceramcoat, and others do admirably for their price, if you use a bit of water to thin them out while you paint. Applebarrel, on the other hand, is sold at wal-mart and does HORRIBLY. Never use Applebarrel paints, except on terrain projects where consistency is not important.

So I use GW and Folk Art paints. I learned the hard way you do have to basecoat light when using white and yellow. Learned my lesson HAHA! Anyways any good mix ratio's for Folk Art paints? I use water to thin

I don't have a precise ratio, I just usually dip my brush in water before dipping it in the FA paint I'm using.... sometimes I have to mix it around a little.

For the beginner, here is the best resource I know of to learn new techniques:

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/p/archives-and-tutorials.html

Okay thanks man!