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Hi I have almost a full 1st company of Terminators and almost a full battle company to paint and don't really know where to start! My collection has just kind of grown as I've seen bargains etc. and now I don't want to start painting anything properly until everything is at least red coated (Blood Angels army by the way).

All of the models are just about base coated white or black but now I'm onto giving them their first red coat and wondering if there's any useful tips. I have just got the gw spray gun, is it any good? Or is it better for tanks or priming?

Do you guys just paint everything then go back to do boltguns, heads, etc.? Obviously DC and Sang. Guard is different but would you take similar approaches?
I'm hoping there's some handy tips out there to make the grinding them out easier!

Cheers,
Shaun

For quicker painting, armypainter has red primer for blood angels. that would save you a lot of time, then add stain to fill the cracks, then hit the highlights. a lot quicker than one at a time. without counting on buying the primer and waiting for shipping.

1) Pick a single squad.

2) Have the squad fully assembled (if you magnetize, this is when you should do it).

3) Prime squad in your desired color.

4) Apply desired basecoat to the entire squad.

5) Apply desired details do the entire squad (do 1 color at a time, to any part on the model that you want to be that color, then move on to the next model.

6) Once finished with step 5, repeat with a different color/wash/drybrush/desired paint application.

The trick is to do the entire squad together, 1 step at a time.

Well, at least that's how I do it.

I use plastikote spray paint; covers well and means I don't have to break out the airbrush just for base coats.

The GW spray gun is just that; a spray gun. Use it for base coating models or tanks. It wastes a hell of a lot of paint compared to airbrushes. I've not personally used it, so can't really comment further.

However, the air cans are pants; keep a bucket of warmish water to hand to dunk the can in for a couple of seconds when the pressure drops off to warm the can up. And for the love of god spray in a well ventilated area as the cans not only leak, but you spray propellant out with the paint so it is just as bad as using spray paint for fumes.

When spraying I tend to spray everything one colour then go back to paint the smaller details. Obviously if you can leave the guns off then you can do (also allows to paint and spray behind the guns more easily).

Personally it is nice to paint a unit or two to completion and then go on to the next couple rather than have a million partially painted models still to go through. Also, interspacing characters and vehicles as a reward is a good way to keep things from getting stale.

Cheers for the advice so far.

I've never looked into the Army Painter stuff but feel as though I'm missing out. What are your opinions of the quickshade stuff? It looks pretty amazing but then adverts aren't going to look rubbish are they!

And yeah I was thinking chain painting would be the way to do it. Just grit my teeth and bash out squad after squad :| going to be a long few weeks!

So, you are painting marines? With one colored armors? (I mean, almost only one color i the entire model).

Well, spray it in the color you want, paint the details and wash with black. Very tabletop, not incredible quality. Will do the job

If you have a way to put your hands on an airbrush, do the same thing, but use zenital higlighting technics before the details. Good luck

I usually workshop one squad at a time as well, in this order:

1) Assemble (including the basing sand/modelling, which I paint)
2) Spray prime. (or Brush on primer, if preferred)
3) Basecoat primary color/colors
4) Build up a quick highlight to desired main colors
5) Washes to tie together/enhance blending
6) build up final layers of drybrushing/highlighting
7) Paint any details/secondary areas with a similar step process. (this is the point where I do final edge highlighting; it depends on the effect you want and how much you want the edge highlighting to pop)
8) Paint the base with a 4 step Basecoat, wash, drybrush, final highlights drybrush
9) add flocking and final details

This process achieves a high standard for the tabletop, but takes lots of time and dedication for each model. Along the way you'll figure out the best ways to fix your mistakes, too. I find painting the majority color to near completion first makes that step really fast; So finishing the red then going in and picking out the edges of the shoulderpads, imperial aquilla, helmets, bolters, etc ... might be an effective way to go for you.

Doing a squad at a time is nice as they all come out looking the same and you can develop a method for your army. You'll learn how you like to paint each part of the models that are common to your army - cloth, armor, bone/horns, chain/metal, etc.

I am also in the same situation. +1 to everyone who helped. Thanks for the original post and advice of everyone.

I 'm pretty close to evildrspock with a few exceptions: The goal for table top painting is clean and neat base coats for everthing. You will find if you do this you can always go back and add layers later for highlighting.

Basics:
1) Assemble everything, Sand your bases
2) Spray black Primer
3) Spray base coat of primary color (red for Blood Angels). The recommendation for Army Painter is good if you don't have access to an airbrush. I have no experience w/ the GW spray brush but it may give you a similarly good finish. Do your whole army at once in a giant batch.
4) Block out areas to be metal in black or very dark grey.
5) Paint boltgun metal wherever needed.
6) Paint any power weapons boltgun metal or Blue.
7) Paint eyes white
8) Glaze model. w/ Earthshade. 1 x for whole model, 2x in dark receases.
9) Glaze eyes w/ yellow.
10) Paint base dark grey, Drybrush w/ codex grey (whatever is new version of this). Drybrush #2 w/ wolf grey....very lightly.

Done.

Now. At any point in the future you can go back and
11) Highlight Reds
12) Increase detail on model
13) Add flock, grass tufts or pigments to your base.
14) paint on or use decals as needed.

I was able to do 60 space marines in 2 nights of painting this way.

Yeah, my method is extremely time consuming, but gives me the effect I want (for example: see the Eldar Guardian in my profile picture). My 1st Eldar army was the black, red and yellow Ulthwe, before the blue and bone Alaitoc, and when I painted the Ulthwe army I pained very crisp flat tones over the whole model, carefully paying attention to the edges of each tone. This was so time consuming and irritating I really didn't like painting. My new techniques with washes, and different ways of building up colors is easier almost for me because you aren't always as concerned with the crisp edges to get it perfect, as you have some leeway to get it to look right. IDK, maybe it's just gotten easier for me by now as I've painted well over 300 some infantry models now.

Jgemrich, I like your reccomendations with more specific colors. My style doesn't really use the GW layering method, but it is an effective way to paint, to be sure (as far as getting models ready to play quickly, and going back in later for details).

One way of speed painting a lot of miniatures quickly which I use a lot is to spray them white, apply a coat of regular paint by brush, but heavily watered down (not so watery it becomes a wash, but watery enough so that the white underneath produces a natural highlight while retaining the desired colour) then pick out details, then throw an appropriate wash over the model.

Instead of the white undercoat, you can just spray the colour you want directly (so, red for blood angels) and then do the wash and all that and then as a final step go over and pick out highlights manually.

I find the trick to speed painting is reducing the amount of work you need to do with a fine detail brush, and increase the amount of work you do with large sweeping strokes.

I have personally never seen a huge benefit to batch painting (except obviously when it comes to spraying, since it's faster to spray a handful of models at once than spraying a handful individually). If it takes me 10 minutes to do one step on one model, it's not gonna magically take less than 50 minutes to do the same step on 5 models. That's not to say I don't batch paint, but my batch painting tends to be related to how many models can I paint while waiting for the paint to dry on the first model and how many models I can paint at once without getting bored, it has little to do with speeding me up.

EDIT: Actually I wouldn't use the first method I mentioned on blood angels since red is a hard colour to make look good using that method, as it tends to turn out pink highlights when what you want is probably more of an orange highlight.

The main benefit of batch painting to me is consistency. Unless I've already painted 20-30 of the models, I find I can me more consistent painting in groups. That, and what you said about letting previous layers/washes dry on what you just worked on.

No real good way to get what you've got done other than (previously described) batch painting.

Get a squad of like 5-10 (maybe more) dudes, and hit the lists noted earlier.

Personally, I'd prime rustoleum rust red, then hit the base coat of red (for a pretty red red, if ya know what I'm red-ing about). Black for a darker red if that's your preference.

I'm batch painting my SWs right now. I've got a group of 8 guys sitting around, some with Dwarven Bronze, and some without. Progress though, progress. Mix it up inbetween squads with a character if you get bored.

I can't remember where I read it so can't acknowledge the sage who said it, but the fastest way to paint an army is 20 minutes a day.

All of the posts above give excellent process descriptions, but if you try to plan for 1 or 2 huge painting sessions a week to knock the army off, either you'll get worn out and give up, or the quality will probably suffer.

Squad at a time, and timebox it....

Snapshot wrote:
I can't remember where I read it so can't acknowledge the sage who said it, but the fastest way to paint an army is 20 minutes a day.

All of the posts above give excellent process descriptions, but if you try to plan for 1 or 2 huge painting sessions a week to knock the army off, either you'll get worn out and give up, or the quality will probably suffer.

Squad at a time, and timebox it....

Good idea. As long as you get a little progress here and there every day, it will get done.

 evildrspock wrote:

Snapshot wrote:
I can't remember where I read it so can't acknowledge the sage who said it, but the fastest way to paint an army is 20 minutes a day.

All of the posts above give excellent process descriptions, but if you try to plan for 1 or 2 huge painting sessions a week to knock the army off, either you'll get worn out and give up, or the quality will probably suffer.

Squad at a time, and timebox it....

Good idea. As long as you get a little progress here and there every day, it will get done.

Yeah, I find my 20m usually turns into 1hr or more, but as long as I do a little bit I'm happy. Each to his own though.

Snapshot wrote:
I can't remember where I read it so can't acknowledge the sage who said it, but the fastest way to paint an army is 20 minutes a day.

All of the posts above give excellent process descriptions, but if you try to plan for 1 or 2 huge painting sessions a week to knock the army off, either you'll get worn out and give up, or the quality will probably suffer.

Squad at a time, and timebox it....

Not bad advice, but I'll add to that and say, in the initial stages of collecting an army, it's well worth figuring out just how long it's gonna take you to assemble an army. Figure out how long it takes you to paint a model, maybe buy a small box of models and paint them up before buying the whole army just to get an idea of how long it takes you to paint, actually time it with a stopwatch/clock, then multiply that by how many models you want in the army, add time for characters (a few hours extra per character) and tanks/monsters (add a few hours for assembly, maybe a whole day for assembly depending on the model, and consider it'll probably take you as long to paint 1 tank as it took you to paint 10 rank and file infantry), then add a few hours for different special weapons that might take longer to paint, things like cavalry/bikes which might take two or three times longer to assemble and paint.

If you do all that and figure out it's gonna take you 200 hours to assemble the army, then it's gonna take you 200 hours So if you paint 20 minutes a day 6 days a week, it's gonna take nearly 2 years to do that.

You have to keep things in perspective, I've tried the "30 minutes after work" thing a few times but there's no way I can keep it up every day and when I figure out how long it'll take to do an army like that, it just blows out to more months/years than I know I can stay focused on 1 army.

If you want an army painted in 3 months and you figure it's gonna take 200 hours, you also have to budget that it's gonna take around 70 hours a month, 17 hours a week or a bit over 2 hours a day.

If that's unreasonable, start to lower your sights a bit and/or think of ways to reduce the 200 hours, which is what most of this thread is talking about

I've started and quit many an army over the years by trying to bite off more than I can chew as far as time is concerned, these days I'm far more careful about actually budgeting my time.

Today, I decided to fit in with my schedule and provide myself with a nice way to relax every day, I'll paint 1 hour a day. Then, I'm satisfied in knowing I am getting something done (that's one color step on 10 models, give or take), and get to participate in my hobby without it taking too much time out of my day.

Army painter quickshade, or if you dont want to drop 30 buy minwax