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Sooo...Dakka...I need help. I have a tournament in less than 2 weeks and I only have about 5 real working days that I can work on painting all my tanks and guardsmen. The tanks I think I can do pretty easily with what I have in mind. However I need some advice on how to speed paint guardsmen. I have around 80 guys to do...They need to be tabletop quality to win any prizes at the tournament. So 3 colors and based.

Any advice on how to speed paint a IG guardsmen? I do have access to an airbrush and am pretty good with it. I looked all over youtube and my google fu is weak today, I can't find any tutorial on speed painting guard with an airbrush. I'm assuming it's a lot easier/faster with an airbrush.

Thanks for any help!
Syypher

1: Airbrush armour/clothes one colour (green, grey, tan, whatever)
2: paint skin, paint webbing/equipment (or alternativly, airbrush clothes/webbing one colour, and brushpaint the armour another)
3: Paint base
4: dip in armypainter quickshade.

Do them 10 or 20 at a time (airbrush all, then brushpaint all, then dip all), throw on a bunch of movies, podcasts, or tv series, and you should be able to knock them out pretty quick.

If you can deal with the poses, these guardsmen will save you a lot of time...

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440249a&prodId=prod1400022

In my experience, they save about 10-15 minutes per model by reducing assembly and cleaning time (one large single mould line is easier to clean than one lots of them on each component of the adjustable pose models). You can just buy a box of regular guardsmen to get the special weapons and commanders (or order the bits online) then make up the numbers with the single pose models.

If you've already purchased the models or don't like the monopose, thats fine.

As far as painting, there's not really much to say. Undercoat, spray a basecoat, pick out the skin, weapons and armour (when picking out the details, try and use colours have good coverage with a single coat, avoid yellows, use the GW "base" range, as it'll save you time having to do more layers), then either dip them or wash them with black ink or army painter strong tone (same as Devlan Mud). Some people recommend dipping more, personally I prefer washing and I find it only takes around 1-2 minutes per model to wash them, when all is said and done, not really any slower than dipping them.

Guardsmen.
(I have oldschool paints, you can use the equivalents)
1. Prime black
2. Spray gun the whole model Commando Khaki (karak stone)
3. Paint all the faces/hands with dwarf flesh (cadian fleshtone)
4. Paint all the metal Boltgun (leadbelcher)
5. Paint the armor Knarloc green (don't know equivalent)
5. Wash everything in devlan mud (Agrax earthshade)
6. If you get spicy you can then drybrush everything except the metal with bleached bone.

I dont want this to sound negative but.... You are in deep trouble. This isnt enough time to paint 80 guardsman at a crap quality. I wish i had some better advice but i dont. I would just for go the tourney if i was you.

LordBoJangles wrote:Guardsmen.
(I have oldschool paints, you can use the equivalents)
1. Prime black
2. Spray gun the whole model Commando Khaki (karak stone)
3. Paint all the faces/hands with dwarf flesh (cadian fleshtone)
4. Paint all the metal Boltgun (leadbelcher)
5. Paint the armor Knarloc green (don't know equivalent)
5. Wash everything in devlan mud (Agrax earthshade)
6. If you get spicy you can then drybrush everything except the metal with bleached bone.

FYI, old GW paints don't directly translate to the new paints. Agrax is very different to devlan, I'd go with army painter strong tone instead. Also it'll probably save you time to use base paints where possible.

NoQuestionzAsked wrote:I dont want this to sound negative but.... You are in deep trouble. This isnt enough time to paint 80 guardsman at a crap quality. I wish i had some better advice but i dont. I would just for go the tourney if i was you.

It is enough time to do 80 guardsmen if you can spend all that time on it and don't have other commitments. I'd worry more about the tanks taking too long. The guardsmen in my gallery only took 35 minutes to paint, add basing and if you don't have the monopose and taking in to account the odd special model, say an hour each, less if you're willing to sacrifice quality, so under 80 hours. 16 hours a day as a conservative estimate. Whether you have the endurance and patience is another matter

You can do 3 things with your airbrush to help you out.

1. Basecoat and Zenithial Highlight the cloth. (this will save you time highlighting and washing everything)

2. Lay each guardsman down flat, hold a small piece of card over his top half and spray his boots only, Quick masking like this works really well with guardsmen because the have a pretty straight line around their calves.

3. Airbrush the bases.


Everything else is hand painting, which is what it gonna take them time.