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Hullo! Humm, I don't know where to start! Firstly I hope I've posted this in the correct forum..

Basically I've just come in to a little bit of money, and I'm looking for ways to improve on my painting - I realize there is A LOT of information on the internet (and some really amazing information too) but my problem is a) My internet connection is pretty much steam-powered it's so slow >.< and b) The information on the internet seems to be scattered around a bit, it seems to be fairly hard to find what you're looking for. I keep finding new information I wish I'd known beforehand, or conflicting information, and I can't seem to find anywhere where a lot of really useful information is collected orderly and accessibly - I guess this might be from my lack of experience of browsing, or maybe just the nature of the internet (though it's probably just me.)

But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining! My real question is, are there any miniature painting guides out there that are really worth their money? I'm prepared to spend quite a bit if necessary - but I've been reading reviews on a couple of guides and people don't seem particularly impressed by them. I'm a pretty experienced painter, so I'm not really looking for beginners tips, rather just a quality, detailed compendium, all in one easy place (book) - if one exists =S If anyone here has bought or seen anything particular that has really helped them out, I'd love to hear about it.

Any help would be really appreciated! Thank you for reading ^^

Well I think alot of guides show you the basics but if you are willing to spend the money on a new guide how about better interweb power haha

I think dakka has a TON of amazing painters (not me haha) but they can help you greatly if you ask. Check out the painting tutorial section that's a good place to find tutorials.

I would ask people here for help painting you'd be amazed how people improve by that... I remember the "want professional painted minis for cheap" or something like that where a guy asked advice on selling his pro painted minis which weren't pro painted but the thread EXPLODED and on like page 10+ you could see how much his painting got better just from suggestions of people on here.

Kinda off the direct topic but peruse these forums and you'll find lots of great resourcess

Hmm yeah I have been wondering if I've been looking at this the wrong way - I guess I'm just a bit of a sucker for having everything collected nice and neatly in one place. But maybe you're right and I should be trying to use the internet and incredibly nice/helpful people on forums like this more than I have been! ^^

(p.s. about spending money on better internet - if only I could! I live in the middle of nowhere, I'd have to move house a good few miles to have a better connection > . < )

Ya dakka will help you a ton!
I was just joking about the Internet thing though haha.

Hope you find some good advice one here!

May want to try Miniature Mentor. For $70 you can download their whole library.

Sign up far miniwargaming's vault free trial download everything you can, and check out the quick tips. if you like it keep it if not cancel before end of free trial to avoid paying a penny

Coolminiornit has a great painting guide for about $10. loads of great info in it.

How about this:

http://miniature-heroes.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=602_619&products_id=25781

There are plenty of advanced tutorials in it.

I've subscribed to Miniature Mentor as well and find it pretty good. It has techniques and discussions around different types of modelling, painting, sculpting and even photography.

Its a bit of an effort to download all the videos, but once you have them you can go back to them time and time again.

I'm about to check out the mimiwargaming vault subscription too. Heard many good things about it!

The FW master class painting guide volume 1 and 2 are quite good. 1 is all about vehicles and flyers, 2 is titans.

^ I will echo this about the forge world masterclass books, some great scale model painting techniques that have recently begun appearing in the wargaming community

Just out of curiosity, do you have anything you've already painted up on the interwebs to share?

On a message board like this, often times just painting something and throwing it up looking for honest C&C is a good way to improve. It'll be directly about your minis, too, so the things you are already doing well will get reinforced and anything you're directly lacking on, people can point out.

The only painting guide I've found worth forking out cash for was BuyPainteds subscription video service. You can see a lot of his videos on youtube. The subscription service gets you more in depth and higher quality videos. He's had some medical problems of late so not many new videos, but even just the back catalog in high quality was worth the 1 year subscription imo, and the bloke has helped me learn so much about painting, especially with an airbrush.

Personally what really helped me was buying new paints, specifically colours I don't normally gravitate towards, and a new set of models, and trying something really outside the box to push my comfort zone. That's helped me the grow and develop the most as a painter. I used online guides but never purchased anything, there are too many dedicates blogs from passionate hobbyists out there personally for me to justify the expense of a guide. I prefer to invest in the tools themselves.

Honestly, I think everything you need to know you can obtain through the interwebs, mostly on youtube. No book will ever be as good as actually seeing how it is done in a video.

There are several excellent painters out there sharing their knowledge for free. Out of the top of my memory is Girlpainting and Orkpainternerd, but I'm sure the community here will supply a ton of other neat tutorials, lots of it posted in the tutorial section here.

And I can tell you for sure, the "How to paint Citadel Miniatures"-Guides are N O T worth it.

Wow everyone, thank you so much for all the replies! Lots of information here! I'm sure I'll end up buying some things, you guys have linked me things I never found through google after ages of looking. Although I can well see how using the internet in a good way can probably be as/way more productive than buying a book, I think I'll be doing both =)

I'm a little anxious about watching/downloading videos, as even a Youtube video takes a goooood few minutes to load, it's not like I can browse through them at any speed at all > . < however I'll certainly see if I can find any good ones from what you guys have been saying. I might be able to go to a relative's house and download something huge like all the Miniature Mentor vids or miniwargaming, they do look pretty good! Really I've got more information here than I could have hoped for, so thank you all ^^

It's interesting the Forgeworld books have been mentioned, I'm quite a big fan of Forgeworld, although I tend to paint smaller/more detailed mini's as opposed to bigger things like vehicles - I'm wondering how useful they'd be, but only for that reason.

SRSFACE, I haven't photographed/posted any models YET - honestly I've only got back in to wargaming in the past couple of months, I've painted a fair few models but I kinda see them more as 'practice' before I really put the time in to do a few I'm happy with. Lots of them are unfinished where I've just been trying to improve some aspect, or something like that. I spent a couple of days painting a zombie last week, put quite a lot of effort in to that, but I wasn't compleeetely happy with it considering how long I spent on it (but practice makes perfect!). I'm about to start another one tomorrow using a few new techniques I've been trying out - I think I'll end up photographing and posting that new up on here if I'm anywhere half-happy with it, and see if I can get any more advice =)

 soitra wrote:
Sign up far miniwargaming's vault free trial download everything you can, and check out the quick tips. if you like it keep it if not cancel before end of free trial to avoid paying a penny

I really urge you to do this and go straight to the Blue Table Painting vids, specifically the ones on value tinting and speed painting. The techniques I learned there improved my painting style tremendously, and cut the time I do them into a fraction. (I painted a chaos tank commander last night in about 5 minutes, and it looks amazing compared to the figures I used to spent hours on.)

I just picked up Games Workshop "How to paint Citadel miniatures" and after reading through it a few times thoroughly I really think it is a great printed guide. It may be a bit more useful to someone who is planning on doing a lot of GW stuff, and even more useful if you intend to use all the Citadel paints and related tools. I like the fact that you can stand it up to help use the guide while working on your models. I like it, although it is a bit spendy IMO.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470009a&prodId=prod1490018a

 Demigod wrote:
I just picked up Games Workshop "How to paint Citadel miniatures" and after reading through it a few times thoroughly I really think it is a great printed guide. It may be a bit more useful to someone who is planning on doing a lot of GW stuff, and even more useful if you intend to use all the Citadel paints and related tools. I like the fact that you can stand it up to help use the guide while working on your models. I like it, although it is a bit spendy IMO.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470009a&prodId=prod1490018a

Not trying to be a jerk, but the advice you get in there can be found free on any YT painting channel. GW paints are overpriced and their tools are overpriced and terrible.

I have been looking in the mini war gaming vault. some really great stuff in there. my downloads are taking a bashing!!!

 Demigod wrote:
I just picked up Games Workshop "How to paint Citadel miniatures" and after reading through it a few times thoroughly I really think it is a great printed guide. It may be a bit more useful to someone who is planning on doing a lot of GW stuff, and even more useful if you intend to use all the Citadel paints and related tools. I like the fact that you can stand it up to help use the guide while working on your models. I like it, although it is a bit spendy IMO.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470009a&prodId=prod1490018a

Sorry, but I don't consider myself in any way a good painter and still I couldn't salvage anything from the GW Guides. They cover the naked basics which you can learn in a couple of hours at YFLGS or on youtube. It's mostly a showcase without much tutoring. After explaining that you have to basecoat and layer paint afterwards and what's drybrushing, it just shows you finished models and tells you "basecoat this, first layer that, second layer thus, details those".

Boggy Man - whilst I've heard similar things about the guide (it's not really worth it..) - I can't say I've heard the same about the paints, everything I've read (which admittedly isn't A LOT) says the GW paints are rather good quality, especially the washes (shades, whatever you call them now) that are supposed to be really quite good quality. I think the price of them is rather alright too, although you only get a small quantity, you don't need a lot, and a similar quality paint (Windsor and Newton or Golden Artist Colors for example.. anything but the worst, student acrylics) in a larger size would be at least double the price... I really don't mean to argue with you, just going by what I've heard really.

Just another vote for the painting guide on Cool mini or not.

https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/bases-2/ultimate-painting-guide-link.html

It's cheap, downloadable and makes a great foundation for alot of other things. It's a bit convoluted in spots, but very good overall.

v/r
Bill

 Rumpelstiltskin wrote:
Boggy Man - whilst I've heard similar things about the guide (it's not really worth it..) - I can't say I've heard the same about the paints, everything I've read (which admittedly isn't A LOT) says the GW paints are rather good quality, especially the washes (shades, whatever you call them now) that are supposed to be really quite good quality. I think the price of them is rather alright too, although you only get a small quantity, you don't need a lot, and a similar quality paint (Windsor and Newton or Golden Artist Colors for example.. anything but the worst, student acrylics) in a larger size would be at least double the price... I really don't mean to argue with you, just going by what I've heard really.

No argument there; Citadel is quality paint, but so is Coat d'arms, which come in bottles nearly twice the size for cheaper. A little further down the scale there's Vallejo and Reaper. And when talking mass painting like orks and nids Apple Barrel works just as well.