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Hi guys,

I have to paint a SW battle force for a friend of mine.
I've been tru numerous tutorials how to paint SW, but they all require ~25 different kind of paints and sometimes buying all the paint is you need costs you more than the battle force. My question is, is there any short way to paint with 10 different paints and still look good? I believe I have neat finish on my works with small amount of paints, but still...

You can always mix colours together.

It depends on what kind of quality you're looking for. You Could get away with 3 colors (silver for weapon and other metallic parts, SW blue for armor, and eye color) and a primer if you wanted, but it'd not look good. Looking at the box you'd want many more colors.

Things that would help reduce the amount of colors needed:
Using all helmeted heads
Using only normal marine parts, NOT the SW box parts or upgrade parts

Also skip highlights. Just use base colors and Agrax earthshade. It may not be worthy of a Golden demon. But will still look good.
Then you're looking at SW blue(I prefer gray), silver, gold, white or bone, Red, black and yellow also Primer, the wash and varnish. I exuded skin and hair colors as @troa sugested

Do you have an example of a tutorial you liked but want to reduce the number of colours?

Often you can eliminate a lot of shade colours by mixing with either dark brown or black and eliminate highlight colours by using white, light grey, light beige or yellow.

If you have an example of a tutorial we can probably figure out what colours you actually NEED to recreate it.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Do you have an example of a tutorial you liked but want to reduce the number of colours?

Often you can eliminate a lot of shade colours by mixing with either dark brown or black and eliminate highlight colours by using white, light grey, light beige or yellow.

If you have an example of a tutorial we can probably figure out what colours you actually NEED to recreate it.

Here is the tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKdzNh1JGE4

I counted nearly 25 paints and maybe at least 3 shades and oils, and I'm damn sure that you can help me retrench and still have ok result for playing.
About the flesh tones. It will be nice to buy at least flesh set in the future, cause I plan some IG at some point. Atm I have only white and Tamiya Flat Flesh.

Here's an early WIP:


Grey auto-primer, very dark grey & foundation yellow.
Plan is to gloss varnish then wash with dark brown ink.

 DalinCriid wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Do you have an example of a tutorial you liked but want to reduce the number of colours?

Often you can eliminate a lot of shade colours by mixing with either dark brown or black and eliminate highlight colours by using white, light grey, light beige or yellow.

If you have an example of a tutorial we can probably figure out what colours you actually NEED to recreate it.

Here is the tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKdzNh1JGE4

I counted nearly 25 paints and maybe at least 3 shades and oils, and I'm damn sure that you can help me retrench and still have ok result for playing.
About the flesh tones. It will be nice to buy at least flesh set in the future, cause I plan some IG at some point. Atm I have only white and Tamiya Flat Flesh.

One tough thing about Space Wolves is they tend to have a lot of different colours on them, armour, fur, bones, hair, gems, gold, steel, markings in yellow and red and so on. So you're going to need a handful of colours unless you reduce the palette a bit. But without any major modifications to the palette.....

You can probably get rid of the Russ Grey or The Fang (The Fang is a bit darker and duller but has better coverage so will be easier to paint, Russ Grey is a bit more vibrant but will take more layers to get a solid coat, you may want to use a grey primer with Russ Grey). So that's 1 less colour you have to buy.

You could get rid of Fenrisian Grey by mixing white with The Fang or Russ Grey. So in total that's 2 less colours.

If you don't want Gold (I'm not a big fan of Gold on my Space Wolves, but it's up to you!) you could get rid of Balthasar Gold and Gehenna's Gold. So in total that's 4 less colours. I paint my Space Wolves without gold and prefer the look of them...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/719703-.html

You could replace Zandri Dust, Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull with Rakarth Flesh and use mixes of Rakarth Flesh with white (for highlights) and darker brown (for shading) or if you don't have a dark brown you could actually use Rakarth Flesh, wash Agrax, mix Rakarth Flesh with Agrax for a highlight, then highlight again with pure Rakarth Flesh then an edge highlight of white + Rakarth Flesh. That'll get rid of 2 more colours, so now we're down to 6 less colours.

For reds and Oranges you could just get Mephiston and Fire Dragon Nright and mix the in between oranges yourself, getting rid of Trollerslayer Orange and Jokaero Orange. Alternatively you could get Mephiston Red and Trollslayer and make a pseudo Jokaero with Trollslayer+Meph and a pseudo Fire Dragon with Trollslayer + White. So that's another 2 less colours, for a total of 8 less colours.

You could do the faces with less tones, maybe just buy Kislev Flesh and Bugmans Glow and mix the rest. You might even be able to eliminate Kislev Flesh and use Rakarth Flesh instead (mixed with Bugmans perhaps to darken it and warm it down a bit). You could also just use a generic dark brown instead of Bugmans Glow which you could also use as a shade for the bone areas. So that's another 2-3 colours gone, for a total of 10-11 colours less.

Eshin Grey you could mix yourself, I don't normally like mixing greys because it can be hard to repeat it if you need to mix it again, but if you don't care about that you could just mix a pseudo Eshin Grey from Black + White + a bit of Russ Grey or The Fang (just to give it a slight blue tinge to make it a cold grey rather than being completely neutral, you could use other colours if you wanted a warmer grey). So that's 11-12 colours less.

You could paint the eyes without Bloodletter, so that's another 1 colour less.

So you're looking at 12-13 colours less if you don't paint the gold, 10-11 colours less if you want to keep the gold.

You could also get rid of Runefang Steel if you don't care about the edge highlights on the metallic areas, up to you.

My SW:

Prime Black
Airbrush SW Grey
White on shoulders and knees
Red or yellow on shoulders/knees depending on squad type.
Snakebite Leather for leather, hair, fur, etc.
Bone for claws, bone, skulls, etc
Black on Weapons, metal bits
Boltgun on weapons metal bits.
Flesh for flesh


So what is that:
Primer
SW Grey
Snakebite
Bone
Black
Boltgun
Flesh
White
Red
Yellow

There's your 10.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course, my SW are the epitome of Tabletop standard. They look good at a foot or two away, but don't get any closer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-20774-4758_Pretre%27s%20Space%20Wolves.html

Myself, I:
Prime black
Drybrush the entire model bleached bone
Heavy drybrush of shadow grsy on the armor
Light drybrush of spacewolf gray on the armor
Re-black areas like weapons and faces
Undercoat bolters bleached bone
Paint weapons red
Paint exposed skin
And pick out the metalics

I've been doing it for years and for me it yields better than average results

Always more than one way to skin a cat

clicky

http://space-wolves-grey.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-paint-space-wolves.html

These look decent, are quick, and easy.

If you prime white you take away the need for base colours. Simply paint the models in your highlight layer instead, ink them down, and then reapply the same highlight this time as a highlight.

I don't paint space marines, but I paint everything from a white undercoat now and it considerably cuts down the amount of paints I use.

 Bottle wrote:
If you prime white you take away the need for base colours. Simply paint the models in your highlight layer instead, ink them down, and then reapply the same highlight this time as a highlight.

I use that technique for a lot of models, but I don't think it works well for Space Marines. It works well for Lizardmen, Tyranids, Guardsmen, Orcs/Orks/Goblins/Gobbos, when I try and use the same technique on marines it mostly just looks messy.

Though I agree priming white is a good way to go, though for Space Wolves priming grey is probably an even better way to go.

Yes grey primer is going to save you so much time! Definitely agree :-)

 Bottle wrote:
Yes grey primer is going to save you so much time! Definitely agree :-)

I've done grey and black, and I like the effect of black a lot better.

 pretre wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Yes grey primer is going to save you so much time! Definitely agree :-)

I've done grey and black, and I like the effect of black a lot better.

If you're painting your colours to be opaque it should not change the end result at all, it'll just change how many layers of paint you need to achieve a solid colour. Because SW are a blue grey, priming grey will result in the least amount of coats and eliminate the need for "The Fang" base colour when you actually want it to be Russ Grey.

If you're painting your colours to not be entirely opaque, priming black or white requires completely different techniques. If you prime black and are building up transparent layers, you build up away from the shade regions. If you prime white and are building up transparent layers, you build down in to the shade regions away from the highlights.

25 paints is a lot of paints for a 25mm infantry model

It's certainly possible: black, white, brown, brown wash, black wash, 3 shades of gold, 3 shades of silver, 4 colors for the faces, 4 shades of blue-grey, yellow, orange, red, 3 shades of green for targeting reticles, 3 shades of blues for things like power weapons, 2 shades of pure grey and BOOM there you are way past 25 colors, and you still have stuff like hair and purity scroll and bases -- and the bases can take up 6 colors all by themselves!

But that means your finished product is not going to be a quick paintjob

So anyways, it is certainly possible to achieve a nice looking Space Wolves army without having to crack open 25 pots, if that's your question. It will just be less colorful, or require more work (mixing) to achieve that colorfulness

I notice the OP is in Bulgaria, I think you'd probably be able to find Vallejo much cheaper than GW paints over there?

Over here, Humbrol, Tamiya, Gunze and Lifecolour seem to be the cheapest acrylics you can find, you just have to be careful with Tamiya and Gunze because they are alcohol based so they won't mix with other acrylics (but they do mix with each other). I'm not sure with Lifecolour, I've never bought any of their paints. Humbrol are good paints but watch out for them drying in their pots the same way GW paints sometimes dry out. Tamiya, Gunze and Humbrol have much smaller ranges though, so you're more likely to have to mix the colour you need instead of buying it off the shelf.

Over here Vallejo is a touch more expensive than those ones I mentioned, but still cheaper than GW.

There's also Army Painter and AK interactive.

So maybe if you look in to those brands you might be able to save yourself some money.

Yep, that's correct! I am already using Tamiya and Mister Hobby + lifecolor and some GW Citadel (GW is really expensive here). We have Vallejo too, but I am not aware of the prices. Working with alcoholics is harder, compared to GW and Lifecolor (pure acrylics).

I really liked this Army Painter guide and the Quick Shade. Unfortunately there is no Army Painter here and I wonder what alternative I can buy here.