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I've been playing around with this and I'm struggling to work out which is the best option - or how to choose the best option. Which order do you do your base coating in? Do you go with the largest surface area first or the deepest, hardest to reach details first so to avoid messing up the closer to the top coat later?

I go with the largest surface area as I can apply it quickly with a large brush and not worry about other spots, which on my models is usually black and thus is also the recess color. After that, I do everything else in turn starting from the largest or deepest areas. Again, while I try not to get any on the base, I don't worry much about it as my last base step is going back over with a smaller detail brush and cleaning up all the edges. Then finish with a full wash, followed by any specific washes I might want, and finish with drybrush highlights.

That's my current method for painting. Gives a nice tabletop standard in between battle ready and display quality.

I basecoat everything black, unless it specifically has to be a light colour, then pick random parts to paint as I go. Admittedly this might not work for painting armies for the tabletop though.

 SergentSilver wrote:
I go with the largest surface area as I can apply it quickly with a large brush and not worry about other spots, which on my models is usually black and thus is also the recess color. After that, I do everything else in turn starting from the largest or deepest areas. Again, while I try not to get any on the base, I don't worry much about it as my last base step is going back over with a smaller detail brush and cleaning up all the edges. Then finish with a full wash, followed by any specific washes I might want, and finish with drybrush highlights.

That's my current method for painting. Gives a nice tabletop standard in between battle ready and display quality.

This makes sense to me, but I think where it doesn't work for me is that I'm painting Van Saar for Necromunda - which means segmented armour where each panel has multiple layers of different colours.

I tend to base coat the whole model in the predominant color and highlight, then pick out everything else.

It's why it takes me forever to paint Marauders because they're like 50/50 skin and cloth.

 MurderSquid wrote:

 SergentSilver wrote:
I go with the largest surface area as I can apply it quickly with a large brush and not worry about other spots, which on my models is usually black and thus is also the recess color. After that, I do everything else in turn starting from the largest or deepest areas. Again, while I try not to get any on the base, I don't worry much about it as my last base step is going back over with a smaller detail brush and cleaning up all the edges. Then finish with a full wash, followed by any specific washes I might want, and finish with drybrush highlights.

That's my current method for painting. Gives a nice tabletop standard in between battle ready and display quality.

This makes sense to me, but I think where it doesn't work for me is that I'm painting Van Saar for Necromunda - which means segmented armour where each panel has multiple layers of different colours.

I took a quick look at the Van Saar models on GWs website and I don't think it's a problem. Start with the undersuit without worrying much about hitting the armor plates, then do the base plates, being careful around the edges to hit the undersuit as little as can without significantly reducing your painting speed, then do the same with the higher armor panels vs the armor plates. In fact, you might even just hit the top of the upper panels with the normal brush and use a smaller brush (or just the tip) to hit the edges. The main thing is to not be terribly afraid to accidently hit something you didn't mean to. In the end, you just carefully go through all the base colors again to clean things up with a small brush. That's when you can go really slow because you're only hitting the small mistakes.

Sergent Silver speaks the truth. Heed these words.

I usually basecoat the entire model with whatever the mid tone of main colour is, applying it with a big arse brush, rattle can or airbrush. Then if I spot any difficult to reach details I'll hit those and then maybe touch up the basecoat if necessary.

The only time I might basecoat a detail colour instead of a main colour is when it's a colour that will be hard to paint... but realistically these days there's so many good high coverage paints that problem doesn't exist much these days.

If I think it's going to be hard or time consuming to reach the recess details, I might start by basecoating a shade colour rather than a mid tone, but I prefer mid tone because it lets me see how the colours work together prior to doing any detail work.




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 MurderSquid wrote:
This makes sense to me, but I think where it doesn't work for me is that I'm painting Van Saar for Necromunda - which means segmented armour where each panel has multiple layers of different colours.

Van Saar I'd paint from the deepest colours to the top (underlying cloth, bottom armour plates, then top armour plates), but it depends what colours you plan to use, are you going to paint them in GW's colours? If so, just prime/basecoat it dark grey, pick out those greenish armour plates, hit it with a black wash, then pick out the dark grey armour plates. It'll form a good base for any further highlighting, shading, volumes, etc.

Deeper stuff first and then dark to light.

So i go deepest first. and I do personally what i can sloppy painting, idk if anyone else has coined this or do something similar but its a method of painting i do explicitly for large volumes of models that are going to be table top reedy.

But generally i got deepest to highest and darkest to lightest, and always insure my color scheme matches that pattern as well, so that my deepest color on the model is also my darkest that way when i paint, i can be really sloppy and fast, then just go back in and clean up mistakes. Because the color i spilled onto is darker, i can paint over the mistake in a single pass.