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Hi guys, i've just started collecting an imperial guard cadian army and after careful calculation I have come to realise that I have around 50 Guardsmen to paint not including special characters and every time Isit down and try to paint (assembly line style) I just can't be bothered after 5 or so minutes and i'm never truly happy with the results. I need some advice because I do love the guard but Ijust can't seem to get into the ebb and flow of painting a big regiment. I had no problem with blood angels and was able to paint a 1000 point army to a good standard in just over ten days but so far I have about 8 vets and a commissar painted and so many more to do and it's been that way for months, any advice?

LIke ANY big project, break it down into more manageable chunks.

This will help prevent you from getting bored or burned out, and with each minor piece of work done, you will get a sense of accomplishment.

I had to paint 60 guys a while ago, and broke it down into six groups of ten guys.

In between each batch of 10, I worked on something else (a vehicle, a single hq figure, etc.) for variety.

Also, share your progress with your friends, and encourage one another.

Best of luck!

Breaking it down is good advice. I would also say that adopting a method where you are happy with the results for table top standard with a shorter time invested is important. You should at least like the way they are coming out in order to remain interested in painting them even if you are not spending the time to do a top quality job. There are videos on painting tyranids for example to tabletop standard quickly that still result in a nice looking model you can be happy with. If you havent already i would explore dipping with something like quickshade which could make a great looking guardsman over a basic paintjob.

FWIW

I quite literally just did this! As others have said I broke it up, I did ten men at a time, then I would do a character or something. I also streamlined my 50 men, I didn't go and try to put a ton of detail into it, so I would do ten guys all of one colored layer, then the next layer across all ten. The nice part of this was that By the time I finished 50 I had 2 officers, a Psyker, and some random models from a board game painted. The end result was that I had 50 guys that were at tabletop, maybe a little above, and the special characters with them really pop out because of the added detail.

I would say for you to do 5 or 6 at a time, by the time you paint 50 guardsman I imagine the 45-50th will look MUCH better than the 1-5th.

Niexist wrote:
I would say for you to do 5 or 6 at a time, by the time you paint 50 guardsman I imagine the 45-50th will look MUCH better than the 1-5th.

This is also true, my last guardsmen looks WAY better than my first. I'm going to have to go back and redo them all at some point once I have everything painted! Or leave them to show my improvement over time

Thanks guys, this is all great advice, I think Ishould organise my free time a bit better too.

Reading some warhammer books usually gets me motivated again.

assembly line is soul crushing!
Just do 5 at a time. Youl finish quicker in the long run, and achieve a better result.
I tried assembly line painting 80 skaven clanrats once (whopping half a point per model... so thats basically nothing on the table) And had to break them down in to ranks within the unit rather than go through them all just keeping sane

Yeah decided assembly line just isn't for me, all I have ended up with are 10 or so decent painted headless, weaponless, armless guardsmen on a base.

I find 2 or 3 at a time is best, with building other models inbetween to let out some creativity.
Saying that I take forever to get anything painted. C'est la vie.

One thing I find helps, is to not have all of them sat there infront of you.
Try packing them all away, and only having the few you are working on right now out at the desk (or wherever you work).
I find that the massive pile of to do, within visible range is rather off putting and daunting when you want to do good work on the one in your hand.

This is how I painted over a 100 orks without going crazy. Watch a television show while you paint.

I find that I can paint and listen to the dialog and I periodically look up the screen if something is going on. Also, American Football is the perfect sport to watch while painting. Baseball should be good. I've also heard that football is as well despite the fact that there is very little stoppage of play. Discipline yourself to only watch those shows when you are painting and you'll find yourself looking forward to paint so you can see how Tony Soprano whacks his latest friend turned rival. Movies also work.

I watched 6 seasons of 3rd Watch, 3 seasons of the Sopranos, 5 seasons of the Shield, 3 seasons of Dexter, 3 seasons of Deadwood, and 4 seasons of Spartacus. While painting and/or modeling. All are pretty good showsand highly recommend them..

Are you using an airbrush? An airbrush can greatly speed up the painting of armies to a decent tabletop standard. For the khaki/green cadians for example you could:

1. Airbrush prime white.
2. Wash black.
3. Airbrush basecoat thinned khaki or earth. Thining helps the shading show through.
4. Brush catachan green for armour.
5. Do some quick highlights and other details.

Could instead airbrush legs and arms khaki or earth and the chest and head catachan green before assembly. Then just brush the neccessary remaining stuff like the small amount of cloth ont he torso and the shoulder pads. This is higher overall quality imo, but takes a bit longer as it's more awkward working with individual pieces.

Also, whatever method you do, paint the model and the arms separately. Much quicker and easier to get a good job without the arms and chest getting in the way of each other.

 Davespil wrote:
This is how I painted over a 100 orks without going crazy. Watch a television show while you paint.

I find that I can paint and listen to the dialog and I periodically look up the screen if something is going on. Also, American Football is the perfect sport to watch while painting. Baseball should be good. I've also heard that football is as well despite the fact that there is very little stoppage of play. Discipline yourself to only watch those shows when you are painting and you'll find yourself looking forward to paint so you can see how Tony Soprano whacks his latest friend turned rival. Movies also work.

I watched 6 seasons of 3rd Watch, 3 seasons of the Sopranos, 5 seasons of the Shield, 3 seasons of Dexter, 3 seasons of Deadwood, and 4 seasons of Spartacus. While painting and/or modeling. All are pretty good showsand highly recommend them..

My working show is how it's made on Netflix. Hours of background noise and music for industry and every now and then you learn how they make something!

 Yonan wrote:
Are you using an airbrush? An airbrush can greatly speed up the painting of armies to a decent tabletop standard. For the khaki/green cadians for example you could:

1. Airbrush prime white.
2. Wash black.
3. Airbrush basecoat thinned khaki or earth. Thining helps the shading show through.
4. Brush catachan green for armour.
5. Do some quick highlights and other details.

Could instead airbrush legs and arms khaki or earth and the chest and head catachan green before assembly. Then just brush the neccessary remaining stuff like the small amount of cloth ont he torso and the shoulder pads. This is higher overall quality imo, but takes a bit longer as it's more awkward working with individual pieces.

Also, whatever method you do, paint the model and the arms separately. Much quicker and easier to get a good job without the arms and chest getting in the way of each other.

Airbrush coupled with part assembly is even quicker. I usually keep the weapons or anything that is a different colour off the model that I can and spray it separately, saves a lot of time on big hordes and tanks.

The other thing I do is set a reward point, usually a new model (something from FW usually) if I've painted a certain amount by a set date. I'd also suggest working up your concentration span slowly as it takes time to be able to sit and paint for hours at a time. This works for me and I have been regularly painting ~80 models at a time.

 Bobaram wrote:

 Davespil wrote:
This is how I painted over a 100 orks without going crazy. Watch a television show while you paint.

I find that I can paint and listen to the dialog and I periodically look up the screen if something is going on. Also, American Football is the perfect sport to watch while painting. Baseball should be good. I've also heard that football is as well despite the fact that there is very little stoppage of play. Discipline yourself to only watch those shows when you are painting and you'll find yourself looking forward to paint so you can see how Tony Soprano whacks his latest friend turned rival. Movies also work.

I watched 6 seasons of 3rd Watch, 3 seasons of the Sopranos, 5 seasons of the Shield, 3 seasons of Dexter, 3 seasons of Deadwood, and 4 seasons of Spartacus. While painting and/or modeling. All are pretty good showsand highly recommend them..

My working show is how it's made on Netflix. Hours of background noise and music for industry and every now and then you learn how they make something!

I'm also a fan of having something on to listen to, often its some movie that I've seen before, anything new is too distracting. Lately I've been enjoying listening to some Black Library eBooks while I paint.
Upto chapter 12 of descent of Angels right now.

Find a scheme you like and can do, then paint one mini. Then admire this mini and think how awesome it would be to have an army painted up like that. Then paint said army.

Best way to go about these big paint projects is to get a girl involved. Crass, I know, but also extremely true. When I was painting my IG contingent last year, I was lucky enough to be dating multiple girls, two of whom enjoyed arts and crafts. Since IG work best with a very basic paint scheme, I had no problem with having them over (one at a time, of course) to help with "craft time" while we took breaks from our other "activities." Ended up being a great weekend tradition for about a month, and it actually made me look forward to painting Imperial Guard. How often can you say a thing like that?

On a side note, regarding the fact that neither of them had ever painted a mini before, the fact that they were total novices made them super careful with all the parts I asked them to paint. To be fair, I gave them all of the broad sections like the armor, the washing, the base coats, et cetera. While they were working on putting down the broad strokes of each next step, I just went through and did the touch up work on the step that had come before, applying the eye you get for this sort of thing after many years doing it. The end result was a very nice tabletop standard allied detachment, but I was never expecting to win any beauty contests with them.

Haha I tried getting my girlfriend to help and she just managed to knock a pot of ushabti bone all over my legs!

I've just got an echo of what's been said. I make terrain and read warhammer books after a few models, takes my mind off the monotony.

How to get motivated? I find 'holy gak, it's golden demon next week' is helping immensely.

 FURIOSO wrote:
Haha I tried getting my girlfriend to help and she just managed to knock a pot of ushabti bone all over my legs!

You just need to get yourself a spare GF who's into painting.

Sounds like you need to change your paint scheme.

When tackling large armies, always choose a scheme that is easy to paint en-masse. This means you want to go heavy on the techniques that do the work for you - washing, drybrushing, sponge weathering, powder weathering, etc.

Imperial guard is specifically easy because the models lend themselves well to speed painting strategies.



Another strategy that I find very useful is - I don't put it on a tabletop unless it's painted. This works great as motivation!

Alway have some of the stuff you recently finished nearby, it makes it much easier if you can see what you get at the end.

Also trashy TV series that won't draw your attention with gripping plot and won't be spoiled if you don't watch closely. I find True blood increases my productivity greatly. UFC or other live events are also good as they have long natural lulls between fights making it easy to pace yourself. Twitch.tv maybe?

I powered through most of my fantasy army's infantry blocks during a 24 hour "Iron Painter" event. When I was finished, I saw the world in Citadel colors.

...it did kind of burn me out on painting for a while though, lol. Even today I would rather paint almost anything else then my next big block of state troops.

Putting down over 100 painted models on the table feels totally boss, though. "You painted all of those?"

Get into (or start your own) an escalation league. I'm in one now, starts at 500 points and goes up 250 points every two weeks to a 2k final level.

League results deduct one point for an army that isn't completely painted. That plus the fact that I want to provide a good game environment for my opponents has me painting like mad.

The nice thing is that 250 points isn't too big a slice to bite off every two weeks. Depending on the configuration, I'm doing 5-6 models and maybe a vehicle or flyer. The variation helps keep it interesting.

-Aeglos

Sometimes you don't get motivated. Horde armys are tuff, if you can't seem to stay seated one day consider putting it off for a day or two. I have weeks where i won't paint anything, because its a never ending wave. Just remember its better to take your time than to force it and rush it for lesser results.

I did a squad of 10 at a time (platoons broken down by squad). I further broke the squads down by weapon type...Vets with 3 specials, then the 6 lasgun vets, finally the SGT. This let me put all of the squad ID marks on the one unit at 1 time Then I did a vehicle of some type.
Then on to the next squad.
You can pull a unit per week, including transport (mine took 2-3 weeks because of the amount of conversion work i did on every model) and over the course of 2 months have a fully painted and based Army, including details like eyes, belts, squad markings, etc.
A bit longer for Orks...but anyone who has a fully painted and based foot Ork Army should get extra points just for the gut-check that requires.

Seeing the look on my opponents face when I smash his primed black marines into dust is motivation enough for me, plus....painted figs perform better....ITS A FACT!!

(dont know where the fact came from but it sounded good!)