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I'm currently buried in models that I've trudging through, and could use some hints. People talk about speed painting and I'd like to try and speed up my own production. Right now I'm painting/basing 10 marines a week, I only have about 20-25hrs a week to paint. I usually grab a unit, paint the base colors, wash, pick out all the highlights either via layering or drybrushing, put on a protective coat, then do the base. Could I improve my output by doing 20 or 30 guys at a time? Any other tips?

I assume you are doing one color on all the models, than moving to the next color and down the line?

Other things that help is using a primer in the major color of your force. So for grey knights prime them silver, for Khador you can go with red etc.

Or just get an airbrush.

My suggestion would be to get an airbrush to paint your base layers if they're mostly the same color.

I find my airbrush doesn't speed up the painting much per say; I just spend longer on all the other bits now still.. I can't argue with the results ; I couldn't paint that well or that fast with a brush.. not even close.

 darefsky wrote:
I assume you are doing one color on all the models, than moving to the next color and down the line?

Other things that help is using a primer in the major color of your force. So for grey knights prime them silver, for Khador you can go with red etc.

Or just get an airbrush.

I do airbrush the base silver on, but I'm not skilled enough with an airbrush yet to do all the scrolls and such. Once I'm done with the silver I'll go model to model doing all the reds, blues, etc.

I would agree with darefsky on starting with a color primer. Army painter makes a good spray can airbrush. You can get it at 20% discount at quite a few hobby websites.

If you want the high quality paint job though it really does take the time. If you want to speed things up then an airbrush would help. But even with that there is a learning curve. It will take time to speed it up. But put the effort in to making those types of changes and you can pull it off with practice! =)

With an airbrush you could assemble them all (except different colour parts), stick them to a flat bit of timber standing up with double sided tape all facing the same direction, spray the model a darker shade of your scheme, spray from @ 45 degree angle down a lighter shade then a vibrant shade from the top.

Then just spray all other parts, paint the metal and chest, wash it, a few small highlights, eyes and done. Do 30 in 2-3 hours.

It won't win the golden daemon but are more then tabletop quality. Check out buypainted on YouTube and you'll see.

Dude, with 25 hrs per week for painting i would stop complaining. There are folks out there who get that in a lucky month...

Otherwise, there's the washes-only technique. Basically, priming it white, then using only colored washes instead of paint. Even if you are not too clean, the overall softer tones make little mistakes almost invisible and while the colors are somewhat duller, the miniatures still look good. This works great with orks, guardsmen, nids and probably tau and Eldar too. Marines tend to rather bold colors but I assume it would be possible. Grey knights are problematic, because there's no such thing as a metal wash to my knowledge. On the other hand - if you're building GK by a rate of 10 models per week, and have done so for say half a month, shouldn't you be done with it by the end of next week?

 Kosake wrote:
Dude, with 25 hrs per week for painting i would stop complaining. There are folks out there who get that in a lucky month...

This. A thousand times this. I'm doing very well if I get 20hrs a month.

On topic, have a look at quickshade on the armypainter website. I've used it myself once or twice for certain things and it can work wonderfully.

 Kosake wrote:
Dude, with 25 hrs per week for painting i would stop complaining. There are folks out there who get that in a lucky month...

Otherwise, there's the washes-only technique. Basically, priming it white, then using only colored washes instead of paint. Even if you are not too clean, the overall softer tones make little mistakes almost invisible and while the colors are somewhat duller, the miniatures still look good. This works great with orks, guardsmen, nids and probably tau and Eldar too. Marines tend to rather bold colors but I assume it would be possible. Grey knights are problematic, because there's no such thing as a metal wash to my knowledge. On the other hand - if you're building GK by a rate of 10 models per week, and have done so for say half a month, shouldn't you be done with it by the end of next week?

I'm not complaining that I have 20+hrs a week to paint, not at all. Though I do have 2 other armies with over 500+ models I'd like to get painted, some of which have been sitting around for over a year. I was just looking for faster routes to get models done. I was also looking for some insight since I would like to get my stuff done, and have been approached by a couple people about painting their armies for them.

I'm painting 10 marines a week, at this rate I should be done with my infantry around the end of next month.

Well, as I said, using the washes-only technique you can get hordes done REALLY fast. Your batch size is almost unlimited, I think you can get your whole infantry done in one weekend. Check youtube, I think there's a good guide on AoBR orks that shows the principle really good.

Thanks, I'll have to check it out!

There's no one method for speed painting that works for all models.

What I do, time myself painting a model, figure out where I'm losing time, try and eliminate those steps or do it faster.

Some basic tricks, though...

Prime white, use a watered down base coat (not so thin as to be a wash, but thin enough that it doesn't 100% cover the white). This will give you some decent highlights and is extremely fast.

Use a big arse brush. Buy a series of large brushes and use the biggest brush you can. For applying basecoats and washes, I use a flat tip brush that is around 1cm wide. About 10 times faster than using the typical pointed brush. Save the pointed brushes for actual detail work. And even when doing detail work, try and use larger brushes if you can.

For Spehss Mareenz, it's best to apply highlights by airbrush. Slopping a wash on a marine doesn't tend to work that well. Not that you CAN'T wash a marine, it's just the haphazard speed painting type washing doesn't really work well on them. If you have an airbrush, you can do the bulk of your highlighting and shading with the airbrush, it will be a lot faster.

Pick armies that don't have a ton of detail that you'll need to use a fine detail brush for. That's not to say don't paint detailed models, it's just if you have to go over that detail with a fine brush, it's going to take you a long bloody time (eg. Chaos aren't a great army for speed painting, vanilla marines are good for speed painting, space wolves aren't good for speed painting, tyranids can be good or bad depending on what scheme you choose).

Painting quickly is mostly about picking a scheme you can do using big brushes and using haphazard motions. If you have to go in and carefully clean things up and paint a lot of details, it can be very slow.

Also picking models that don't require a lot of assembly. I figured out it takes me about 20 minutes to glue together a guardsman from clipping him out of the sprue, cleaning the mould lines and assembling him. Compared to about 5 minutes for a snap-fit guardsman (I still glue it together, it's just so much faster to clean and assemble the snap fit ones).

You can't speed paint everything. I'm a very slow painter, but to give you an idea, the fastest I can paint my Space Wolves is about 2 hours per model, any faster and I'm massively sacrificing quality. My Imperial Guard have a much better scheme for speed painting. On average, I can assemble and paint a Cadian in about 20-30 minutes.

The key technique for speed painting is to not try to get brilliant results.

My aim is to finish an army and play with it. I want the army to look good en masse from a distance of six feet.

Consequently I don't try to do lots of detail and clever shading. I stick to three or four base colours, some basic details that show up, like weapons and flags, and do simple shading with dry brush and/or magic dip techniques.

If we are talking about speed painting a 40k army, your basic troops don't really need highlights picked out, or eyes balls to be perfect. get your base colors down, wash, highlight real quick and move on. Spend the time and effort on the sergeants, Leaders, HQ's that kinda thing.

Where I get really slowed down is painting WM/H cuz there just arnt 400 figs in an army so my tendency is to paint them all to my best ability, Add that to the fact that I might get 5-10 hrs a month I get to pain and blam.....

It's often quicker to do touch ups than paint carefully.
Smash the paint on with a big brush and see if you can notice any mistakes when the models are on the table.
Allseeingskink seems to have the right idea although personally I start from black and have got good at drybrushing and overbrushing techniques.

Use a limited palette. Four colours looks good. Painting every strap, bag and bandage a different colour will take an obscene amount of time. If you don't want all these details looking exactly the same alter the thickness of wash/drybrush on each piece and they'll look different but remain uniform.

For space marines do the whole model one colour first. Basecoat, wash, highlight, thin wash/glaze to soften the highlight. After this pick out weapons/details in other colours.

Don't get bogged down in detail; you're painting an army, not a single model display piece.

If you use a lot of wash and are being delayed by drying times consider using a hair dyer/heater (don't use too much heat or blow though)!

Buy a cheap hairdryer to quicken the drying ptocess between coats.
Use a dip or black / brown wash over the whole model.
Bse before you prime - do a whole batch in one evening. Remember to go over any sand glued on with watered-down wood glue once the 1st stage is dry to prevent the sand coming off when you drybrush. Pop in an airing cupboard to dry over night.

I find a desk fan far better than a hairdryer.
The process of drying is more about moving air than heating up.
It's less noisy and does a job for you that you don't have to do, holding a hairdryer for any length of time gets tedious..
This'll leave you with more time to paint.

Definately echo the suggestion of a colored primer. This is key for me. Even if your primer coat isn't the final color, it does make a difference. For example, my Blood Angels are primed brown, which is complementary to the red basecoats I lay on. Red will cover brown in fewer coats than black.

Also, look at the brush you are using. I do the bulk of my painting with either a #2 flat or a #4 flat brush. They lay down paint very quickly and the edges allow for very fast edge lining.

Lastly, washes washes washes.

Thanks for all the great tips guys!

This may sound sort of stupid but it has been the best speed painting advice I have ever received...

When you are in your painting time...paint! Don't browse the 'net or spend too much time watching videos you might have on in the background. If you need background distraction I find podcasts and audiobooks are great.

Mainly just focus on what you are doing. Have all your paints and washes set out and ready so you don't have to go hunting for specific colours in the middle of a session. Also make sure you take a short break every now and then or your quality and speed will decrease the longer you go without giving your eyes and hands a break.

Essentially: Stay Focused, have everything ready before you start, and give yourself small breaks to break up long painting sessions.

 l0k1 wrote:

 Kosake wrote:
Dude, with 25 hrs per week for painting i would stop complaining. There are folks out there who get that in a lucky month...

Otherwise, there's the washes-only technique. Basically, priming it white, then using only colored washes instead of paint. Even if you are not too clean, the overall softer tones make little mistakes almost invisible and while the colors are somewhat duller, the miniatures still look good. This works great with orks, guardsmen, nids and probably tau and Eldar too. Marines tend to rather bold colors but I assume it would be possible. Grey knights are problematic, because there's no such thing as a metal wash to my knowledge. On the other hand - if you're building GK by a rate of 10 models per week, and have done so for say half a month, shouldn't you be done with it by the end of next week?

I'm not complaining that I have 20+hrs a week to paint, not at all. Though I do have 2 other armies with over 500+ models I'd like to get painted, some of which have been sitting around for over a year. I was just looking for faster routes to get models done. I was also looking for some insight since I would like to get my stuff done, and have been approached by a couple people about painting their armies for them.

I'm painting 10 marines a week, at this rate I should be done with my infantry around the end of next month.

See, I will be happy if I am done with my current project by June....

I think the pace you are keeping would be a goal for many....

 Joyous_Oblivion wrote:
This may sound sort of stupid but it has been the best speed painting advice I have ever received...

When you are in your painting time...paint! Don't browse the 'net or spend too much time watching videos you might have on in the background. If you need background distraction I find podcasts and audiobooks are great.

Mainly just focus on what you are doing. Have all your paints and washes set out and ready so you don't have to go hunting for specific colours in the middle of a session. Also make sure you take a short break every now and then or your quality and speed will decrease the longer you go without giving your eyes and hands a break.

Essentially: Stay Focused, have everything ready before you start, and give yourself small breaks to break up long painting sessions.

I like to have TV series playing in the background. They go so slow you don't really have to pay attention to them and can just paint. Podcasts and audiobooks put me to sleep. Avoid watching movies, as they tend to be a bit faster paced and you end up watching them instead of painting... unless it's a movie you've already seen before. Sometimes if I want to have a long painting session, I'll sit down with the LOTR trilogy. I've seen it several times so mostly just have it on as background noise

I basecoat black then white over the top with spraycans. That gives you instant shadows and low tones. Then just use washes over the rest of the model and drybrush details. Mega quick, touch up individual models later.

Following up on the brown basecoat suggestion, I like doing the bumpmapping thing where you spray a model black then dust spray it from above with white. I'll then do a couple of slightly thinned layers of scorched brown/rhinox hide (enough so the colour is fairly solid, but the gradient underneath still shows through a little).

The other advantage for working from a brown basecoat is you can paint up in to almost any colour from it. The only exception to this I can think of is blue. A dark brown works fine as extreme crease shading even for green! In fact, it is worth 'black lining' with dark brown (instead of black) if you are using a natural palette.