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I am normally a hideously slow painter who fusses over every detail on a model. This means it can take me weeks to get something done, when hours would have sufficed, and the end result probably isn't all that much better anyway. So I noticed a box of guardian parts on my shelf and decided to put some of them together, and assign myself the task of painting them as quickly as possible to what is for me 'baseline' quality.

So this will not be a tutorial on how to paint fast, but rather a log of what passes for fast painting for me. I have read many how-to posts on Dakka and elsewhere about painting fast, and for the most part they leave me kind of upset, because they always seem to be written by people who have astonishingly awesome painting skills. I do not have such skills. They'll do a 'quick highlight' on a whole squad in 45 seconds and it looks more amazing than anything I have ever done. So forget that.

Anyway, hopefully I can learn something during the experiment, and maybe it will be helpful to others as well.

First: priming. I sprayed the models with some Krylon ultra flat black. Some pics were taken on the cell, so the quality is rotten. This is one of them. (Luckily there really isn't any interesting detail to see yet. It's just black!)



My normal strategy with guardians (and most others with the gun held across the chest) is to paint with the right arm off. I don't like 'reaching' around the gun and arm to paint the chest, partly because I'm clumsy and end up bending brush bristles, globbing paint on unintented parts, etc. For the model that's in the lower middle right in this picture, I left the gun on. This is another experiment - we'll see how it goes painting him as opposed to the others.

After priming I went over some of the underexposed parts (like the necks) with some regular old black paint.

Time spent on this stage: 10 minutes.

I also suffer from the curse of perfectionism, but also procrastination (which you could call laziness) so this means I've only ever properly finished a handful of models.

Will be interesting to see how you get on with this, cus I've often thought of trying it myself.

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I painted the weapons, faceplates, extra ammo/grenades, and 'spurs' with two coats of Vallejo Bone White. I tried not to be too fussy about overspill, and managed to restrain myself from breaking out the tiny brushes to avoid mistakes. One of my goals in this step was getting the right amount of paint on my brush so that (a) it's not a painty mess yet (b) I don't keep having to re-dip the brush. I report some success but definitely need more experience. I also learned that my mid-sized brush is a crusty, ancient, frayed hazard that should not be allowed near a model. How was I to know? I haven't picked up that brush in so long; all the miles go onto my detail brushes.



The cell cam went into revolt trying to figure out the high contrast between the dark and light parts of the models. It's clear enough to see what I did though.

Time for this step: 25 minutes.

Maybe that number seems embarrassingly high. For me, it's a victory!

Total elapsed project time: 35 minutes.




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The next stage involved painting the eyes. I also did a little bit of follow-up work on the Bone White, because there were a few areas I forgot to paint.

I picked out a color called Brilliant Blue for their eyes. It's not really a model color - just an artist acrylic. You can see it in the background. Vallejo Game Color doesn't have anything like this. It's like a slightly more green-tinted version of GW Enchanted Blue. I think it's a little more piercing, good for eyes.

I tried to blob the eyes on without much attempt at pinpoint accuracy. I admit to using a tiny brush for this, however. I'll be doing a Skull White highlight under the eyes toward the end, and that should cover up the majority of slop around the eye sockets.



Time for this step: 12 minutes.

Total project time so far: 47 minutes.

Now for the main color. Once again I used some artist acrylics, this time 2:1 Rich Bronze to Raw Umber. My guess at GW colors would be Brazen Brass with Scorched Brown.

I tried to be a bit more careful here, as I don't want too much/any rework if I can help it. I successfully kept my hands off the detail brushes. It did take me longer than I thought, but still far less time than this step would normally take me.



Some things I noticed and learned: I often take small "breaks" to contemplate the model, as if to mentally gear up for the next area to paint. I am especially bad at doing this between models. The time between finishing one model and starting the next was sometimes a minute or more. As soon as I noticed that I did this, I stopped it and things sped up considerably. I forced myself to not even clean the brush between models - I quickly put down the finished model, picked up the next one, and applied some paint to it without redipping or cleaning the brush. (Not that I didn't periodically clean the brush. I did. I just wanted to eliminate my taking of between-model breaks.)

I also slowly became aware of what can only be called fear of the model. Or maybe it's a fear of making mistakes on the model, but I project that onto the model itself. The model intimidates me! My normal reaction is to approach it timidly, with a puny brush and only a tiny dab of paint. As I whacked away at the models with (what is to me) an oversize brush, this fear began to erode and I gained a lot more confidence applying larger brushes to these guys. This confidence sped up my painting quite a bit.

Third, there's that one guy with his arm still attached. Of course there are areas I can't reach. I said to myself 'So those will go unpainted!' and left it at that. This made me realize something I was doing with the other models, which was wasting time painstakingly working on areas that no one will ever see. I actually caught myself thinking 'But the model knows it's not painted there.' Yes, I realize how slowed that sounds. By the end I was making headway against this retardation and not wasting so much time on invisible areas.

Time for this step: 1 hour 47 minutes

Total project time so far: 2 hours 34 minutes

I would like to append a note that the 2nd-to-last model only took me 6 or 7 minutes to do. (The very last model in this step was the guy with his arm still attached, so that was an anomaly.) I think that's progress!

Relating to alot of the problems you describe there. I've sometimes thought of trying to paint drunk to alleviate the hesitation, but it'd probably only end in tears. And spilt brush water.

Those are looking very tidy so far, keep it up!

Hehe, I have painted drunk more than once. I always felt like I was doing brilliant work at the time, but when I looked at it with sober eyes the next day had to hang my head in shame at the mutilation I had made of the model.

I washed the bone-colored areas with Bronze Flesh, then dry-brushed over the top of this with a 50/50 mix of Bone White and Skull White. It's a bit hard to see in the first photo, but you can see the edge of a catapult pretty well in the second one, as well as a reasonably good view of some plasma grenades.





What's "new" here for me is two things: First, the wash was done with speed in mind, with a large brush. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be done, I don't know; I would normally carefully run the wash only into the recesses, keeping it off the raised or flat parts. Here I just splashed it over the whole surface (more or less - I still didn't wash over things like the wide, fat barrel areas of the catapults, and I was rather tidy around their faces). Second, I dry-brushed the bone. I don't like the way it turned out very well, but it is definitely quicker than my usual method, which would be building up ultra-thin layers with a detail brush. I did take the time to paint the highlight on the face, however, rather than dry-brush it on. There just isn't that good of a surface to brush against on the face, and I'd end up whitening the eyes and scattering onto the helmet, which I obviously don't want. I also didn't dry-brush the spurs on their legs. Those got a quick stripe of the 50/50 mix.

I have to keep reminding myself that grunts like this look perfectly fine with a less-than-perfect paint job. Overall, I feel really energized and enthusiastic about painting these guys because I'm getting through it so quickly.

Time for this step (wash and dry-brush): 47 minutes.

Total project time so far: 3 hours 21 minutes.