Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello everyone!

I am just really crazy about painting miniatures and its really fun.
But I am becoming desperate with paintig large surfaces. Every technique I am trying is causing the same problem:
- lots of scruffy areas, paint strokes and so on.

First I thought I thinned my paint not enough. After putting more water to the paint it was to thin and didn't cover the surface well.
So I tried it with Lahmium Medium and I think this is too thick.

When I was watching some videos, everybody is talking about 1-2 layers of color, but when I am thinning down my paints (as I thought is correct) i need 3-5 layers of color and then its getting unclean.

Unfortunately I do not have any pictures at this time, but maybe you guys can help me.

Thanks.

You can over thin paints, especially with water ergo the multiple coats. This can be desired but clearly not what you want.

Lahmian Medium is effectively paint without pigment so can conversely thicken paint.

So it can be a tricky balance if your not in the know.

I would suggest in the first instance having a look at the very good GW videos on Youtube (as it sounds like you are using GW models/paint).you should hopefully be able to find an example of what you are currently working on.

They did a glut of videos running up to Christmas for example. Heres a thread listing them, possibly something useful here.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/671968.page#8295812

Alternatively for big models and/or whole armies with a single common colour you can spray the whole thing in the main colour. This is particularly useful with vehicles as you will have the flat base colour you desire, then all you have to do is pick out the other colours. GW have a range of sprays just for this but there many others like Montana Gold, Army Painter or Tamiya.

Yeah, 1-2 layers is a lie if you want a nice coat on a large surface.

My advice, use a large flat brush (larger brush = less strokes = less streaky). Try and get something with reasonably soft bristles. Thin your paint and aim for 3+ layers to get a solid colour, if it's something like yellow or red which have naturally poor coverage, aim for 5+ layers. Note the "+", it may very well take more. You can also add in a bit of flow improver, to be honest I don't usually bother and just use water.

With each coat coverage is the last thing you are worried about, you just want it to be thin enough that any streaks will be covered up by your next coat and not leave visible bumps.

This is not the best painted tank in the world, however you can zoom in and it's hard to see any roughness or strokes or streakiness anywhere and it was painted entirely with a hairy brush. It took most of a day to do the camo pattern, slowly building up the layers.



Of course after painting that tank I decided to buy an airbrush largely because it's such a pain in the arse painting tanks like that with a hairy brush

I'm far from an expert, but 3 is the minimum number of coats I ever lay down. I watch the same videos (incl. GW vids) where they talk about 'maybe needing a 2nd coat', but even for basecoats (outside of primer) I'm laying down 3 layers. I think better painters just have a better feel for how much thinning is necessary vs keeping to strict ratios per colour/brand, and so can probably get away with less. Not being very good myself, I err on the side of caution.

It helps to paint on top of a neutral grey primer. Lots of people use either white, or black, both of which are strong 'colours' that tend to show through pigmented paint.

Groundh0g wrote:
I'm far from an expert, but 3 is the minimum number of coats I ever lay down. I watch the same videos (incl. GW vids) where they talk about 'maybe needing a 2nd coat', but even for basecoats (outside of primer) I'm laying down 3 layers. I think better painters just have a better feel for how much thinning is necessary vs keeping to strict ratios per colour/brand, and so can probably get away with less. Not being very good myself, I err on the side of caution.

Not too be too harsh on Duncan because I do like his videos, sometimes I don't think he's clear that he probably put down 3 or so coats and also, honestly, some of the larger surfaces he paints aren't all that smooth (you often don't notice, because of the video compression on youtube they look nice and smooth, but occasionally you get an uncompressed image with the light hitting it from the right angle and you can see it's often far from perfect).

Also some of the cuts in Duncan's video I don't believe. Like, he was painting I think it was a Cadian tank and you could see that he wasn't laying the paint down very smoothly, then it cut to the finished product and it looked a lot smoother (and not just because he added more coats, the first coat actually looked grainy which is something you can't get rid of by painting over it!). It makes me think that sometimes they cut to a different model rather than the one he was just working on.

Thanks for all those answers.
I am glad to hear that painting more layers (3+) is not the wrong way of painting

Or just get an airbrush and literally fart beautiful smooth basecoats all over everything.