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Hello,

I'm a fan of Airfix type models and have been looking at the 40k models - not to play the game, but just because I like the style and they look great. What I'm wondering is how best to start painting them. From the videos I've seen it looks like they're a bit more involved than what I'd be used to.

I've seen a beginners set for £20 (https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Space-Marines-Starter-Paint-Set-2016), however I'm more interested in vehicles so don't think that would be worth it.

From the tutorials I've found (such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKhIQ1TL2FM) they appear to show you needing 15-20 different types of paint to do a single model, and I don't really want to be spending this much on paint that I don't use much! I can probably drop a couple of colours by having less varying details (such as rather than gold and silver details have just silver), but does anyone have any tips as to how to save a bit on paint? I'd be looking at Ultramarines I think, so would anyone be able to suggest a minimalist list of colours you can get away with where the models still look good (probably a rhino / predator / whirlwind)?

Thanks!

For the best value I would recommend Vallejo or Army Painter paint sets. You can get both at about $2-2.50 per color if you look carefully on places like Amazon. You don't necessarily need a whole lot of colors if you are smart about selecting colors you can mix to produce the results you want, but if you are too stingy you're either not going to be able to do justice to the detail, or you're not going to have very much contrast.

If you're going to do Ultramarines, the gold is a pretty important component of their color scheme. Good news is that if you're using metallic paints you could easily get away with using one color for steel, one for gold, and one wash to use for both. After washing them you could use them as their own highlights, if that makes sense.

If you're willing to mix some of your own colors, I think you could get away with whichever blue you decide to use for your Ultramarines blue, a steel metallic paint, a gold metallic paint, a white, a black, a red, a tan/brown for any parchment details, and a wash such as Nuln Oil. However, there are quite a lot of little details that are supposed to be different colors on GW models, so the more tools you have the better if you are going for a fully completed look.

Macragge blue, leadbelcher, nuln oil, calgar blue, abaddon black and khorne red.

Basecoat the tank with macragge blue and due a recess wash of nuln oil. Then highlight with calgar blue. Paint the tracks+wheels leadbelcher, apply nuln oil and then drybrush again with leadbelcher. Do the same to the exhaust pipes. Paint the headlights/vision ports on the cupola abaddon black. Then paint a line of khorne red at one of the bottom corners to suggest some depth. Then paint any aquilas leadbelcher+nuln oil.

That's about as bare bones as you can get while still looking decent.

Do you currently paint your Airfix models? What do you use to paint them? If you already have paints you can just use the same ones on 40k models.

Mixing colors the hard way is your only real option unless you want to sacrifice painting quality on those expensive game models. You can significantly cut down the number of individual paints you need, but it comes at a high price in time and difficulty in keeping consistent colors across a whole army. For example, instead of buying three different shades of blue for highlighting you can buy one and some white to mix with, but it means that every time you paint blue on a model you'll be mixing slightly different colors. And you're going to be spending a lot more time mixing shades, mixing them again because they dried out before you finished or you didn't make enough, etc.

Thanks for the input everyone - having had a think about it and reading the above I think I'll just spend a bit more and get some extra paints. Might as well do it properly rather than be disappointed with the final job, especially if I then decide to do more!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Basecoat the tank with macragge blue and due a recess wash of nuln oil.

Quick question on this (not sure if it should go in a new topic as it's separate to my original thread title), but is there a vast amount of difference between nuln oil and Agrax Earthshade? I've seen them both used for recesses on various videos, but in general Nuln oil appears to be a more useful paint for doing other bits later on.

Nuln Oil is black and Agrax is more brownish. I would use the Agrax on parchment, robes, skin, and other "organic" stuff like that. Nuln Oil is better suited for metal parts.

Something to keep in mind here, if you want various models in a cohesive look its better to actually get the various colours now than try to expand later - you can get going with the basic ones and leave various details unpainted for now - go back later.

Helps you are after models for the models not to game with, found having several factions on the go means you end up with a fair few colours over time, whats a minor detail colour for one is usually more important on the other.

Suggest also going with Vallejo paints, the dropper bottles make mixing a lot easier - get on eBay or amazon and get yourself some empty dropper bottles and some thinner (its better than using water, you don't need to much) - would start with the basics, forget the details and just leave them the same colour as the area around them so they don't stand out until you get the paints.

Suggest though the main decider on what paints to get is what you can source locally, the GW paints are fine if you get along with the pots and if you can get them locally its better than depending on mail order.

Try to build up a decent palette of them over time.


You may find some of the paints you use for airfix are useful, depending on what colours you have, e.g. for weathering stuff, but I'd stick to that and not try to use them for the main colours unless you plan to keep going that way.

Main thing though, enjoy and don't worry too much about matching 'official' colours if say you think a different shade of blue would work better

As someone who does both miniature painting and Airfix-type models, the main difference is how much you need to highlight and trick the eye with your painting.

With an aircraft, unless you're doing fiddly 1:144 and smaller, it's mostly smooth lines and due to the scale any detail on the real thing can be easily reproduced in plastic.

With 28mm miniatures, there is a HELL of a lot of detail that can never be truly represented by the sculpted plastic - think of all the nuances and subtle structure of a face, and consider how much of this you can get into a section of moulded plastic 3 or 4mm tall. As such, there's a lot less of just 'paint-by-numbers' you need to do with miniature painting. To get things looking good, you need to exaggerate shadows and highlights to trick the eye into seeing detail that just can't be modelled on the sculpt itself.

When I paint (and this is what I've found works best for me, others may do it differently) I use a flat base colour, then a dark wash - a thin paint that runs into the hollows but rolls off the raised areas - then I tidy things up with the base colour. This gives the illusion that the shadows are much deeper than can be shown on the model. I then go over the raised edges with a lighter shade of my base colour, again to exaggerate the shapes that are already there.

So, for any given colour on the model, you'll generally also need a dark wash and a lighter highlight shade (although you'll find you'll not need a separate wash shade for every base shade - for example a generic 'dark brown' wash will cover almost every shade of brown you might use).

Trimming down the number of paints, because I wanted to safe cash by mixing colors, brands and etc. has proven to be a total waste of time. At least for me :(

 BattleMetalChris wrote:
As someone who does both miniature painting and Airfix-type models, the main difference is how much you need to highlight and trick the eye with your painting.

I dunno about that, I think the main difference is Airfix models have real world counterparts so if you highlight and shade the hell out of them they just end up looking stupid next to what we know the real ones look like.

Infantry models in general need to be more highlighted just because casting methods don't have the undercuts and sharpness necessary to properly represent cloth, faces, etc, so you highlight and shade more than you would a vehicle to try and overcome flaws in the casting method.