Basecoating for Beginners

Welcome to the next step of painting The Doom Lords 2016 Chaos Chosen Blood Bowl team!  In our previous posts we covered assembly, and priming.  Please check them out if you need help with those steps.

Okay here it is, it's rubber meets the road time.  You've primed your minis now you are ready to actually start applying paint. Let's take a step and just congratulate yourself for getting this far. Most models bought are never even assembled let alone primed. So by doing that we have already achieved more than most.

Now to set ourselves up for success we are going to need paint and brushes.  Miniature painting can be an expensive hobby with most paint pots running between 3 and 7 dollars a piece. Not to mention that a quality brush can also be very expensive.

Fortunately there is a cost effective solution that can get your toolbox ready for action.  

Citadel sells a starter kit for Warhammer 40k that you can usually find in your Local hobby shop or you can buy online.

For the price of 30-40 dollars you get 13 pots of paint, model cutter, plastic glue, and a starter brush.

Buying those all separate would easily cost 70-100 dollars. The downside is you don't get to pick your own paints but the starter brusher from Citadel is a fantastic brush to get acquainted with and you will need plastic glue and cutters to assemble models.

Now that you have your paints, your brushes and your primed models you are ready to paint!  I know it seems like a lot of work to get models ready to be painted but putting in the effort in the beginning will pay dividends in the end. Think Karate Kid, right now is wax on wax off pretty soon you'll get to blocking punches and rounding housing people.

Get a 2 to 3 paper cups and fill them with water and get your brushes as well as some paper towel. The key to using water based paint is controlling your water in both the paint and especially on your brush.

Notice the little plastic caps on your brushes. DO NOT LOSE those. Mini painting is not like painting canvas or large crafts. Even a single bristle out of place can ruin or imped a beautiful paint job at such a fine level. 

Think of the brush more like a pen or a pencil. You want to put as little paint on as possible to keep the point sharp and "draw" the paint on the model.

Speaking of painting there are two ways to paint traditional acrylic paint. You can use it straight from the pot which Citadel paint is formulated for; or you can thin the paint with a few drops of water to make it less thick and to extend your paint.

I personally do a mix of both. The benefits of painting directly are less coats needed and you can quickly hop around for speed painting.

With thinned paint you will need more coats but you can control the level of paint much better and for a beginner it will be easier when trying to paint fine detail work to avoid clouding details.

The next most important thing is to always use caution when dipping your brush into the paint. You only want to dip the absolute tip of the brush in to the paint.

The reason is because if paint seeps to the ferrule (metal collar holding the bristles to the handle) of the brush it becomes very hard to clean and if the paint dries it will push the bristles out of alignment and ruin the brushes sharp point which will make it useless for mini painting.

Don't be like me and end up having to toss a 15 dollar paint brush because of over dipping.

To start the paint process you want to make sure you brush is moist but not wet.  So first dip your brush in clean water then wick out the excess moisture into the paper towel.

I can't stress enough how essential this is because when you are painting on such a small level any amount of excess water will turn paint into a runny mess.

Once you've prepped your brush dip a little and start painting.

Chaos warriors after base coat of Cadian Fleshtone

One of the keys to mini painting is to paint inward to outward on the model.  You can see in the above example I've painted the flesh first before the armor because the flesh is inward.  

Using the principle of inward to outward will save you time and aggravation in touch ups and is a fundamental core of painting minis.

Remember to clean the paint off your brush frequently. Excess pigment can stack up fast and you don't want to lose your point.  So just repeat the process of filling your brush, wicking the moisture, dipping the tip and painting.

Beastman painted with Bugman's Glow. 

For the basecoat of the Beastman skin I chose Bugman's Glow because it was the right shade to me to match the Beastmen from Blood Bowl 2. ( Cheap plug Nbp-pro.blogspot.com Ps4 blood bowl 2/3 league) .

The last tip I will impart you with is the choice between painting individual minis or batch style.

Painting an individual figure means going form start to finish doing all layers and work on one mini before moving on to the next.  Many pro and veteran painters paint this way because their speed and experience let's them really get the most out of a mini.

But let me ask you are you here to paint one really great mini or to get a team of blood bowlers ready for the pitch?  Starting your first team doing one mini at a time might mean your team doesn't take the pitch for a few seasons.

I prefer batch painting for Blood Bowl Teams and the reason is threefold.

1.The team has matching outfits and usually matching race which means you will be using alot of the same paint on each mini.

2. While you are waiting for one coat to dry you can move onto the next mini and when you've done all the minis you can start back on the first to apply the second coat.

3. It will allow you to improve by giving you the same positional or area to paint repeatedly to rapidly improve through trial and error.

It also leads to consistency especially for a beginner. If you mix up a nice custom paint you want to use and only paint one mini and then forget what you did it might be harder then if you had painted them all with it right then and there so they all have the same awesome shade.

As you can see the boys are lined up after getting their base coating.

Well that's it for this edition of Sprue to Pitch, I hope you found these tips helpful! Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @SpruetoPitch. Happy painting.