Now you have your mini primed its time to get the basecoat on. For now we are gong to call the mini done when its basecoated, but when we get on to fancy shading and highlighting this will just be one stage of several. The basecoat puts down the basic colours, and there's no reason why all your minis can't just be basecoated. Wargamers have something called the 'three foot rule': if it looks OK three feet away (the typical distance armies are seen on the wargames table) then its fine. The important thing is that we are painting minis and they look miles better than unpainted minis.
Planning. As I mentioned previously, its a good idea to think before hand what colours you want where, and decide what order to paint things. I usually start the basecoat with the flesh tones and then work outwards. Painting the largest areas early on is good too, as is getting hard to reach bits done first. It's different for each mini, you'll find the process that works best for you for what you are painting.
Using the Brush. Hold the brush close to the end of the ferule (the metal bit) near the bristles. This gives you good control over the brush. Shake the paint really well (making sure the top is firmly on). Only use a small amount of paint, and it often helps to add a little bit of water to the paint on your palette to help it flow more easily. You're aiming for a runny consistency, but still thicker than water. However, don't add water if you are painting directly onto unprimed Bonesium. The nature of the plastic means that watered paint won't bond properly to it.
When putting brush to mini, aim to use the side of the tip rather than pushing the tip of the brush onto the surface. If you use the tip like a pencil, you will bend the hairs and quickly ruin your brush. Draw the hairs across the mini towards the tip.
Try to keep the paint right at the end of the hairs (and that blob of paint is too big!)
You might find it difficult to keep your brush hand steady, making it hard to get a controlled brush stroke. Hobbyists call this 'The Shakes'. There are several ways of addressing this, you can lean both elbows on the table or desk and hold the mini and brush right up to your face; you can rest one foot on a chair, raising your knee and resting your wrists on your knee. One technique I often use is to rest my forearms on the table edge, hold the mini on in my left hand and rest my right hand against the left. This contact provides extra stability, though I find I'm bending my neck a bit too much if I paint for too long. Experiment and find what works for you.
My preferred painting posture, ideal for detail work. Here I'm painting the monk's belt.
Basecoating. Paint the edge of an area first. This way you can get a nice clean line. Fill in the rest once the edges are done. Try to be as neat as possible, but if you do get paint on a primed area, then you'll cover it when you paint that area. If your 'happy accident' is in a dark colour it might help to go over it first with the primer. If you've gone over another area of basecoat you can simply go back and paint over it later, once everything is dry.
Painting the monk's flesh starting at the edges
Fill in the flesh colours, nice and neat
Mixing Paint. Our selection of colours is small, so we are going to get used to mixing paints. Dropper bottles make this easy, you can control the amount of paint you put on the palette to mix. You have much more control over the mix if you put separate drops on the palette and then take small amounts of paint from them to mix. This is where your notebook comes in handy. Record the colours you mixed and what mini you used them on, that way you can reproduce the colour on future minis. The goblin has a tunic painted in a 1 to 1 mix of blue and black and the trim is a 3 to 1 mix of red and black. The leather boots and belt are 1 to 1 dark brown and yellow with just a touch more yellow added for the other straps. Play around with your paint mixing and find something that works for you; one reason for using something white as a palette is that you can see what the mix looks like on the primed mini.
Goblin showing mixed paint colours
Little bits of detail. Don't worry about detail such as eyes or teeth on your mini (I chose the monk and the goblin because they didn't have much in the way of fiddly bits). However, one quick way to make small items stand out is to line them. I'll talk more about this in a later guide, but essentially, paint the detail in black first, then touch it with its final colour, the black should still show around the detail like a shadow and help it stand out. This is particularly effective on small metal details, such as studs and rivets, and helps give definition to them.
The studs on the goblin's belt and the rivet on his sword have been lined. (Yes, I missed the rivets that hold the strap to the shield)
A Note on Painting Black or White. Black and white are difficult colours to get right. Straight black or white paint tends to look too artificial, especially for the mock Medieval fantasy minis that most roleplayers collect. I find adding a very small amount of white to black gives a much better result. the goblin's shield is done this way. Similarly, the tiniest touch of colour added to white helps. Experiment with different colours, I've used a touch of blue in white as the basecoat of my Imperial Stormtroopers and Clone Troopers here. Remember, you are mixing a very tiny bit of paint in with the black or white, the end result should fool the eye into thinking it's still black or white.
Dos and Don'ts
DO wash your brush regularly, especially between each colour. It keeps the brush in good condition, stops paint drying in the hairs and stops cross contamination of paint colours.
DON'T dip your brush into the pot, use your palette. You have far less control over the amount of paint that gets on the brush, and if you're mixing paint you risk contaminating the pot.
Now you've got your first (few) minis painted. What next? Well, nothing beats practice, so get a few more done. look critically at each mini and see what you like and what you don't like. Experiment with different paint schemes. You can always paint over any happy accidents, or in extreme cases, strip the paint off (material depending). Make sure you keep that first mini though, it'll be fun to look back and see how much you have improved.
Examples. Here are the goblin and the monk after basecoating. By mixing paints I'm able to get a far wider range of colours. I mentioned some of the goblin's paint mixes above, the monk has trousers mixed with 2 to 1 white and black with a tunic of 4 to 1 white and black. The belt is 1 to 1 red and dark brown, and was chosen to give a bit of colour to the mini. The slightly 'patchy' look of the monk's outer robe is simply the paint mix (1 to 1 dark brown and yellow) being watered down. The thinner paint tends to pool in the folds of the cloth and concentrates there, giving a darker shade. "We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents" and we'll explore this method of adding shade and depth later. the bases are either the black plastic 'slotta base' in the case of the goblin, or 1 to 1 white and black for the monk, painting the integral mini base, often called a 'broccoli base'. Basing is worth a post on its own, so I'll discuss it another time.
Completed goblin and monk
Next time I'll show you some very simple techniques for improving the look of your mini. Meanwhile, practice. If you have any questions please leave a comment below. Is there something you particularly want me to cover? Just ask.
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