Hi mates,
Sometimes I just dont want to paint tons of miniatures at a high standard, or spend too many hours on a single unit, when you have a lot of simultaneous projects.
I have used Army Painter's Quickshade before, using a similar technique to the one used by Master David Imrie aka Saxon Dog, in his old blog, with very good results, it saves time, but not that much.
This time I have tried a simpler method. Just airbrush the dominant colour, and paint some miniatures in various brown tones, then block in the different colours, basecoat stuff... boring but you have to do a clean paintjob. After that is done, the Quickshade's turn arrives. I used the "splash on" method... with a cheap brush, mid to large size, cover the entire miniature with the Quickshade, and then re touch it with a damp brush with White Spirit or turpentine, in order to remove the excess Quickshade, this is a matter of practice, you will know over time how much you have to remove or touch...
After 24-48h you can paint over it a few highlights, just 10 minutes per miniature, nothing too fancy, and then spray matt varnish. In my case, I had troubles (hot weather) with the varnish and it became whiteish, almost ruining some miniatures (Thank God they were cheap plastic Warlord´s ECW storming party figures)
In the next pics you can see the some samples before and after the Quickshade.
after Quickshade, and a couple of paint touches here and there (and matt varnish)
In my humble opinion, you can achieve decent resolts if combined with a good basing and nice flags. In this case, you can se a musketeer wing, using cheap plastic miniatures. I would not use this technique on more expensive or better sculpted miniatures, but I have at least 2 complete Pike & Shot units that I will paint quickly this way. I think it works better with earthy tones, so Thirty Years War miniatures are perfect for it.
If you go a little bit further, and expend some extra time in the command group and flag, the results are far better:
In no time, an Austrian "tercio" for TYW finished and ready for combat.
Cheers
more on my blog:
https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/