Your tips for speed/batch painting please.

[racm32]

So I recently decided to expand my 28mm Anglo-Saxon army for Saga to be able to play large games of Hail Ceasar and the like. I just finished assembling the last unit and this has brought the army up to 231 miniatures. 90 of which are already painted.  Now I'm looking at the huge ay before and realizing I need to improve my speed/batch painting skills. I'd love to hear the different tricks, tips, and techniques you all use.

[Storm Wolf]

For me No1 is citadel contrast paint or similar paint style with army painter inks, much faster.

Colour blocking, stain instead of black-lining etc and use minimal layers and drybrushing.

My biggest change now I am in my 50`s is when i think its good enough, thats it, I stop.

Not much help there sorry 

Good luck

Glen

[Dolnikan]

I'm not a good painter. A fairly horrible one actually. But I do manage to maintain some speed when going about things. Which leads to a few ideas to build up this speed:

1) plan it out. I always try to think of the most efficient order to paint things, based on where corrections will be needed, ease of reaching certain parts, and which colours work best over others.

2) do all things of one colour at a time. Even if it's for a hundred figures. It might seem like it doesn't get results for a long time, but in the end, it saves quite a lot of time.

3) put on something in the background while you're painting. I like to have something to listen to because it makes me feel more relaxed and makes me less aware of the time.

4) and while painting the large batches, have something in between each batch. A different figure that's more challenging, grabbing a cup of tea. That helps against potential boredom.

[sonicReducer]

Have a look at Marco's method - it looks amazing and is fairly fast although he is going for high quality



In short he does a zenithal highlight, blocks colours using contrast or an airbrush and then a wash with oil paints, much of which is rubbed off for highlights.

[Diablo Jon]

Assemble, paint and base one unit at a time  don't assembly the whole army first and then be confronted by a horde of miniatures you have to paint...err ok to late on that one 

I find splitting the painting of the main units, in the army, with other stuff helps. So I might paint a big unit of say 24 spearman than reward myself with something fun like a command base. Then another unit of spearmen and then perhaps a baggage camp piece and so on. Probably not really applicable to a Saxon army but things like painting a unit of cavalry after a unit of infantry also helps to keep things interesting.

[Dags]

Use a bigger brush

[Ogrob]

My things would be to figure out how big a batch you can tolerate at a time. For me the upper limit is around 20.

Minimize steps. If you can block out a bunch of colours and then wash them all the same dark brown wash for example, it will be a lot quicker than painting one colour, shading and highlighting that, and then doing the next and so on.

[Hobgoblin]

One quick method is to undercoat black (Pebeo gesso is great - much quicker than spray to use and much quicker to dry), and then drybrush grey and white. Paint in the metallics with natural steel (or whatever), then use washes or contrast paints to 'tint' the drybrushed areas with greens, browns and other clothing colours (and wash the metal areas with brown, black or blue, depending on the look you're going for). You can then paint the faces and hands and any other areas of flesh more conventionally (e.g. 'flesh' paint, wash, highlight up again).

This technique means that you're focusing all your efforts on the faces and allowing the texture of the miniature and the wash/contrast paints to do the work on the other bits.

I did these skaven this way; it leads to quite dull colours on the clothes, but that creates a good contrast with the faces, etc.. And it's really quick.

Edit: a step-by-step tutorial of sorts starts here.

[armchairgeneral]

I undercoat in Vallejo ghost grey and black wash with GW Nuln Oil.

I use Foundry triads so the highlight shades are already mixed. That said you need to try them out as sometimes the highlight doesn’t seem much brighter than the base colour.

For black I just block in mid grey and black wash until black enough.

For armour I block in silver and black wash over the top.

For flesh I block in bright flesh tone and then go over with a flesh wash.

I block in the base colours and just use one or occasionally a further highlight shade. The highlight shade also is used to correct any mistakes with the base shade.

I do 6 - 8 figures in a batch as more than this seems monotonous. It is probably more efficient to do larger numbers if you can stand it. I have know friends do 24s and 48s or even whole armies of over 100 as works in progress.

[fred]

Use a bigger brush

This

And focus on the bits that matter, rather than trying to paint all the little hard to reach bits. As said above contrast paints, pre-shading and washes all help with volume.

[sultanbev]

I'm a traditional block painter, undercoating in black enamel, but painting most colours in acrylic.

I always do it in this order - overall coat colour or body armour colour; pants; packs; belts and boots; hats/helmets; facing colours/plumes etc; weapons; blades; flesh. Any dry brushing if needed, although I don't normally for figures.

In 6-15mm I paint by the unit generally, most are around 24-40 figures in the smaller scales.

For 28mm I have found I can paint about 16-18 figures in one go, if they are the same uniform. For ancients most had no uniforms, so it becomes a bit more difficult - so I pick a set of typical colours, eg greys, browns, sand-light tans, or dyed colours such as greens. blues, reds, purples, yellow, whatever takes your fancy, and split however many paint shades you have in that group between the figures you have.
So if I'm doing a block of ancients in mostly grey clothing, and I've got three shades of grey, I'll take those 18x 28mm figures and do 6 in each shade. But after leaving them to try for a few minutes, I'd do the trousers in alternate shades, or do some in light browns. Once you've done a set of irregular looking clothing, most of the accruements (eg scabbards, belts, boots, spear shafts, blades) are the same colour across all of the figures, so you can then revert to doing all 18 at once.

[SteveBurt]

One trick for irregulars in batches. Pick a colour and paint the first guy’s tunic, then the next guy’s trousers, the next one’s cloak, skip the next one. repeat in different combos with the next colour. It ties the figures together but makes them look not too uniform. I’d limit batch sizes to 12 or so

[dadlamassu]

When painting armies like yours I generally, like you, assemble large portions of the force.  place them in "tribal units" each of a mix of various troop types - armoured, unarmoured, shielded, unshielded, skirmishers, cavalry and separate out the leaders and characters.  Undercoat in white.  Select a colour theme for each tribe - say seasons - spring (tints of yellow, green, etc), summer (bright greens, blues, reds etc), autumn (shades of browns, orange, ochre, deep reds etc) and winter (lighter tints of blues, pale greens, greys etc) others use natural earthy colours or whatever theme takes my fancy.

I then stand the units in ranks equal in number to the colours chosen.  Paint the flesh on everyone.  Paint armour on those who have it.  Starting rear left paint jacket, next chap paint trousers, next rank miss one figure so second gets jacket, next trousers and so on for two in each rank.  Then next colour until all figures have one colour on them,  Then reverse and start back right and work along the ranks again.  Paint weapons, belts, leather, helmets etc to taste then paint shields and add decals or hand paint motifs/patterns.

All figures are washed with a varying mix of brown and black.  When dry a bit of dry brushing to bring out details.

Leaders, characters and command groups get brighter colours.

Sounds complex but this way I have painted armies quickly to my standard.  I am almost 70 so satisfactory is good enough.

[racm32]

Thank you everyone for the great tips and tricks. I will be testing several of them over the coming weeks.

[FierceKitty]

Forget speed. Just make a rule that you must do something every day.