Methods for batch painting irregular troops?

[Hammers]

Do the fine people of LAF have anyone among them who has a practical process for painting a largish set of irregular troops at the same time?
To illustrate: I am at the moment painting 30+ afghan riders. The inherent boredom of painting that many horses aside, I am gong slightly dizzy in the head trying to give them a suitably individualistic and rag tag look WITHOUT loosing the benefits of batch painting.

So, how do YOU do it?

[OSHIROmodels]

For large (and indeed, sometimes small) batches of irregulary painted figures I pick a colour and choose five or six figures from the batch and paint a different item of clothing on each. Once done I then choose another five or six (some the same, some different) and do the process again. I carry on like this until they are done. I find it makes it easier if the large batch is split into smaller ones.

Does that make sense?

cheers

James

[pacarat]

Do the fine people of LAF have anyone among them who has a practical process for painting a largish set of irregular troops at the same time?
To illustrate: I am at the moment painting 30+ afghan riders. The inherent boredom of painting that many horses aside, I am gong slightly dizzy in the head trying to give them a suitably individualistic and rag tag look WITHOUT loosing the benefits of batch painting.

So, how do YOU do it?

I have done this quite often. Works great with sets of 12-24 or more figs.

1. Pick out some number of colors (3-7) that you think are suitable for the figs to be wearing.

2. Mix up the figs, so that poses are spread around

3. Divide the figs into an equal number number of groups (to match # of paints chosen.)

4. Select a color and a group (having just "assigned" a color to a group)

5. Paint some part of every figure in that group with the associated color. For max variation, vary the part being painted - say half in pants, half in shirts, etc.

6. When done, reshuffle the figs into completely different groups, and reassign paints at random to the groups.

7. Repeat steps 4-7 as needed until all items are painted.


I have done my ACW Confederates, LOTR and fantasy, medievals, and ancients using this technique. All my horses are done this way as well.

I also will do separate paint selections/groups for clothing, webbing and equipment, hair, shield, etc.

HTH

[sundayhero]

Personaly, when working on irregular, I make smaller groups of similar figures, like I did for the talibans here :

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=60650.45

[Silent Invader]

Do the fine people of LAF have anyone among them who has a practical process for painting a largish set of irregular troops at the same time?
To illustrate: I am at the moment painting 30+ afghan riders. The inherent boredom of painting that many horses aside, I am gong slightly dizzy in the head trying to give them a suitably individualistic and rag tag look WITHOUT loosing the benefits of batch painting.

So, how do YOU do it?

I just painted 62 minis in one batch, 50 of which were Afghans including horse.

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=89654.msg1165703#msg1165703

It was a most enjoyable process. For the Afghans, it's just a matter of selecting key colours for trousers, tunics, waistcoats and turbans, separate the minis into groups that are of similar pose, then use one of the colours to paint a different part of the clothing for each group. For more differentiation, remix the groups after each colour. If you're interested, some of the WIP photos on the thread show the paints being used.

For the horses, I grouped them by body, hair, and blanket colours.

EDIT for wrong link

[Hammers]

Thank you. This is pretty much my own method. In addition I use several trays where I keep the sub-set of miniatures on which I have e laid down the most recent color.

I will also pick out a percentage of the minis and paint dots, stripes and similar patterns on them to enhance their non-uniformity.