Well when I first started a lizardman army a friend was strapped for cash and said "Hey I'll paint those for 100 bucks" and I was glad to let him do it, that was last year and they've just been assembled and primed, so when I got my new additions to my army (80 saurus warriors for a steal of a deal) I decided to assemble and paint them my self and I quickly found out, painting is hard! So my question for you guys out there is, what are some easy ways to paint, and what are some effective minimalist color schemes?
What kind of colours are you thinking about using? If you wan't to base them off the GW ones, have a look on the GW website they have made a painting article for saurus. I won't go into overly descriptive details again now since I'm at uni, but here are a few keywords to search google for. You will find mountains of articles. Drybrushing (very fast and easy), inking or washing (also fast and easy and almost essential for most models), highlighting (more advanced technique, requires a steady hand but build up to it). Probably the three most important tips I can give you for painting are 1) Water your paints down. Straight from the pot it is too thick, 2-3 thin layers will look better than one thick layer. 2) Don't be afraid to 'mess up a model'. It is dead easy to strip the paint back and start again or just go over any mistakes, you cannot ruin a model. For the same reasoning, push your painting skills! Try new techniques, this is how to improve. 3) Practice! It is definitely a case of the more models you paint, the better they will look especially if you are trying new techniques all the time. Good luck with it, and feel free to post some pics so we can give more specific suggestions about how to improve.
I'm actually painting mine according to the GW "classic" saurus look(blue on aqua or w/e it is, it escapes me atm) and though this works fine for individual models I'm looking at a block of 60 saurus/TG so i came up with a quick solution. pick your scale color, pick your skin tone, lighten them both up with some skull white, paint the models appropriately, then use some GW wash on it, done. i did 60 models in about 6 hours of steady painting, but the basecoat only took 2 hours for it all. detailings the hardest part but really its just time consuming painting all the little bits of gold and teeth/claws so... thats just my opinion but have at it.
After looking at a model after it dried, I discovered that all my paint is esentially nail polish, its the high gloss stuff which would explain one of the reasons why I didn't like the model. I'm going to go out this weekend and find some flat colours see if they work any better.
It's always a good idea to put sealant on your models anyway. I use Testor's, personally... Glossy sealant will protect much better, but be shiny. Flat dries matte, but doesn't protect as well. Solution: Gloss coat first, then a flat coat after. If you like the shiny paints there's no reason not to use them. Base+Wash+Drybrush = pretty decent result. When you're starting, it's especially important to know what you're aiming for. "Tabletop quality" essentially means something that will look good while you're playing, from about 2-4 feet away. Aim for this first, and don't get obsessive. There are plenty of tutorials out there. The Brushthralls and Dr. Faust's Painting Clinic are two of my favorites, and should cover most of the basics.
The brand and type of paint is actually a pretty important thing. GW paints are obviously the ones designed for warhammer models and you will be able to follow other peoples guides easier (correct colour names) but I cannot explicitely recommend them due to their rediculous price. Just make sure you at least get water based paints designed for miniatures. P3, Vallejo, Citadel to name a couple.
Actually I'm going to hopefull be picking up paint this saturday, and I was going to go with a Red and white theme for my lizardman, white bellies with red markings on the back. I assembled all 80 of the saurus warrior torsos! My shopping list now includes glue a hobby knife end and Paint.
Good luck with white. You have picked possibly the most difficult colour to highlight. Red is easy though.
Luckily nothing is set in stone and I've finally with liberal amounts of easy off gotten rid of my nail polish paint job, I actually picked white as I thought it would be easy :/. That not being the case do you have any suggestions to colour schemes that work well? I'm open to anything really.
There is no har in trying white on a couple of test models. It just tends to be a difficult one because it has poor coverage so lots of coats are needed, and to give it some detail you basically need another colour anyway. What are you going to highlight white with? Brighter white? The two most common ways to take it are really light brown for a somewhat dirty look, or greay for a cleaner look. In icy blue also looks good. Same troubles with black. If you are still throwing around ideas, have a look at what other people have tried for inspiration. There is plenty of variety. Also consider searching google for pictures of real lizards and frogs.
True that! It's pity the colour is such a pain to get a nice and even coverage with. You will have to build up a coat of lighter paint before you paint white so that it'll pass with 2-3 coats of white, otherwise you'll be looking at 6-7 coats of white before it's nice and even. So decide on what kind of tone you want. Brown is usually looking more organic than grey or blue too. Keep that in mind. You can also use red but the red will make it look indirectly pink-ish. Cheers!
Just prime white and it isn't all that hard For my elven ships in Uncharted Seas I even just left the white primer alone. You can leave the white, and just apply shading rather than highlighting. The red will go on much better over a white primer coat as well. You could also prime gray, and add white for highlights from there. But if you're planning white as a new painter, for the love of Sotek do NOT use a black primer. As strewart says, shading choices over white can have a big impact. I'd think a blue/gray will work better than a tan, but that may just be because of the standard blue color on the lizards. The Brushthralls have a good article on painting/shading white.