I have 33 Saurus to paint currently, and it's soon to be 49 as I need the rest for my 2K list. I was just wondering if anyone had any tips to quickly paint them cause I seem to take hours painting units.
Paint a group of them at once and do the same stage on each model before moving onto the next. So if you line up 10 saurus, and do the base coats, by the time you have done the 10th one the first is dry so you can move straight onto the next stage. Other than that, its just a matter of practice and sticking to it. The more you paint the better and faster you will get.
I try to do that method it's just I am not a brilliant painter so I take ages to make sure everything is done properly. I'm just going to have to keep at it. When I went to my local GW they suggested the spray gun they make. has anyone used it? is it good and easy to use?
Bah, they would. All I would possibly consider using it for is tanks maybe, if I had a lot to do. Airbrushing is a valid technique, and it can produce very nice results. However, it still does take skill to master it, and it will be a while before you can whip through a whole unit fast. Also, if you did want to investigate it I would not recommend the GW airbrush at all. Its a tool where you get what you pay for, and the GW one is rubbish for its cost plus they sell cans of GW air for $15-20. You really need to get a proper artists airbrush and hook it up to an air compressor rather than a little can (which will run out of pressure fast giving uneven results and costing more in the long run) so the best you could hope to get away with is $200-300 by the time you factor in a brush and small compressor. So like I said, valid technique but expensive to start. Also takes a lot of effort to properly clean everything when you want to change colour. To start with, especially on the base coats, don't worry too much about making mistakes. Just get the paint on there, you can always go back and patch it up later. Its when you get to the detail bits that you should be really careful, so yes they will take longer but if the base parts of the model are done it can almost be called tabletop standard and used anyway. Lots of people don't ever get around to finishing painting their models remember. As long as you are making progress, no one should mind in anything less than a tournament setting.
Well I play with two different groups and neither really care about models being painted I just wanted my Lizards to be painted unlike about 6K of my 10K high elves lol. I'll just keep at it when I can, and I will try not to be so picky doing the basecoat. And yeah I didn't like the look of the spray gun, and it being £6-7 here to replace the can it's going to get expensive for a poor result it seems. How do I post picture up by the way? shall post my painting and could you see if it is an acceptable level? I never got into the painting side just the playing.
Check this thread for how to post pictures. And yeah go for it! I am sure people will be happy to give you a bit of constructive feedback on your painting.
If You really are not too much into detail there is always dipping you can always spray the unit one color and dip it in shading check out the Army painter method www.thearmypainter.com it is really quick and the results can be not too bad. redeyefrog
The skink priest is really good, I can see some nice shading on him. The others appear to lack the same level of shading as the priest has though. Repeat whatever you did for him and they will look good. You use washes I assume? All you really need to do is get a layer or two of wash onto the models and they will look far better, its very fast and easy to do. If you want to go one step further, give them a bit of a highlight on the raised areas with a lighter tone before adding the wash. That will work even better, but will obviously take longer. I don't recommend drybrushing with LM, it never seems to work well, however, you can be fairly rough with the highlight mostly by using a fairly dry mix (not much water added) and not loading too much on the brush at once, then brush it over the raised areas to get paint on them. Follow that up with a wash and they will look good. Let me know if you want me to go into any more detail on any of the techniques I mentioned. Otherwise, they are decent keywords to google, there are loads of really good illustrated tutorials out there. Good luck with them!
This is not the way I do them but a quick way would be: 1. Invest in a big brush 2. Paint model iceblue 3. Heavily wash model asyurmen blue 4. Drybrush skin iceblue 5. Wash the scales asyurmen blue again. This should create a 2 tone effect on the scales and skin both of which have 2-3 layers of detail and it is all achieved through dry brushing and washing.
Looking good! I would say that aside from actual method of painting itself the best way to speed up unit production is batch painting a rank at a time. All the blue, then all the yellow, then all the gold (etc). My boyfriend (who collects Chaos Warriors, alas) takes upwards of forever to finish three ranks because he insists on doing one model at a time - granted they look pretty darn good, but I think most of us mortals are quite happy with less than GD standard on our rank and file troops! I batch paint, and finished en entire Lizardman battalion plus a Slann in the time it took him to paint one unit of fifteen Nurgle Warriors. Nuff said, really!
I haven't used the wash on any of them par the priest cause I didn't have time on the unit and I didn't like the standard of the scar veteran. I picked up some of the army painter tone and I have seen what it can do. It will definitely speed up my painting and make it look a lot better. Will show you more pictures of the improved models when I get around to painting more. Thanks for all the help so far guys