Category Archives: Painting Guide

Word Bearer painting guide Part One – Red Armour

I made a new painting video. Still learning the ropes really, but thought I would start at how I paint my Word Bearers!

Share Button

Crimson Court – Prince Duvalle

I haven’t had as much time to paint recently, but I knew I had to paint Prince Duvalle from the Crimson Court box set. All four models in the box are amazing, but this guy is my favourite!

Share Button

Painting Bone Guide

I recently did a guide on painting bone. There’s a number of ways to paint bone, based on how old or how dirty you want the bone to be, but this is the scheme I went with when painting my legion of the damned models.

This isn’t a very difficult technique, and you could definitely go further with it.

Share Button

Golden Throne’s guide to paint Ultramarine Power Armour

Hello guys, I have a new guide about painting Ultramarine power armour. Hope it helps!

Share Button

Golden Throne’s Painting Guide for Marble

Hello guys, I recently did a guide for painting marble! I hope it proves to be useful.

Share Button

Painting Chipped Black Power Armour – Cypher

Share Button

Painting Guide: Bases

The following article is a simple guide to basing your miniatures. There are several ways you can base miniatures, this is just the method I prefer and if you have any other ideas you should share them with us!

The level difficulty of this guide is simple, and can be achieved by any one!

What you will need before starting:

– The miniature’s base.

bases1

 

– PVA Glue

pvaglue
– Basing sand

basessand
– A Medium Drybrush

mediumdrybrush
– A glue brush (preferably an old brush from your collection you don’t mind getting damaged)

gluebrush
– Black undercoat

basesspray

– Skag Brown

skagbrown

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Tau Light Ochre

taulight

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Ushabti Bone

ushabtibone

 

 

 

 

 

 

Optional tools:

– Static flock
– Snow flock
– Mourn Mountain Snow
– Battlefield debris (i.e. old guns from your bits box, a spare arm or shoulder pad)
– Suitably sized pieces of stone from your garden

 

For the sake of this article I have chosen to paint up a base for my next Chaos Space Marine biker. Normally I would stick a standard infantry model to its base and undercoat both model and base at the same time. However this approach isn’t suitable for bikers as it makes painting the base difficult and can often lead to a messy miniature.

The Possessed Marines in this picture have been based with sand and stuck to their bases before being undercoated.
The Possessed Marines in this picture have been based with sand and stuck to their bases before being undercoated.

Step 1:
Take your base and clear any flash around the edges. This may require a modelling knife but usually Games Workshop’s bases have very little flash.

bases1

 

Step 2:

In order to align your bike to the base without covering the area you wish to glue the bike to, a clever technique is to paint the bottom of the bike with a bright colour like so.

baseguide1

With the paint still wet, you can then place the bike onto the base and get an approximate place you want the bke to be, and the wet paint will mark out the areas you will avoid further on in the process.

baseguide2

 

Step 3:

Once the paint has dried you can apply a suitably large dollop of PVA glue to your base. I recommend you use an old brush to spread the glue about, and keep it handy so you always have for future bases.baseguide3

baseguide4

 

 

Step 4:

With the glue spread out on your base, try to avoid covering the areas marked in blue in the picture (or whichever colour you decided to use) and then dip the whole base in your sand box.

baseguide5

You may want to scrape a few pieces of sand away and have a few attempts of dipping the base into the sand so you get the coverage you are happy with. Once you have got the result that satisfies you, leave the base to dry for thirty minutes or so.

baseguide6

 

Step 5:

Once the base has dried it’s time to undercoat. For this I use normal undercoating spray. There are many producers of black undercoat spray, for the sake of this article I recommend using Citadel Black primer spray, but you can use the one you prefer if you wish. You can also use normal black paint, however this is much more time consuming and you run the risk of brushing away the sand as you apply it.

Remember, spraying should always be done in a well ventilated area, preferably outside when available.

baseguide7

I use an empty black box for my own undercoating needs, however if you are doing a large amount of miniatures you can use a stick, and blue tack the models to it and spin the stick slowly around as you spray. For this article I used my trusty cardboard box!

 

Step 6:

Leave the base for another thirty minutes or so to allow for the base to dry fully. If you try to apply the colours to the base too early you will end up removing the sand.

baseguide8

 

Step 7:

Once the base is dry you can now start the fun bit of painting it.

baseguide9

The first layer will be Skrag brown. You will want a good dollop again of this, and you will want to water it down. The more layers you do the better sealed in the sand will become. You can just do one layer of Skag Brown if you want your base to have a darker appearance, however I like to do two to three depending on the size of the base.

Always let each layer dry before doing another.

The first layer of Skag Brown
The first layer of Skag Brown

Don’t worry at this stage about knocking the odd bit of sand off. Try to be careful but it isn’t the end of the world if small parts of the base lack some sand.

Additionally don’t worry about the rim of the base, you will be coming back to the rim of the base later.

Three layers of Skag Brown later!
Three layers of Skag Brown later!

 

Step 8:
When you are happy with the skag brown coverage, its time to dry brush the base with Tau Sept Ochre.

baseguide12

Simple as that.

 

Step 9:

Dry brush the base again, but this time with Ushabti Bone.

baseguide13

 

 

Step 10:

Finally paint the rim of the base with Skag brown.

baseguide14

And that’s it! Your base is finished ready for your model.

baseguide15

 

 

 

Further ideas!

The above method is a great starting place for your miniatures, but you can always go a few steps further and add other elements to your bases.

A finished bike sits on a base like the one shown in the article.
A finished bike sits on a base like the one shown in the article. This base has had some dead grass added to it, which is done by simple adding some PVA glue to the finished base and had the grass added.

 

This Heldrake's base has had slate stones scattered over it to break up the base a little. These stones are simply super glued to the base just before adding the sand with PVA glue.
This Heldrake’s base has had slate stones scattered over it to break up the base a little. These stones are simply super glued to the base just before adding the sand with PVA glue.

 

wfbsorc1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both the Wight King and the Chaos Sorcerer have had snow added to the base. Similar to the dead grass on the Chaos Bike's base, these effects are added after the base has had the basic work done to it.
Both the Wight King and the Chaos Sorcerer have had snow added to the base. Similar to the dead grass on the Chaos Bike’s base, these effects are added after the base has had the basic work done to it.

 

This dreadnought has the head of a battle sister sitting on a rock...
This dreadnought has the remains of an Ultramarine laying before him…

 

...whilst this Daemon prince stands astride the many skulls of the fallen!
…whilst this Daemon prince stands astride the many skulls of the fallen!

Discuss this article here.

 

Share Button

Painting Guide – Chipped Armour

I wanted to share a simple yet effective technique I stumbled across. This is a really good guide to doing chipped armour on tanks (or any armour for that matter) and it is really simple to!

http://thetwelveolympians.co.uk/painting/chipping/

It’s really worth checking out if you have ever wondered how it’s done. Here is a picture from the article to show the effect.

20140510_085519_zps8svrcaz1

I couldn’t get in touch with Joel (AKA Hades) but it’s a great guide and I don’t think he will mind me sharing it.

Share Button