Hobby Tricks: Prepping symbols, Sticks and BLOOD!

TJ here to share a couple of basic things I have used/ noticed that have helped me save time or just plain kicked ass. Let's take a look.

So the Alpha legion symbols you have seen on my Berzerkers and Oblits are all pretty well shaded and highlighted. I didn't paint each one of those painstakingly over the course of hours. NOOOO! I painted them all at once with a regular brush and some help from plain old Blue Tac.

I stuck these ALpha Legion Symbols onto the blue tac and then primed them right on the blue tac. DOn't worry, you can still use the blue tac afterward and it is $2 if you can't (but you can). Then you come through with a big brush and paint base them all and then come back and dry brush the highlights. No cleaning up the surrounding shoulder pad, no being careful. Just get 100 or more done at a time. It saved me hours on the Alpha Legion and is still saving me time. I just glue the symbols on later.

Another thing I did was use the blue tac ($2) and stuck it to some yard sticks that I had cut in half (less than $1 each). This let me airbrush and highlight the models super fast. I know this trick isn't new and isn't unknown, but I know I thought i was fine without the sticks and man was I wrong. I based and highlighted 115 models with three colors of blue in an hour and five minutes. 115 models! I can't believe I knew this trick existed and never tried it. It costs three dollars to set up. DO IT!

The last little trick I have that I have been using lately is just mixing 50/50 Blood For the Blood God technical paint with Secret Weapon's Realistic Water effect medium. Take a look at it dried on that base. That's completely set. It looks wet and passed right over the skulls to pool looking pretty much like fresh blood to me. You could go heavier on the BFTBG to make it thicker too. I was just stoked by the final result and wanted to share it. BTW, I have used a bunch of different still water and I was really impressed by SW's formula. It just works better and easier and is very affordable compared to the alternatives.

Anyway, those are just some tricks I have tried and found recently. I think I might do something like this once in a while. Have you tried any of these? Let me know how it worked.

Tutorial: Speed Painting Daemons For Quality Part 3

TJ here to continue and finish this three part series on Speed Painitng for Quality. Part 1 debuted on Dec. 8, Part 2 on Dec. 10. I am currently at sea on a Naval vessel and scheduled this a lon ime ago, so I cannot link those right now, so if you are interested in them, dig them up. The intention is to help people who have some dusty, unpainted daemons on the shelf - get them painted. I painted 40 models in 8 hours to better than the average tabletop standard and this post is where that all comes together, so let's get to it:

Tutorial: Speed Painting Daemons for Quality Part 2

TJ here with Tutorial number 2 for Speedpainting Daemons for a quality finish, unlike stereotypical speedpainting, which usually looks terrible. I recenlty painted up 20 horrors and 20 plague bearers in 8 hours, roughly 2 hours per squad (though I painted them all at once) and wanted to share the method with everyone, so, if you missed the first part of the tutorial, it published on December 8th (I cannot link it bacause I am at sea and this is a scheduled post), but for those who already read it, let's dive right in.

Tutorial: Speed Painting Daemons for Quality Part 1

TJ here with a tutorial that is geared toward not just Speedpainting Daemons (or anything else really fleshy), but speedpainting for quality. A lot of people see speedpainting and immediately just think "Crap" but it doesn't have to be that way. Recently, I painted up 40 daemons (20 plague bearers and 20 Horrors) and I did it all at once and it took 8 hours total. I paint for two hours a night, so it really took me less than a work week and less than i usually spend on a deamon prince, but the look is above what many call a table top standard and fits in nicely with my army on the whole, so let's take a look:

Get Your Stuff Painted!

Ho,

Fly Molo back again with a painting article. And I do love painting. Actually, more accurately, I like having painted models. I assume you do too!
Yet, think back,... out of the last 20 or so games you've played, how many times have you used a completely painted army? How many times have your opponent?
Why is that?

How to Paint Yellow Necrons: Part 2

Old School here with the second half of the How to Paint Yellow Necrons Tutorial. As I mentioned in Part 1, this paint scheme isn't designed to get you Golden Daemon results. This tutorial is designed to show you how to make an eye catching paint scheme that will look good on the table top and won't take you forever to pull off. Also, yellow is just a sexy color to work with!

Easy Camouflage Patterns with Silly Putty Masking!

Old School here to share a quick tip for those of you who want to use camouflage in your armies. I have struggled with tape and paint-on stuff for some time and never got the actual camo effect I have seen on various vehicles in my military career. I read about using Silly Putty for masking on a WWII forum and decided to give it a try ...

Maggot Strewn Nurglings in a Day - Pics and Tutorial!

Old School here to show off my Nurglings with full Maggot bases, a sacred seven Nurglings per base and a tutorial on how I painted 21 Nurgling bases in just over six hours! First things first, this project would have never happened without CVinton. We we trading bitz and talking shop one night when the conversation turned to Chaos, sacred numbers and the abundant supply of Nurglings I had just sitting in my bitz box.

Before leaving for the night, CVinton rounded up a number of Nurglings and vanished. Soon my kidnapped babies were the subject of text message slide shows, their bases covered in maggots. Yesterday, I dropped in on CVinton, who like a plaguebearing Santa Claus, gifted me with 21 bases of Nurglings, each with seven per base! I was so stoked, I vowed to paint them that night. Let's look at how I managed to get them done so fast!

Speed Painting with Quality 101 Pt. 1 (Thousand Sons example)

Alright, we all have those models in our army (or for some of us armies) that we have and barely use and we like to pretend we will take the time to paint some day. Well, I got sick of seeing my old Thousand Sons sitting around and I decided I would paint them, but that I wouldn't take a ton of time doing so (after all, I have a greater Plague Daemon and a Nurgle Prince to paint this weekend). Just because I am using Thousand Sons in my example, doesn't mean it couldn't be done with Ultrasmurfs or any number of armies out there, so maybe this could help you. Hopefully the hobby purists won't hang me for this!

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So I decided to try my hand at speed painting and in the process put a little tutorial together for those of you who don't have the time to sit and painstakingly paint every last model in your army but you want the to look good.

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The models were already primed black, but I of course don't want to sit around painting them blue so I found a color that was just a shade lighter than I wanted them to be when they were finished. In this case it was KRYLON PERIWINKLE BLUE SATIN FINISH (Ultramarine Blue is a decent equivilent.)

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Spay the models from about a foot and a half away as this stuff can be a little thick and pick a day where it is not too humid or rainy as it will cause the finish to look like a dried Mud flat. Don't freak out about the flash, it will be corrected before completion.

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With your Thousand Sons decked out in Periwinkle, now it is time to give them a very generous wash of Asurman Blue wash from GW. Use a good sized brush to slop it on and then brush the liquid wash downward across the model, forcing the dark blue to pool in creases and in areas where natural shadow should fall. Then let it dry (I did the spray and wash one night and then painted the next day).

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Next, I wanted to paint the trim its metallic gold color the 1k Sons are famous for. Now I could have easily done this with a brush, but with speed being the theme, I decided to use a metallic gold marker I found at Wal-Mart (they come in a pack with silver, blue, green, and magenta). I did all the trim, but the stripes in the head dress were done using paint, but that is in the next step. I was suprised by how well the gold looked coming from the marker and it is really the point where I figured that these models could look really good even for a very quick job.

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My next step was to bust out the Folk Art paints available in the entire color wheel and found at Wal-Marts and Hobby Lobby stores across America for pennies! I used Kings Gold and a very pointy brush to do the stripes on the Egyptian Headdress (took only two coats). The tabards were brushed over with Titanium White (very good at covering). I could have gotten away with one coat, but the second didn't cost me much time and it really pops.

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The last step of this tutorial is to wash the tabards with Gryphonne Sepia, once again brushing it to get into the folds and creases. At this stage, I have put a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of actual labor time into this 9 man squad (which includes the aspiring sorceror) and I am actually impressed with the quality at this point. I am going to take an hour and twenty minutes Friday to paint the details (bolters, powerswords ect.) and then base the models. At this point, I will have completed a 9 man squad in 4 hours of actual painting. We will leave the final judgements to the second half of this tutorial, but I must stress that this could be done with almost any army, but especially ones that have colors in the same wheel as the GW washes ... So Ultra Marines could literally be done with these same colors, Salamander and orks could be done with greens, Blood angels with reds ect, ect.. While this may not be for everyone, I hope it proves useful to those hobbyists who have units they do not have the time or interest to perform epic level paint jobs on. As always, comments are more than welcome.