Lazy Painting 101

I am a lazy painter.

There. I said it! I'm not someone who will ever win a Golden Demon. I will never spend days working on one miniature, making sure it's perfect. I will never discuss the merits of one company's paints over another company's paints. I am not the guy that a lot of painting articles are for. I'm not willing or able to put that much time or effort into expertise.

However, I do have a large painted Space Marine army that looks good on a field and that people like to play against. Expert painters will tell me that my miniatures need more work but most people will say that my army is really well painted. Tragically, I find that I often have a much better looking army than a lot of people I have played because more than a few people don't want to paint. Some people don't think their paint jobs will look good compared to other people's work. Some have a lot of minis and are daunted by the idea of painting them all. Some people just don't feel they have any painting skills. These are all people I used to be when I first started.

So, how do you get from this…


…to this?



If you're looking for the tips of the pros, this article won't help you at all. If you want a decent looking army that you're proud to field and that opponents are happy to play, then you might want to read this. I'm going to tell you how I, a lazy painter, do it and maybe it'll help you to get your bare plastic out of the boxes and onto the field faster and prettier. Most importantly, it will hopefully get you playing and give you the desire to be a better painter.


1. Be uniform.

The biggest secret to having a good looking army is making a uniform army. If you have a hodge-podge of miniatures that are all different, they'll look like, well, a hodge-podge of miniatures. If you have a sea of guys in your colors and scheme, it'll look great on a table and people will remember it. Besides, when you're playing, you don't see the minis individually from 6 inches away, you see them in units from arm's length so if they look like they belong together, they'll look good as a whole.

2. Be consistent.

This is a little different than the uniformity point. If you do something a certain way, stick with it. If you paint certain types of weapons a certain style, do it through the entire army. When I have a mini wearing cloth (capes, robes aprons, etc.), I always "paint" the cloth with ink. If you're consistent with how you do the details, it'll make them look that much better and add to that aforementioned uniformity.

3. Basecoat your miniatures in black.

A lot of people will tell you that you should use white so colors will stand out. I read in some GW painting guide that you should use gray. I always use black for several reasons. Firstly, black spray paint is cheap and easy to come by. Second, as you paint, there will be recessed spaces and if they're already dark, it'll save you time and effort. Lastly, if you have black spots on your miniature, they're already black! If you want to use bright colors, then either paint the small area white or, if you’re using something bright all over, heavily drybrush the mini white and you'll still get the color and the recesses will be shadowed.

Personally, I recommend either Krylon or Rustoleum flat black depending on how you plan your painting. If you plan ahead what and when you're going to paint, use Rustoleum. It takes a day to fully dry but you can't overspray without trying and it keeps all your detail. If the mood hits you and you want to paint now, use Krylon. It'll go on alright and it'll be dry and ready in an hour. I usually use Rustoleum because I’ll often basecoat something and forget about it for a few days out on the patio…

4. Learn how to drybrush.

Dry brushing is your best friend. It makes metals look good, it highlights, when done right, it can even give the illusion of lighting. It's wonderful. But there's a little bit of a secret. Your brush HAS TO BE DRY. If you have too much paint, it'll streak on. If you have a damp brush, it'll come out weird. I use newspapers as my paint bed because they're easily replaceable and cheap to acquire (in fact, the big Austin weekly is perfect). When you intend to drybrush, get the smallest little bit of paint on your brush and then wipe your brush off on the paper. Keep doing it until no more paint comes off the brush. THEN do your drybrushing. Just run along the places you want and keep doing it. You'll see how the color starts to appear. Do it until you get the look you want. And remember that drybrushing will eventually mess up whatever brush your using so I use one or two brushes exclusively. Another way is to use a brush for your normal painting until you feel like replacing it and then use that worn brush for drybrushing. It gets you a little more use out of it.


5. Put effort into your first miniature so you can put less into the rest.

The first mini is the hardest one. You have some ideas but until you see the way it actually looks, you don't really know. So spend some time getting that first mini right because it'll be the template you use for the rest of your army. Personally, I suggest you use one of your line troops for that first mini. Once you get that basic guy with his basic scheme, you'll have a better feel for how your uniform army might look. If you have a special guy like a commander or some such, you can embellish and add cool dealies and bobbers, but he's only one mini in a large army.

6. Pick two colors you'll like and stick with them.

If you want to pick 8 colors for your basic scheme, that's great, but trust me, the more complicated you make the basic scheme, the busier and messier it looks. Sure, you may want to use other colors for detail and other things, but 2 basic colors are easy to paint and look neat. For my army, I use blue and black. Sure, I use Boltgun Metal for guns and other colors for pads for various reasons, but when my army is on the field, it's a blue and black swarm and that's what people see when they face me (see #1).

7. Assembly line painting is awesome!

If you have a first mini for a template and a basic easily paintable scheme, there's no reason why you can't get a ton of paining done! Line up 5 troops and make an assembly line. Paint all the arms then paint all the legs then the torsos, weapons, details, whatever needs to be done. With a simple scheme, you can easily do five in an hour. Sit down in front of the TV and by the time your drama is over, you'll have more guys done.

8. Don't hesitate to break a rule if you like the end result.

Sure, my Marines are blue and black, but my Terminators are orange with blue highlights. Most of my Marines are made along certain basic lines, but my Veteran and Command squads are all a mish-mash of weapons and styles. I paint all my special and heavy weapons the same ways except for bolters. Sometimes they have blue casings, sometimes they're all Boltgun metal. I like the way they look and that's what matters most. As long as you're happy with what you do, that's what matters most.

9. JUST PAINT.

Even if you only paint one mini a night, keep painting. Think about it. If you paint one mini a night, in a year you'll have 365 of them done. That's three and a half Companies! The more you get done, the more complete and filled out your army will look. The more you have done, the more you'll want to get done. It always seems daunting, but once you have one squad, you'll want to do another. Once you have a bunch of troops, you'll want to do an HQ to lead them and some heavy weapons and assault squads to support them. Soon, you'll want to give them some transports and tanks to move them all around and then you'll actually look forward to painting more. And once you have a lot of stuff painted, you'll want to play more which will make you want to paint more and so on.

Hopefully, these pointers will be helpful to you. Next week, I'm going to do something for those folk who are more visual in nature. I'm going to use all these ideas and go through a paint job from scratch so you can see how some of these ideas work for me. Until then, happy painting!