Some people in the club have told me that they are amazed at the speed with which I paint figures. There is no real trick, and I might add that my best speed painted figures don't even begin to compare to a Koznarsky or a Borucki paint job. But so be it - I'm happy with my fellows, and they perform admirably well on the wargaming table.

Craig Robertson has hired me to paint some Boers for The Sword and the Flame. He purchased a number of figures at Historicon, and ordered the rest from Old Glory directly, then turned them over to me. He had collected 4 bags of regular infantry, a bag of Staatsartillerie (officers and artillerymen), a bag of guns, and a bag of cavalry. This amounts to 142 infantry, two guns, and 10 cavalry. Interesting mix for Boers, when one thinks that they can very justifiably (in a skirmish game) field an all mounted force, but it will be great for our games.

Well, things being what they are, I let August get away from me, as well as September. There were other more pressing things on my schedule (moving into a new house, etc). Then the hurricane hit (and my painting room relies on artificial light, so with the electricity out for two weeks, that basically killed the second half of September. Then October was spent recovering, and getting my painting space in the new house ready, and I spent some time painting up some figures for Krigbaum, and began a contract paint job. WELL, here we are at the end of November, and I need to get Craig's figures done, and I'm tired of futzing around, so it will be a priority.

The key to my painting method is efficiency - arrived at by assembly line techniques. So the artillery, cavalry, and infantry will all have to be painted separately. I will begin with the Infantry. The first step was to open up the packages, sort them into like poses, and clean the figures.

Next, after the flash and mold sprues are cleaned off, is to base them. I use wide craft sticks (like a fat popsicle stick), and glue usually 6 28mm infantry to a base. As much as possible, I use the same pose (or similar poses) on the same base. This will make painting go much faster.

Once the glue is dried, and the figures are all on sticks, now comes the spray primer. I almost always use black. I used to use Armory flat figure primer, but found that the $7 price tag (similar for GW spray primer) chased me off to the discount shelves at Walmart and Lowes. I can usually find some Krylon Ultra Flat black for about $2 a can. I've tried the extra cheap ($.77 a can) stuff from Walmart, and found it a little too thin and runny.

The key here is to get as complete a coverage as possible on the figures. Turn them down and spray them again from another angle, use weird spraying angles when you hit them, etc. Spray them all over, using multiple coats from different angles, but try to make sure that the paint is not too thick in any one spot - this is just a primer coat, and you want all that lovely figure detail to shine through for the real painting. Now let the babies dry completely. Overnight, if possible.

Okay, once the figures are dried, then comes the second primer coat. This one is the key to the chuck style, and I think it works pretty well. This coat is applied by hand, and is white. You get a big fat brush, and using reasonably dry white paint (i.e. - no water or thinner involved) dry brush it over the whole figure. This is SUPPOSED to be a very incomplete coating, to just hit the high areas of the figure. If you have a spot of the figure that you know is supposed to be a light cover, use more white paint at that spot. Again, when you are done, let them dry.

Next we begin the color phase, of starting to lay on the actual colors the figures will be when finished. This phase takes almost the longest, but still goes reasonably quickly. However, 142 figures is MUCH too many to work on at one shot (for me, anyway), so I am going to break it up into three groups. Two groups of 60 infantry each, and finally one group of 22 (the artillery and officers).

Before I begin discussing the laying on of colors, let me first describe a special thing that I have done. That is, I have taken two extra figures that came in the bags (there were only supposed to be 140), and have converted them to Standard Bearers. Craig had purchased (from Cotton Jim Flags) a package of Boer army standards. So he obviously wanted some standard bearers, but none of the figures involved were so equipped. So I selected the two extra figures (which were, conveniently, figures bearing rifles at a port arms stance), and proceeded to modify them. This I did by clipping off the rifles, then using my Dremel tool, I drilled holes in the hands, to take a small bit of piano wire. This will be the flag staff once the painting is completed.

Okay, the laying on of colors. I usually start by doing all the flesh first, then I work out from there. So, I paint the faces and hands first. The key is not to get complete coverage. You want to do much more than you did with the white primer coat, but not complete coverage. Leave the really low areas black, and leave the crevices between regions black. Make sure all the white is covered over with color, but leave some low black spots. The combination of having the black and white undercoat will make sure that your colors will naturally look lighter or darker in different regions of the figure - giving a sort of shaded appearance. The black regions then give accent to the surrounding color.

After the flesh, I do the bigger areas of the basic uniform - pants, coats, shirts, etc. And hair. And finally headgear and footgear. No details at this time, just basic colors. Finally I do the equipment (bags, packs, larger belting). We are doing mass painting, so the more you can standardize colors, the better. Also, if you are doing random colors across different poses (very useful for giving an irregular force a very irregular look), I suggest doing it in some sort of a pattern. For instance, if I want to use several colors for pants (maybe 4 colors for 60 figures), I would paint two or three figures on all of some stands all the same color of pants. Then if I wanted to mix up the color of jackets (I am painting Boers, and they are civilians with NO uniform dress - except for the artillery and state officers), I would do something similar, but use a different pattern. For instance, maybe I paint the first three figures on a base with brown pants, and the second three with black pants. I repeat this for 5 bases. Then on the other 5 bases, of a 10 base set of 60 figures, I would paint the first three on each base tan pants, and the second three would get grey pants. Now I would go back and do Jackets. Lets say I am using the same four colors as for trousers, but I don't want to have the same figure with the same color trousers and jacket. Then I would paint the first figure of each set of three (two sets on a stand) tan - except the sets with the tan trousers. Then the next figure of each set (whether that's the first or second figure doesn't matter) that I paint would get a gray jacket (except for the gray trousered fellows). Finally, would repeat this with black and also with brown.

After all the colors are done, it's time to go back and paint in the details. The weapons get painted at this time, as well as smaller belts and attachments. Hat bands, buttons, cuff and collar colors, hair accents, and other things. This is what I call gross detailing. It is all the detailing, except for the very finest.

Once your colors and the gross detailing are done, it's time to move onto the fine detailing. This is where you add the little flourishes that make a figure stand out. Again, we are doing mass painting, so nothing too massive. Just a couple of bits here and there. Metallic rifle bolts, harness buckles, stripes on some clothing, teeth, claws, extra uniform bits, and finally eyes. Eyes in units are easiest done with just a black pen - showing an eyeball. On the Boers, since so many of them have a lot of face hair (bushy beards and mustaches), I left out the Eyes step, yet in the figures that are exposing a full face, I did do the Black Dot method.

With all the basic colors on, and then the details and fine details, on some figures I now do an all-over wash of dark brown or black. I didn't opt for this on the Boers, because of the basic earthy tones of the clothing they are wearing, and because I wasn't painting them for myself, and I don't believe the Customer would have wanted it.

With all the colors on, I then mount them on bases, if I'm doing mounting (not for all customers). I prefer to use the plastic bases from Games Workshop, they seem to work well, especially for individually mounted figures. So I glue (using cyanoacrylate - super glue) the figures all on to individual stands.

Now that they are on bases, I flock them. This I do by putting a rather wet coat of paint (not a wash, but certainly thinned down paint) all over the base of the figure, and while it is still wet, I then dip the whole base of the figure into a box of modelling flock. When they are finished, this step seems to make the most difference to the overall and uniform look of the unit.

Once the figures are all flocked, and ready to be coated, I'll assemble them into a spraying tray, and give them a coating of some sort of clear sealant. Not knowing how Craig liked his figures to appear, I used Citadel Matte Sealer, and only a light coat. This will protect them, until Craig decides how he wants to coat them. Personally, I like to use the Armory Matte Sealer, which is closer to semi-gloss, and put a right heavy coating (several coats, actually) on the figures - so when some greasy fellow named snoops picks up your figures at a convention, all the nasty grime on his fingers won't rub off the beautiful paint job underneath.

One of the more important things is having a good place to work, with all the right tools, and in a good environment where you can leave things set up, and have proper lighting, etc. This is a luxury, but I find it really helps out a lot.

So what's next? Well, you play games with the figures you have already painted!! And get ready for the next paint job. In my case, it will most likely be WWI Period East African Germans and Askari for Jon Krigbaum. Who knows what is after that?

Back to How To Articles