Watching Paint Dry

Has your painting improved over the years, or has it got worse with age? Have you developed a recognisable style that you could pick out from a bunch of random painted figures? Do you even care? Just paint 'em good enough to get on the table and play, quality be damned, right?

These were the questions I asked of myself whilst rummaging through boxes of old painted figures. The figure that prompted that moment of self-reflection was this one. 

He's a Citadel knight that I painted sometime in the late-1980's. It wasn't so much the figure that set me thinking, as the shield. This was painted freehand in enamels, probably with a cheap synthetic brush. Was this the peak of my painting ability? Could I paint that to the same standard now, with 40 more years of accumulated painting experience, modern acrylics and a nicely pointed kolinsky sable brush? Well, I'm not sure. The answer is complicated - and I'm not even sure the question is the right one.

Before we go any further be warned this is a very long post so go grab a slice of toast and a cuppa, make yourself comfortable and I'll continue.

Okay. Let's start at the beginning.

Styling it Out

Airfix HO/OO (1/76) soft plastic figures and 14ml tinlets of Humbrol enamels. That was where my painting journey began. Those nascent efforts were undoubtedly crude. Mostly bare plastic with a few details like boots or weapons painted in. It wasn't until 1972 when Airfix released their Waterloo British Infantry set that I showed any interest in painting a whole figure. For the sake of my credibility as as wargamer, I would like to claim that this was due to a newfound interest in accurately depicting the uniforms of the period. But that would be a lie. The truth is, the Waterloo British Infantry figures were originally molded in a pale cream coloured plastic. Unlike my 8th Army or British Paras figures where the unpainted tan or green plastic worked well enough for the right uniform colour, Waterloo British infantry in cream uniforms was never going to pass muster. For colours, I just followed the box art, blocking in the main areas and applying blobs of pink for hands and faces. I may not have learned a great deal about Napoleonic uniforms, but I did learn that painting figures was fun. I enjoyed seeing my ranks of toy soldiers swelled by colourful figures, even if those happy feelings were tempered by the annoying tendency for the paint to flake off the figures with anything less than gentle handling.

Good 'old Airfix plastics. I used to have boxes and boxes of these...

...but only a few have survived. Airfix Waterloo British Infantry. 

The last survivors of countless charges across the bedroom carpet - Airfix Waterloo British Hussars and French Cuirassiers.

It was to be nearly another decade and many boxes of Airfix plastic soldiers before I discovered metal miniatures.

This is the first metal miniature that I ever painted. He's a Ral Partha ES-3 'Balrog', dating from the late 1970's.

I probably acquired him around 1980, which is when he first appears in the Citadel Miniatures Catalogue in the UK. He is interesting to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, the choice of colour. That dirty purple colour didn't come strait out of a tin, so I must have mixed it from whatever collection of Humbrol enamels I had to hand at the time. Secondly, there's quite a bit of shading going on, especially in the folds of the wings. I think I just mixed in some black while the paint in the recesses was still wet - a kind of crude wet blending.  There's no real style apparent yet. I'm just experimenting and trying stuff out. It's all intuitive. I'm not following any tutorials, but I seem to 'get' that adding darker colours to the recessed areas helps to give the details some definition. 

After what I considered to be a 'win' with the Balrog, I continued to add to my collection of figures - though with less than stellar results. I just couldn't replicate my original success with wet blending. Clearly, first time around had been a fluke. My chosen method was simply to apply black paint to creases and folds, either straight from the tin or mixed with the base colour. It probably hadn't occurred to me that I could shade with colours other other than black, but then the racks of Humbrol tinlets at my local model shop offered a rather limited choice and black paint was always easy to obtain. Here are some examples I painted during that period. They're not pretty, but at the time I was happy with them. They are an honest representation of where I was on my painting progress, so please don't judge them too harshly.

Here are some figures from maybe a couple of years later. By this time, I've discovered dry brushing. It's not very subtle and rather overdone, but the concept of highlighting as well as shading has extended my painting repertoire. Lots of depth here.

Time passes and I'm starting to refine my style. Now you can see from the picture below there is far less reliance on drybrushing though it is still used in moderation, for example on the old man's beard and the hair on the chap to the right. Shading and highlighting are more subtle too. Looking at these figures now, I approve of my colour choices and I'm happy that the painting has brought out a bit of personality. I'd be quite happy to mix them on the tabletop with any of my more recently painted miniatures.

Fast-forward to the late 1980's and my painting has settled into what I now recognise as my default style of white primer, base colour, shade and then highlight, with blacklining to delineate between blocks of colour. Shading and highlights may get several graduated layers depending on how much time I want to invest in a figure, but the basic three-colour principle is always there. Dry-brushing still has a place, particularly for armour, but it is now better executed. Incidentally, armour and metal equipment is always painted with metallic paint. I've never embraced Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) techniques.

Here are some WarOldHammer elves that demonstrate well the point at which my painting technique coalesced into the basic style I still recognise today. Unlike the figures in the preceding picture, these were batch painted in units with a basic palette of white, green and red to tie them together. The ivy leaf and teardrop shield patterns are hand painted. Being elves, I went for as clean a look as possible. I think I achieved that.

Oil & Water

Lets face it, enamel paints are smelly as sin and clean up is a pain in the arse. That I stuck with them stubbornly for so long probably says a lot about my character! By the early 1990's I'd caved in and made the switch to acrylics. One of the deciding factors was probably the range of colours. The enamels I had been using were originally designed for plastic model kits with drab camouflage schemes, so bright or vibrant choices were mostly limited to primary colours. I found ways around that by mixing my own colours, but achieving vibrant blues or purples was always challenging. Acrylics changed all that. Ditching the white spirit and smelly rags was a boon too.

These are the first figures that I painted after the switch to acrylics; Britannia Miniatures 28mm British and Essex Miniatures 28mm Mahdists, for battles in the Sudan. I remember being pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to transfer my painting style over to a new medium.

More than anything else, my success painting these figures convinced me to switch permanently to acrylics.

Must be some kind of mix-up

How much do you rely of colours straight from the bottle? Look at an online or magazine tutorial nowadays and odds are you'll be presented with a recipe list of colours from one or more commercial paint sets; "Tunic - Citadel Kantor Blue, Shako & Boots - Abadon Black", etc. This is not how I paint. As I mentioned earlier, I started mixing my own colours very early in my painting journey. While this was originally out of necessity to broaden the limited range of enamel colours, it probably had its origins in my childhood interest in art. I'd been dabbling with painting pictures long before I ever got serious about painting miniatures. In recent years I have gravitated more towards colours straight from the bottle for convenience, but never for every part of a figure. Take the Britannia British infantry in the photos above. The base colour for their tunics came straight out of the pot. The base blue for the trousers was mixed until I achieved the shade I was happy with. Its a similar story with my Russian Civil War units. Lots of green uniforms, mostly based on Foundry's 'Russian Helmet Green' triad, but none straight out of the pot.

Talking of triads, I remember getting excited when Foundry introduced their Triad paints in 2006. They seemed to promise a good match for my painting style of base, shading and highlights. The reality was a little different. I've never been entirely happy with the balance of colours within each triad. I do still use them, but mostly as a starting point from which to mix my own.

The downside to all this mixing, apart from the time required, is keeping things consistent. Replicating a colour I've mixed before is a bit of a dark art. Taking the British infantry again as an example, I recently bought some more of the same figures and wanted to match my original colours and style. Over 35 years have passed since I painted the originals. The paints I used then have long ago dried up and the shade of red is discontinued. Mixing up some colours to match was the only solution. Had I been more organised, I'd have kept some notes to help me.  I started keeping a paint diary a few years ago and it's a great help when I want to add to a unit. Here's a picture of the originals and later additions. You can judge for yourself how successfully I've matched the two.

Spot the difference.
Originals (painted circa 1990) on the left.
New additions (painted 2024) on the right.
I think I've matched the original colours well, but look at the painting on the webbing and pouches.
Does it look tidier on the originals? Oh dear,  I think it does.

Bring Me To Life

I've always felt that its the face that brings a figure to life. For that reason, I always used to paint faces last. I enjoyed that final touch that transformed a painted miniature into a believable character. Looking back now, this seems a crazy way round to do things, especially when having to paint inside helmets or headgear that had already been painted. The figure below is a perfect example. The armour, weapons and equipment were painted first.  His face and eyes were painted last. I'm really not sure how I managed that in the narrow gap between his helmet and face mask. Incidentally, he's a nice example of my dry-brushed silver over black basecoat armour technique. 

I can't justify this odd order of painting outside-in, other than to say once the habit formed, it stuck. Stubbornness again. It took many years before I changed to paint figures from the inside-out. Completely daft, huh? 

Jeepers, Creepers...

..whyd'ya paint those peepers? While we are on the subject of faces let's talk about painting eyes. I do like to paint the eyes on my miniatures, even if they won't be visible at arms' length or at a distance on the tabletop. Why even bother then? I think again, this is about wanting to bring a figure to life. For me, there's something intensely satisfying about bringing out some personality in my painted figures. Perhaps this ties in with my preference for games that have a strong narrative element. For units I'll settle for something that gives the basic impression of eyes, but for individual or character figures I definitely want to paint the whites and pupils if possible. This is not without risk. More than a few times, execution has fallen short of ambition and I've ended up with a Marty Feldman lookalike that I've had to completely repaint.

My original method was to paint the whole eye black, paint a thin white strip inside that, then get a dot of black as close to centre as possible. This often produced what I call the Johnny Depp look. The guy below in the floppy hat is an example of this method. Later, I began using dark brown instead of black and toned down the whites by mixing in a little flesh colour. For pupils I changed to dark grey or grey-blue. No matter the method, for me, painting eyes has always been an imprecise mix of technique and luck with varying degrees  of success.

In The Flesh

I mentioned earlier that I painted the flesh on my plastic Airfix figures in pink. By the time I graduated to metal miniatures I'd learned how to paint proper flesh tones (well, Caucasian tones at least). The trick of adding a little green or yellow to a mix of red and white was taught to me in secondary school art class with powder paints and water, and I carried that forward with my Humbrol enamels and white spirit when  painting miniatures. The real trick, of course, is getting the ratio of colours right. I went a bit too far with the yellow in some of my early attempts. Take these Ral Partha wood elves for example. They have a rather sickly, jaundiced complexion. The lack of shading and highlights doesn't help. As time passed, this was corrected. 

A pallid pair of woodland palls. 

Here's a more healthy (and aggressive) looking wood elf. By now I'm successfully adding shading and highlighting to bring out the musculature and add depth.

And here's another example. A bronzed-thewed barbarian champion.

Paint it Black

I can't remember exactly when I started to undercoat figures. Most probably it was when I finally switched from enamels to acrylics. With enamels I could get away without any kind of undercoat, but I quickly realised that painting metal miniatures with acrylics needed some prep' first. Since I was used to enamels I simply used what I had to hand; a tin of Humbrol Matt White thinned with white spirits, applied with an old brush. It's a method I've stuck with ever since. I've never been a fan of spray cans. With brush-on primers I can always paint in comfort indoors in the dead of winter or during hot or humid summers and I never have to deal with splatters, fumes or propellant running out before the paint does. I will admit that since the advent of hard plastic and resin figures I have resorted to spray priming, but with an airbrush not an aerosol can. I just find for plastic or resin, this works better than thinned down enamel applied with a brush. But for good old metals, brush priming still wins every time.

Paint it black? No thank you. I tried that once. A horrible experience. Trying to get good, bright coverage over the primer was impossible. And I struggled to see the details. I know it's a popular method and I understand all the arguments for it, but I've never been successful with it. Even a grey primer doesn't work for me. With a nice thin white base I can easily see all the details and visualise how to balance the various colour choices. Grey just throws that off for me, so I stick with what works.

The Unvarnished Truth

I never varnish my figures. There, I said it. Heresy perhaps, but on top of the the extra time and effort required, the possibility of ruining a perfectly good paint job seems to be more of a risk than that of a few chipped figures that are easily touched up. When I switched to acrylics I did worry that the paint wouldn't be so hard wearing, so I experimented with a layer of gloss varnish followed by a layer of matt. The results were disappointing, dulling and yellowing the original paintwork, as the example below demonstrates. 

Unvarnished figure on the left. Varnished figure on the right.

That was that. No more varnished figures. It's rare that I have to fix damaged paintwork on figures painted with enamels and even those in acrylics need little attention if handled and stored with reasonable care. I do have to wonder how roughly some gamers must handle their figures that necessitates encasing them in thick shells of clear polyurethane and matt varnish. If that's you, well to each their own. I manage perfectly well without the hassle, thank you.

Small...Far Away

I'm probably very fortunate that I have never had to wear glasses. I do know that my eyesight isn't as good as it was. That's just age. There was a time when I could focus in on very small detail that I would now struggle to see clearly.  Around 12 years ago I conceded that I needed a bit of help and invested in a Rolson headband magnifier. I got on okay with that for a while, but have recently found I can also manage to paint some small details pretty well without it. How's that? Well, I don't know. Maybe my close-in vision has improved again. I spend far less time staring at a computer or phone screen nowadays and my painting area has better lighting now, so perhaps that all helps.

Another typical Wednesday game night at Craggy Island Wargames Club.

The thing that really made me pay attention to detail was when I started this blog and began posting pictures of my work online. Seeing my painted miniatures magnified several times was a rude awakening. I had thought my painting was acceptably smooth and neat, but "OMG that looks rough!". The camera lens is a harsh critic and far less forgiving than the Mk.I eyeball when the level of magnification is way above what you'd see in 'real life'. I know I should probably accept that if a miniature looks okay at arms length or on the table, then that's good enough. I try not to worry so much about it now, but I would say that photographing miniatures has helped me to identify where I need to improve.

A fool with a tool is still a fool

I used to get by with cheap synthetic brushes, a plastic mixing tray, a jar of water or white spirit and a roll of kitchen tissue or an old rag to wipe brushes clean. That was my basic painting set-up for many years and it served me perfectly well. Over time, I've moved to Kolinsky sable brushes, a wet palette and brush soap. Has that made me a better painter? That's debatable. What it has done is make my painting experience a bit more comfortable. I do take better care of my brushes now. Yes, they are expensive but when well cared for, they last longer. 

The wet palette saves me wasting paint, especially in hot weather when it would otherwise dry out quickly in a plastic mixing tray. Because I often mix my own colours, preserving them from one painting session to the next is a challenge, especially when I only have a few minutes free painting time and days can pass between sessions. The wet palette solves that for me and that's the main reason I use it. Being able to mix colours on the fly is also useful, but not a reason to make the palette indispensable to me. As for brush soap, I recorded my thoughts here. It goes a long way, too. 

None of this kit is a necessity, but overall I'd say it makes my painting a more enjoyable experience - and when I'm enjoying it, I probably paint better too.

Shine a little light on me

I used to do most of my painting in daylight, which was more than a nuisance during the short, dark days of the winter months. Attempts to paint by artificial light were often frustrating. Colours that looked okay under a light bulb looked "off" when viewed in natural light. Bits that were missed suddenly became obvious. Eyestrain was always a hazard. I have tried a few solutions over the years, but never found a source of illumination that was satisfactorily comfortable to work under for an extended period of time.  At present, I use a Redgrass R9 Solo desk lamp and get on very well with it. It's not an absolutely 100% perfect substitute for the comfort and natural balance of daylight, but it is close enough and does help to extend my painting time in the winter months.

Get a grip on yourself

I always used to hold figures by the base when painting them. The idea of attaching them to a painting handle never occurred to me until I bought some 15mm Ancients and found the bases were just too small to grip comfortably between thumb and index finger. I was taking regular medication at the time and had a growing collection of empty plastic pill bottles that were just the right size to attach a 15mm miniature with a blob of blu-tac. That sorted my painting grip problem and when I went back to painting 28mm figures I naturally wanted something similar. Solution? Schwartz spice jars. They are my painting handle of choice. My first set was liberated from an old spice rack and since then I've added more when I can find them in charity shops or on eBay. They have to be the original style bottles. Schwartz changed the design and the later version has a domed lid that's useless for attaching a figure to. I find that the  glass body of the original design fits in my hand very comfortably and with enough weight to keep it stable when painting without being tiring. When painting units, its also easy to rack them up. I would never consider buying commercially produced painting handles. To replicate my current setup would be far too expensive.

Old Dog. New Tricks

Having reached the point where my basic painting technique is pretty much fixed, I haven't strayed far outside those boundaries. That's not to say I haven't experimented with new techniques. When I say 'new', I mean new to me. Some of these techniques have been around for years. Things like glazes or washes.  I own a pot of Nuln Oil, a pot of Agrax Earthshade and recently added a pot of Reikland Fleshshade. They all get plenty of use, but that's the full, extent of my washes. It took me many years (until 2023 to be exact) before I attempted Object Source Lighting (OSL). It certainly wasn't in my painting vocabulary in my early painting years - or anyone else's for that matter. (Google tells me we have Slayer-Sword-winning Australian sculptor and painter Victoria Lamb to thank for bringing the technique to prominence, circa 2001). You can see a couple of my rather tentative OSL efforts here and here. OSL is definitely something I like to try more of.

Slap Happy

I'm a slow painter. I always have been. Sometimes I wish I could paint faster and I've pondered whether I should try a new technique; the 'dip' method, speed paints, 'slap chop', paint pens, etc. By the way, who the hell came up with the phrase 'slap chop'? I really hate that term. I don't know why it triggers such strong response, but it does. Sorry, rant over.  Anyway, back to faster painting. I know my problem. I'm really a bit too fastidious. The idea of painting just good enough to be 'table ready' or okay at arms length is very difficult for me to accept. I know if I did that I'd always be dissatisfied with them, even if they looked fine en-mass on the tabletop. I'm not saying I always paint to a consistent standard. I don't. Some figures have far more time and care lavished on them than others. That often depends on the figure. Some just beg to have that extra bit of attention. Others get by with my basic three colour base / shade / highlight. I think that by now, if I was going to compromise for the sake of speed I would have done so. To put it another way, I'm comfortable with the way I paint and happy with the results. If that means my output is lower, that's an acceptable compromise over speed.

All of which means...what?

If you've been following the meandering path of this post this far (well done), let me take you back to my original questions:

Has my painting improved over the years? I most definitely think it has. My early efforts and my most recent ones are world's apart. It's been interesting to me to revisit those old figures and see how my technique evolved. 

Has my painting got worse with age? I don't think so. I recognise that the rate of improvement slowed and probably plateaued around the 1990's. Any improvements since then have been in very small increments, but the important thing is I haven't got noticeably worse. I think the fact that I still find miniature painting as enjoyable now as I did way back is an important factor. As I said before, I paint best when I'm enjoying it.

As for a recognisable style that I could pick out from a bunch of random painted figures. Well, I don't have a bunch of random painted figures to test this out, but I like to think I would be able to recognise my own painting style. Whether anyone else could is not for me to say. 

Is arms length, table-ready good enough? Not for me. I paint the way I paint because that's what satisfies me. It isn't fast. It isn't always simple, or even the most logical way. But it is me. 

And what about that Citadel Knight and freehand shieldwork? Could I replicate that now? Hmm, well probably. My hands are still steady, my eyesight is okay and with a decent light source a bit of patience...but it would be different now. Why? Because the way that I paint has evolved. 

One last thought

The one thing I have omitted to mention in this long ramble, is bases. Although not strictly miniature painting, a good base goes a long way to enhancing the look of a miniature. There's a sound reason why "Faces and Bases" is a well known maxim for achieving a good looking miniature. While digging out old figures for this post I couldn't resist clipping off a few of the tired old Games Workshop square plastic slotta-bases and rebasing to my current basing preferences. I do want to be up front about this as often, when you scroll through the photos in this post you will be looking at old paint jobs with new bases. The Citadel Knight at the head of this post is one example. Whether that enhances the paint jobs is for you to decide. I don't propose to write more on bases here. That's a subject for a future post.

I've written more than enough for now. My tea has gone cold while I type. Time for a refresh.

Till next time.