Re: [GZG] Question for the painting gurus...

Asteroid bases and space stations.

Get some spare bits and pieces, and some chunks of styrofoam. Then
prime them (coating the styrofoam beforehand so the primer doesn't
melt your asteroid).

An old transistor radio has plenty of capacitors, resistors, wires,
etc etc. Capacitors make great "habitat modules", and resistors "fuel
tanks", for example. A single big piece of plastic card can be cut and
glued in layers to make detailed blocky buildings, docking platforms,
etc. Experiment a lot. You WANT failures.

Once you have a few good ones, put them aside. Start with the parts
that you would have thrown away, and glue those together in
interesting ways. Practice your drybrushing, inking, etc on those.
Then use the failures that were genuine attempts but didn't work out.
Then graduate to your kit bashed stuff. Then you'll be ready for the
real thing. Even then, do your pirates, commercial ships and such
first, then your military fleet when you're sure of your paint scheme.

I painted most of my fleets by doing a black spray primer, then a base
coat of some theme color, then sometimes an ink coat of the same
color, then two layers of drybrushing, then painting the details a
contrasting color or two, and then (sometimes) drybrushing those, with
a lighter version of the same color. I don't seal with varnish, though
I know I should. It's the detail work (metallic probes and weapon
turrets, red or yellow "operating lights", etc) that really helps turn
an ok paint job into something really cool, and it's pretty easy too.

I haven't painted a new fleet in a while, admittedly, but if you do
them in an "assembly line" (ie do one step to your fleet before going
back and doing the next step) then you get a very consistent fleet. If
you jot down your methodology it helps so you do everything
consistently.

I know it will cause some controversy, but the GW site has some good
painting instructions on their website, with pictures. The BFG
rulebook goes step-by-step through a few different styles of painting
ships.

The best lesson in drybrushing I've gotten was watching Ryan actually
do it. Seeing him do it once helped me avoid unpleasant mistakes. Even
then, my first time I left too much on the brush.

On 9/4/08, Mike Stanczyk <stanczyk@pcisys.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2008, Fred Kiesche wrote:
>
> > Not sure if this would help...but are you priming first?
> Yeah, black.
>
> I'm at wits end here gang.  How do I learn this when I'm ruining minis
> hand over fist?   I only have a handfull resin ships, which I haven't
seen
> a way to strip them when I totally botch the paint job.  The only
other ships
> I have are a set of new NSL from Jon.  I'm not going near those again
until
> I get something that works.  What do I practice on?
>
> How I got into this mess:
> I went to the respected local game store and was pointed to the local
> painting guru.  He looked at what I wanted and what I had and
suggested
> drybrushing and said I should
> prime in black then 3 drybrush layers: dark grey, medium grey, then
light
> grey.
>
> The dry brushing killed all the detail on the first mini.  Hand
painting
> isn't much better.
>
> I just want a simple easy paint job that won't get me laughed at.
>
> Mike
>
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-- 
Robert Mayberry
(678) 984-5113
Robert.Mayberry@gmail.com

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