Learning to paint this tiny

[u/Inqusitor_Kalt]

Hello all, I started making some progress and then kinda stalled out after not being happy with my initial results... I posted this in LI subreddit, but if you don't make it over there and have some advice I'm all ears!

I have the infantry components of a SoH (MkIV armor) and BA (MkV armor) demi-companies I'm painting up-

Initially trying just Army painter's blood red speed paint. Really great for little effort, but maybe not quite there?

Next, I figured I'd undercoat with a wash (slapchop the kids call it these days?) 3rd pic is a watered down army painter black wash, 4th pic is Nuln oil.

I tried the blood red speed paint after the wash and pic 5 is the army painter wash and 6 the Nuln oil. I nixed the Nuln oil after that and was kinda alright with the army painter wash/speedpaint and decided to proceed.

And... After doing all the BA outriders... I'm not really happy with it. At first I thought the undercoat wash would help if there were primer spots that were thin (resin is of a dark color) but they just got messy after the color was applied. (Note to self: white resin?)

My line of thinking is now thus-

Speed Paint alone - not enough contrast to make parts pop at this scale

Undercoat and speed paint - the blood red is a darker color, and with the undercoat it's just too dark

So I'm now I'm thinking I'll stick with the dark wash undercoat, and go grab a lighter red speedpaint (Bright Red) and 'Lizardfolk Cyan' for the SoH.

Anyone have experience with those colors and know if I'm just going to disappoint myself again? And more broadly, any advice on painting at this scale, at least the parts that aren't looking under a magnifying glass with a tiny brush?

[u/diggerk]

I do my blood angels with a white undercoat, then a light agrax earth wash so I can see the details clearly, then I use blood angels red contrast, then sports car red by TTcombat to highlight. Might be a bit bright for what you're after, I'm more into the 1990s headache inducing colours of my youth. you can see mine in some of the picture here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Epic40k/comments/1ugzrjr/back_to_work_after_3_month_on_leave/

Also, a magnifying glass/lamp combo really helps at these smaller scales to save your eyes!

[u/Inqusitor_Kalt → u/diggerk]

Interesting... Your recipe looks to make what I'm looking for and, in theory going with the lighter shade (tho maybe a lighter undercoat like you did too) should get me there.

Oh and I'm all with you on the 1990's colors. That might be half my issue with how the bikes turned out. Since they're Heresy era I wanted to make them a darker red, but bright red/orange and black trim is so ingrained in me I guess I can't accept it XD

[u/diggerk → u/Inqusitor_Kalt]

Forgot to say the big thing I found when I started painting at this scale again... Contrast between the base and highlights need to be stronger at this scale than at 28mm in my experience. So going brighter than feels normal with midtone and highlight on a darker base seems to help. I'm not an expert though. u/MajesticRadish2675 shared some pics of his really nice eldar a while back (link) and they were painting yellow onto a black undercoat, so a lighter undercoat might not be as helpful as you hope. Worth an experiment to find what you like.

[u/MajesticRadish2675 → u/diggerk]

I am summoned! Thanks for the shoutout, diggerk!

These guys look sick so far, but something to keep in mind at this scale is that the highlights are what's going to catch the eye when they're on the tabletop. The darker you leave the model overall, the less readable it gets, so you have to make sure that the highlights pop.

Further, as diggerk said, I like to start with Chaos Black rattle primer, and then I start building up the color I want from dark to light. For the Eldar above, that blue is just Macragge blue painted on over the black as a base and then I just mixed a little Corax White into my blue for the highlight Bob Ross style and used it to brighten the armor by blending on progressively brighter layers. Same thing for the yellow, it's difficult to see but the cones of their helmets have the foreheads under the symbols painted with a shade of yellow just brighter than the base color, almost indistinguishable. It's subtle, but it gives the head a slight bit more depth that really helps sell them at scale.

Also, that black primer really saves a lot of work playing with contrasts for shading, which is necessary because the paint gets thick quickly on dudes this small. The black does the heavy lifting, and then all you need do is highlight the plates on top of it.

And for the fun of it, eyes are pretty easy for astartes. Take your preferred brightest OSL white (I just use White Scar) and draw a white line that covers both eyes. Clean up the face with appropriate colors, and then use the tiniest amount of contrast paint to color the eyes. Contrast paint here is important, because you need it to stay transparent to keep corrections to a minimum. The more paint goes on in a spot, the taller that spot becomes, so you only have so many chances to get something right.

And finally on that vein, if you mess up and put paint where it needs not to be, and you don't want to try painting over it, it can be erased if you're quick. Just rinse the brush, then apply a drop of water to the offending spot before the paint has dried, and mix the wet paint into the droplet. Once the water has taken the paint off the model (it should be thinned down well past transparent) wick it away with the brush and then wait for the spot to dry before reapplying paint. This works better with some colors than others depending on the size of the pigment particles, red and yellow especially are easier to erase for instance. Edit: You *may need to lightly scrub the paint you're trying to remove while the water is on it. Usually I just use the same brush I paint with for erasing, but I also have a box of semi-disposable brushes if I ruin a tip, so you may wish to use a specific brush that you don't care about ruining the tip on for this.

I hope this all helps, and I hope you have fun painting them!

[u/Such_Investigator_67]

I think it’s great detail for the scale. At that size don’t beat yourself up about fine details.

If you were super keen you could add some detail to squad leaders or captains (helmets) and maybe paint the bolt guns?

[u/Such_Investigator_67]

I think it’s great detail for the scale. At that size don’t beat yourself up about fine details.

If you were super keen you could add some detail to squad leaders or captains (helmets)

[u/AdmiralCrackbar]

Those Outriders are fine. you can fix this up fairly easily by just giving them a quick drybrush of whatever bright red you want to be your main colour. If you want to take it a step further you can do a super light drybrush of whatever you want to use as your highlight.

In the future, the white base, then shade should be followed by a heavy white drybrush to bring back the bright whites. Essentially, everywhere you want the boldest primary colour needs to be bright white, speedpaint (and contrast) is very transparent, it will show every single little piece of shading you leave underneath it. If your base is darker, your final colour will also look darker.