Hobby Talk

Tip: Since painting generally takes a while, it helps to choose a model that you are interested in. I like the super soldiers with overly dramatic weapons, lore, and feats, so I paint space marines. There are many different models from many different games and series. You can learn more about them by going to your local gaming store

Due to the pandemic, a lot of us had a lot more free time to dive into new hobbies, or reawaken old interests. And while the pandemic has lessened over the past few years, this doesn’t mean we still can’t learn about new things. For me, I have recently gotten into doing miniature painting. Miniature painting is a type of hobby where you paint on small miniature models usually around an inch or two tall. Despite being this small, they still come packed with a lot of detail, from the bolts on their guns to the marks for their eyes. This can be very overwhelming for beginners but I’m here to introduce y'all to it.

For this paint session, I made a space marine from Warhammer 40k. A lot of my painting projects are based on of from Warhammer. To begin, we have to prime him so the paint sticks our model nicer. There are many different ways to prime a model, but for today I just used some black spray primer. Shake the can for a bit and spray from a good distance away from the model, making sure to get all the nooks and folds of the model. Don’t put too much though, or else we start to lose some detail.

After the primer has dried, we move onto adding our base coat. When adding paint to miniatures, you need it to be watered down so that it doesn’t cover over details of the models. Each paint is different, but from my experience, use enough water to give the paint a milk-like consistency. This should allow for enough paint to stay on the models without covering up its details. Spread the paint as much as possible, so it doesn’t build up in one spot. Think of it as giving the model two thin coats, so that the color really shines though. Don’t worry if you paint over any part you didn’t mean to, base paints are really easy to paint over.

Next we paint the details. This is stu like the barrel of the gun, the emblem on his chest and the lights in his lenses. When it comes to detail work, I would recommend using a small brush to paint the smaller details. You can go into this stage as you want, painting where the light hits the edge of the armor, or giving the leather sheath some scratches. In this stage you can also use a wash. Washes are watery paints that are great for staining paints to di erent colors or adding huge detail into the cracks. Again if you mess up in the detailing stage, you can always go back later and paint over it.

And now you should have your completed product. This can make for a great display piece for your home office, or can be used in some tabletop game. With this hobby there are so many different techniques and tricks you can learn and develop to really make your models shine. Don’t worry if your model doesn’t already look the best by the end of it. I followed all the same steps I’ve told you above and my models still weren’t the greatest. But as long as you still pick up the brush, you'll be amazed with how much you can improve.