Last Updated on May 20, 2022 by GND
If you wish to embark into painting miniatures, you should know a couple of things that are very important for this superb time consuming but enjoyable hobby. First and foremost, we welcome you to the hobby. It is a great way for you to learn about painting, lore, game, and everything that surrounds miniature that you have chosen to paint. It is a great journey from making your first minis from sprues, priming it, choosing the right color, and finishing it with nice basing. And making it your own personalized hero figurine. Let’s start with the most important and certainly most needed thing, let’s find out how to paint miniatures for beginners.
Space. You will need a nice spot in your room, house, garage… Where you will be able to work on painting minis. Let’s call it a painting studio. We recommend a nice table, with a lot of space for colors, brushes, miniatures, light, and water.
How to paint Warhammer 40k miniatures for beginners?
Next thing you need are miniatures. As we love Warhammer 40k, we will mention those miniatures, but this text applies to all sorts of minis D&D, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings etc… When you get your first box, in it among all other stuff you’ll get your first miniatures. Most of them are plastic, very rarely you will get something else. And you will get it on the sprues, a plastic frame containing parts which you will cut with your first recommended tool: a pair of clippers and mouldline remover. With clippers you will remove miniatures from the sprue and with mouldline remover, you will remove any mold line that was created during the making process. Next thing that you need will be of course glue for plastic. There are many good glues for plastic such as Ravell or Citadel, and we use the one for plastic because when you use it on plastic it kind of melts it and when you push fit parts, space between them disappears and it looks great.
Where to buy miniatures to paint?
So you have assembled all of your troops. Now you want to start painting. So before you start that, you need to prime the miniature. You will need a primer paint. It usually comes in spray cans or tubes. Spray can is simple, take the miniature and spray it in short bursts from a certain distance. It also comes from different manufacturers such as Vallejo, Army painter or Citadel. But the ones in the tube can be used 2 ways. one way is applying it with a brush which we don’t recommend since it is a slow and sloppy process and the best way of all is applying it with the airbrush. We will talk about this later in text.
Best beginner miniature painting kit
When you have primed the miniature, then it’s time to paint. Best brushes to paint miniatures are all of them. You will need lots of different brushes. All kinds, small precise ones for tiny details, and big ones for dry brushing, technical, and the ones that you don’t care for mixing all kinds of stuff. You can get any brand, you will need to practice a bit, but you will get the hang of it as the time passes. If you go for the airbrush, oh man it’s so much fun. But it is a bit more expensive, since you will need an airbrush gun, and air compressor. After practice and a lot of reading how-to, you will be a true pro with the airbrush gun.
Ok, now we are getting to the paints. Paints are the most important part of the hobby. You will need to know what you want to paint, and what colors to use. You will need acrylic colors that are mixed and thinned with water. Or metallic paints, maybe even oil paints. Pick a brand Vallejo, CItadel, Green Stuff World, Amy painter, or all of them. Get your plastic palette, or wet palette, and begin with small steps, take one miniature and experiment how color applies on it, how it feels when you mix two or more colors on a pallet, or how wet palette works, and with a learning curve you will be getting excellent results. Clean your tools all the time, don’t let acrylic paints destroy your brushes.
Every time you finish painting, clean brushes there are many ways to do it. Water or some liquid for cleaning brushes. Clean your palette, clean your table and leave minies to dry. After days of painting and enjoying this hobby you will be a miniaturist, a hobbyist, a painter, a happy person.
Ask us anything and we will surely give you a reply with a suggestion of any type.