Saturday, May 11, 2019

How to Start Painting Minis

It's been ages since I posted anything on painting minis. This post happened because one of the Facebook groups I'm in had someone brand new asking how to get started. They were overwhelmed with the number of YouTube videos and was looking for help with the basics.

Note - they had already bought a paint set that comes with paints, washes, and brushes. I don't advertise here so I'm not giving the brand name but it's very popular for that exact reason - their sets come with what's needed to paint armies. They do also work for individual minis so don't be turned off by the name.

Years ago I used to teach beginning painting at a local convention. We had two hour class slots. My intention was that everyone who took my class would take home a finished mini. Maybe not varnished but at least fully painted and ready for the table. That's quite a goal to achieve with people who have never painted a mini before.

Everyone in my class - regardless of age - left with a mini they had painted and were proud to show off. It literally brought a tear to my eye when they were all excited about what they had done and doing more of it in the future. I had accomplished my goal!

A little bit of snark. One other person really wanted to teach beginning painting as well. He got one of the three classes. I had one of the people who took it at a game I ran later. They got about halfway through their minis and would have to go back to finish them. It's obvious he and I took different approaches in our teaching.

If I don't already have a post about the higher level painters and their issues with teaching low level painters I will be writing one. It's not a slam on those painters at all. It's about being able to 'reach down' to the level of the students and not do things that are second nature once you reach levels of skill.

Anyway. To continue.

My class included a handout going over everything we did, some basic color theory, and additional reading at the end that went into more detail about things I knew I couldn't to justice to in two hours while trying to teach. I had pre-painted my minis to each step so I had an example but wasn't painting and teaching at the same time. I wrote the handout as I progressed through the steps.

The resulting mini is just fine for tabletop. There's no fancy eyes or attempts to layer colors. There's no fine detail work. It's a nice mini and has the people learning the very foundations of painting - color choice, brushwork, shadows and highlights, etc. The extra material goes a bit more into choosing colors, painting the five difficult colors (red, black, white, yellow, and purple), choosing and caring for brushes, and basing. Not bad in seven pages, I admit.

Here's a link to that document. There's no pictures since it was designed to be used in combination with in-person teaching and without knowing what minis I would get for my classes. At the time I was teaching I could request minis and I chose carefully for ones that weren't cluttered up with junk. Without knowing what people are trying to paint it's safer to leave those out.

The link!

Beginner Mini Painting

I've revised it slightly to remove references to the local paint group and add YouTube as a resource. I also cleaned up some typos and generally revised it to be more generic. It had been a while since I looked at it and I hadn't made it public before.

So please. Enjoy the reference if you're looking to get into mini painting or know people who want to do it but think they don't have the skill. I had kids under age ten finish their minis as well as their parents. It can be done. It's not anything to use in a painting competition. But they look darn nice on the gaming table.

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