Tutorial: Painting British WW2 Commandos Part 1

Hi folks, 

Today I'm pleased to introduce you to Troy Brand of Brand Painting Studios who will be showing us how to paint World War 2 British soldiers like a pro.  If you're not a WW2 gamer you might find the colour scheme and techniques useful for painting imperial Guard or other SciFi troopers. That's all from me, over to Troy!

Ed

Warlord Games WW2 British Commandos

A couple of weeks ago I got my hands on some of Warlord Games' WW2 British Commandos. My first impression of them is that they are very well made. There are only a few mould lines to file off and all the pieces fit together very nicely. Some pieces, like the stocks on the sten guns, are very flimsy and prone to snapping before even clipping them off the sprue.  Another good impression it made is that the sprue contains more than enough arms, heads, berets, helmets and accessories to have a huge variety of poses, weapons and faces. So, having sat down and examined the pieces one by one and deciding on the poses I wanted, I went ahead with my little project.

Getting the right colour scheme

It is perfectly acceptable to paint Space Marines in red. However, anyone would consider it a cardinal sin to paint Red Army soldiers in that colour, and equally sinful to dress soldiers of the Wehrmacht in pink, however funny the implication might be. So the first thing to do before even priming your models is to look for reference material to get the colour schemes as accurate as possible. This also means researching the colours of the equipment as well as the uniforms themselves.  The internet is full of very good (and bad) sources for this but I found this rather handy picture on the Encyclopaedia Britannica's website which makes a nice reference.

British commando from 1944-45

Preparing the model

One 28mm plastic Commado ready for painting!

Once I had decided what colours I would use to represent our commando and his equipment, I decided I would try using a beret and equip the model with a sten gun, canteen and rucksack.After I had clipped the pieces I needed for the first model and filed them as necessary I put the model together and based it with some Citadel sand.

I proceeded to undercoat the model with Grey spray primer from Humbrol. Lately I find grey to be a perfectly good compromise between black and white. This has to do with the type of paints I normally use, which are acrylics. They usually need to be thinned down in order not to obscure detail. Two or more thin coats of paint are usually enough to cover a surface. Still, the paints retain a certain transparency. This allows for the colour to appear muted if the undercoat is black, or equally very bright if the undercoat is white.  Grey being more neutral allows for the true pigment of the paint to show after the second thin coat.

Painting the Commando's uniform

Base coating the uniform

Having looked again at my reference, I picked Vallejo Flat Brown for the uniform. When painting large numbers of models it is easier to paint from one darker base coat and build highlights from it. There are other techniques which require the use of a neutral colour onto which shadows and highlights will be added, but for this model in particular, this was not to be.

Once the base coat was painted I then went on to paint the first highlights. These were achieved by layering on a 1-1 mix of Vallejo's Ochre Brown and Brown Sand. To this mixture I added a drop (or less than) of Vallejo Off White for the second layered highlight.

Clockwise: First highlight, second highlight, wash for shading.

Like I mentioned earlier, some techniques involve darkening and highlighting certain areas of the model by blending in different shades from a neutral base. However for this model I have applied a more traditional technique of layering highlights on to a darker shade then using a wash to produce a smoother transition from light to dark as, after a couple of lighter layers it would not have looked very natural. To achieve this I used Vallejo's Sepia Shade. Another good wash would have been Citadel's Agrax Earthshade but I prefer Vallejo's because of a higher pigment saturation. If you have the old Citadel Devlan Mud, I would recommend it for this also.


Painting World War 2 British Commandos: Part 2
Troy continues his tutorial with tips on how to paint skin tones.

 If you enjoyed this tutorial, check out Troy's website. He does commission work and his rates are very reasonable. Ed

Tutorial Painting British WW2 Commandos Part 2

Welcome back to our tutorial on painting World War 2 British soldiers like a pro.. If you haven't seen part 1 you can find it here.  Once again I hand you over to Troy Brand of Brand Painting Studios who today will be mostly showing us how to paint flesh. 

Ed

Painting the skin

Once I was satisfied with the uniform, which covers the largest percentage of the model, I moved on to paint the hands and face with Vallejo's Panzer Aces Flat Flesh. The Panzer Aces line has some very good flesh tones and I thoroughly recommend picking some of these up.  However, the paint in itself is a little pale at first. This is fine, as once a wash has been applied (once again I used Sepia wash) the paleness goes, revealing warmer tones as well as the details on the face.

Clockwise: base coat, wash, highlights

The highlighting on the face and hands was achieved by adding three layers: the first was a layer of Flat Flesh, then a 1-1 mix of Flat and Light Flesh (again from Vallejo) and finally a last one of Vallejo Light Flesh. Satisfied with the flesh tones I then painted the beret. This was a two stage process of painting a base coat of Vallejo Dark Green and highlighting it with a mix of Dark and Light Green.

Painting the sten gun

I picked this time to paint the sten gun, which looks a very, very dark metallic black. This I achieved by making a 2-1 mix of Vallejo Flat Black and Vallejo Gun Metal Grey. If I had not run out of the old Citadel Bolt Gun Metal I would have used that, as Citadel used to make the better metallic paints of the two brands. I then washed the sten with a thinned down wash of Citadel Badab Black. I have not used the new black wash from Citadel, but I really like the medium they used for the old washes. A very light drybrush with the original metallic brought out the details.

The model after the skin highlights and the beret were finished, along with the sten gun.

Unfortunately I did not have enough presence of mind to take pictures of the remaining process, but essentially it boiled down to six areas: the shirt, straps, the rucksack, the pouches, boots and base.

The shirt was painted with a single layer of Off White, which makes a very good contrast with the rest of the model. The straps, equally easy to paint, were all painted with a single coat of Sand.

The original rucksack was a pale shade of green-grey which I achieved by painting the base coat with Vallejo's Intermediate Blue (a slightly blue-ish grey) followed by two consecutive washes of Badab Black.

The pouches were painted with Dark Green and highlighted with a 1-1 mix of Dark Green and Vallejo Game colour Heavy Khaki.

The boots were painted Flat Black and the leggings just above them are painted sand and washed with the same sepia wash.

The base was painted Dark Ochre, then given a wash made with thinned down Citadel Scorched Brown, finally touched up with static grass

The process may have seemed long-drawn and complicated, but the steps in themselves are easy, quick to do and if you apply an assembly line method where you are touching up the last model as the first one dries up you will find yourself finished before you know it. Time to take on the Fascist scum!

That's all for now folks. If you enjoyed this tutorial, check out Troy's website. He does commission work and his rates are very reasonable. Ed

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Six reasons to use a wet palette when painting miniatures

One thing that many newcomers to this wonderful hobby do is use paint straight out of the pot.  I did too for a long time. However, one of the things that really helped me to improve my painting was when I started using a palette, in particular a wet palette.


So what is a wet palette? Well, it's a plastic lid with some old rag or kitchen towel in it and grease-proof paper on the top. It's cheap and easy to make and is on of the things that can improve you painting fast. If you want to see how to make one there's a quick tutorial here.

A wet palette

Why use a wet palette though? What's so great about it? Here are six reasons:

1. You'll paint better
   Using any palette makes it possible for you to thin your paints and mix colours, both of which are essential for good painting. If you ever want to try layering or blending on your miniatures you'll need  to do both. There's so much to say about these that I'll talk about them in detail in a future post.
2. Paint stays wet longer
   Paint can stay wet for hours on a wet palette at the right humidity and room temperature. Even in the least favourable conditions it stays wet much longer than anything on a dry palette. Given how quickly acrylics normally dry this is a huge advantage.  You also don't need to continually keep getting fresh paint out of a pot which can speed up batch painting considerably. If the paint is still wet on your palette, that means it won't dry on your brush whilst you're studying the miniature and thinking about what to do next.
3. Keep you options open
   It's easy to keep several colours available at once which is useful when you want to go back and touch up a spot you missed or cover up a slip of the hand. You don't need to open the paint again, put paint on the palette and dilute it just to repair a small error.
4. Get a point on your brush
   The wet rag in a wet palette is perfect for bringing you brush to a point without the need to lick it! Put the bristles of the brush on the rag and roll the brush in your fingers while moving it towards you. Try it, it's trickier to describe than to do!
5. You use less paint
   Leaving you paints open for long periods of time means that they start to dry up. They're also more likely to get knocked over by pets, fellow gamers or other unwary passers by.
6. No cleaning!
   Dry palettes get caked in dry paint quickly and need to be washed before they can be used again.  With a wet palette you can just throw away the grease-proof paper when you've finished with it and put some more on.

So, there you go. One simple way to improve your painting. If you want to know how to make one click here .

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How to make a wet palette for miniature painting

A wet palette is a wonderful way to improve your painting - I did a post on six reasons to use one if you're not sure what the point of it is. Anyhow it's easy  and cheap to make and the chances are you already have what you need in the house:

• An old lid of some kind. Anything waterproof will do. I normally use a small plastic lid but I have an old biscuit tin lid that I keep for the days when I want a big palette.
• An old rag or some kitchen towel. Anything that holds water and won't disintegrate will work fine. Tissues don't work well.
• Grease-proof paper or baking paper. you know, the kind of thing used for making cakes. Make sure it's not the waxy waterproof kind, as that won't work because it won't let the moisture through.

Once you've got these items fold up the rag or kitchen paper and so that it fits snugly on the palette.

Make sure the rag is soaked with water and then pour off the excess.

Pour off the excess water.

Press the paper down on to the wet rag so that it sticks and there aren't any air pockets. If it doesn't stick it won't work.

That's it. Get painting!

A wet palette in action.

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Painting Space Wolves the quick and easy way: Part 2

Introduction
Welcome once again to the joys of painting the Emperor's finest! Last time I got the Space Wolves painted in a a very simple way so that they could appear on the tabletop and defeat humanity's enemies with a nice, simple paint job. This time I'm going to do a bit more to improve the look without doing anything too difficult or time consuming.

First steps
The first thing to do was to tidy up some of the mistakes that I hadn't bothered with initially and to paint some of the bits that had skipped the first time round.

I tidied up the shoulder pads where my hand had slipped with the red or yellow using Codex Grey. I painted the purity seals using red and Bleached Bone. Since I had the colour on my palette, I went over the assorted wolf skulls and claws with bleached bone at the same time. Finally I used the same colour to drybrush the wolf pelts that two of the marines were wearing.

Shoulder Pads
There's no getting away from it; Space Marine shoulder pads are there to be decorated and space Wolves probably more than most since each one is an individual warrior.  There are basically three options when if comes doing shoulder pads; you can use transfers, one with a molded design or you can paint something free hand. As you can see below I managed to use all three options of the red shoulder pads!

On the left there's a paw print decal which seemed nice and characterful. Given that it's relatively small it was also quite east to apply. In the middle, there's a molded skull shoulder pad that I painted in the usual way and on the right is a simple geometric design that suggest a gaping maw - at least in my mind!

For the yellow shoulder pads I just applied the chapter symbol decals to each. The basic procedure is on the reverse of every sheet of transfers that GW produce.  A couple of things that make it easier to apply decals:

1. Paint gloss varnish on to the area first and to apply the decals quickly before it dries. The gloss varnish helps the decals to stick. You'll need to use some anti shine later to stop it looking glossy but that's a minor inconvenience. 
2. Use a pair of tweezers to pull the transfers out of the water. A paint brush can work too but I personally prefer tweezers.
3. Use some clean, dry kitchen paper to get rid of any excess water.

Decals are bit fiddly to do on curved surfaces like these, flat surfaces like shields are much easier, but I got them on in the end. The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that one tore slightly in the process but I decided just to leave it. This isn't a tutorial for perfectionists...

Painting the wolf skin

I quite liked the brown colour of the wolf skins, but I felt that the guy with powerfist needed something more traditionally wolfy in colour. (Powerfist =  veteran sergeant = curmudgeonly traditionalist space wolf in my mind. Go figure..) I painted over the brow with a light grey and then gave it a wash of watered down Codex Grey to put in some shading and picked out the eyes with yellow just to add a little colour. 

Basing the figures
I painted the bases with thinned Vallejo Khaki which is the nice light brown colour you can see. Since I'd glued the sand on the bases before I started painting and made sure they got sprayed with undercoat, this was a nice quick process! I then dabbed on some PVA glued and added the static grass.

I'm firmly of the opinion that even simple basing like this really improves a figure. Lots of Golden Demon entries put almost as much work into the base as they do into the figure.

All finished!

There you go, three Grey Hunters painted quickly and easily. There's numerous things that could still be done to them, the most obvious being highlighting

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Painting Space Wolves the quick and easy way: Part 1

Introduction
The goal of this tutorial is not to paint 'Eavy Metal standard or award winning minis, it is much simpler. How can you paint your Space Wolves quickly and easily so that they look nice on the battlefield?  Fortunately it's not particularly difficult or too time consuming.  I decided to paint my Space Wolves grey because I'm not that keen on the official colour scheme but with a few changes you could adapt this tutorial to the normal scheme.

Space Wolf Grey Hunter ready for battle!

Getting started
The first step of course is to clean and assemble your figures. It's worth investing a bit of time at this stage as flash and mould lines do look really ugly later on if you don't remove them. It's also a good idea to glue sand to the bases now because then you can spray undercoat it when you're doing the rest of the model. Gluing and painting the base later is more time consuming in the long run.

Space Wolves undercoated with Uniform Grey

The next step is undercoating. If you're a beginner you may like to check out the post I did on undercoating before you do this.  For quick and easy painting, a coloured primer from The Army Painter is a must. This gives you the undercoat and the base coat in one fell swoop which speeds things up by saving the bother of base coating.. I used Uniform Grey but they make Wolf Grey as well for those of you who like the studio colour scheme.

Shading the easy way with washes and inks
The next step is to put in some shading. I do this by liberally applying a wash to the models. I used Army Painter Strong Tone Ink On these models but any black ink or wash should do. If you don't have a commercially made one then thin down some black paint with water and use that, making sure it gets into the recesses. The figures should now look something like this, a bit grubby but very 3D with the shading! Most importantly you can see the detail clearly.

Black ink adds shading and brings out the details

Proper painting starts!
Now begins the fun part; adding colours. It helps immensely if you don't need too many different colours. These Space Wolves just have red, yellow, brown black and metal.Using a limited number of colours has several advantages. One, you don't need to have so many paints which is important for the beginner on a budget. Second, it as stops the figure looking gaudy; gaudy is virtually always a bad look.  The last is so obvious that I think it's easily overlooked. The fewer colours you use, the quicker the painting.

Another trick to painting quickly is to paint batches or groups of models together. Personally I find three or four is a good number. Whilst one is drying you can paint the next. Keep using the same colour until it's on all the models. Concentrate on being neat and getting a smooth coat. When you've finished go back and tidy up any mistakes.

Space Wolves painted the quick and easy way

So there we are: three Space Wolves ready to do battle for Russ and the Emperor! They won't win any painting awards but as a group they look just grand for the battlefield and they didn't take forever to do. There's plenty that could be done to improve them and in part 2 of this tutorial we'll do just that.

Final thoughts
There are many fantastic miniature painters out there on the Internet. Many who are far more talented then me in fact and have armies of beautifully painted figures that grace a 40K battlefield.  Hours of work have gone into the figures and each one is a miniature work of art. Pun intended. If you want a tutorial on that method there is a rather good one here on an awesome Space Wolf blog.

It can be inspiring to  admire these figures but it's also a bit disheartening if you don't have the time or the skill to paint to that standard - and most of us don't.  I think this is partly to blame for the numerous armies I've seen over the years which are unpainted or simply black undercoated figures. People think every figure needs to be 'pro painted' and are afraid to even start. Hopefully this tutorial will help you get started with painting your army.

If you want to improve the models you painted before to a nicer tabletop standard, check out part 2 of this tutoral on painting Space Wolves the easy way.

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Better Painting: Washes and inks for shading skin

One way to improve your painting is to try painting minis that allow you to concentrate on painting one particular thing. I picked up this Reaper figure some years ago to practise painting skin tones.  As you can see I didn't really bother with highlighting or shading anything else but Brand the Barbarian has served me well in my collection of RPG baddies nonetheless.

Whilst I don't remember the details of how I painted the figure I do recall that it was one of my early forays into using inks and washes for shading. Washes and inks can be bought commercially and are designed to get in the recesses and provide shading. "What's the difference between them?" I hear you ask. Well, at this level of painting the main one is that inks dry with a glossy finish and can't be made at home. A wash on the other hand can be made by simply diluting paint with water.  If you experiment with them you'll find that they give different effects but that goes way beyond the scope of this post and there are plenty of better painters to tell you about that. :)

The wash on this figure is very obvious around his abdomen and perhaps a bit too heavily applied but it does show nicely how shading should sit in the recesses to add depth to the model. To get it there you simply basecoat the model and then paint the wash or ink into the recesses. A decent brush, a steady hand and a little practice are all that you need. Some pre mixed washes are great and flow naturally into the recesses others need a bit more care.  Keep in mind that if you apply it too thin you can always add another coat to darken it further. If you start with it too dark you need to redo the base coat over that area and start again.

If you want to try the technique out I personally find brown washes can be used on lots of thing: skin, wood, leather, fur. Black washes over metal is also a standard technique that many people use.  You can of course use any colours and there are all sorts of easy and neat effects you can get. Give  it a try sometime!