How to pin miniatures

What is this pinning you speak of?

Pinning is a skill that most miniature enthusiasts pick up at some stage; essentially it's a method of securing a limb or other item to a miniature.  It's used in situations when superglue is not strong enough to hold the model together which is pretty often in my experience of superglue and metal minis.  The pin takes much of the weight of the appendage and takes the strain off the superglue. When done correctly it gives you a very strong bond.

Although it's particularly important when working with large metal models, even human sized figures may require it on occasion. Dynamically posed figures that come in multiple parts are frequent candidates for pinning. Since plastic and resin are lighter than metal it isn't often necessary with figures made from those materials.

Okay, so what do I need?

Superglue, a pair of side cutters or clippers, a metal paper clip and a pin vice. A pin vice (or vise to our American cousins) is a simply a small hand drill. You can get them from hobby stores, GW, Amazon and doubtless other places. IF you expect to be working with metal miniatures frequently then they're a good investment.

Tools: side cutters, paper clip and a pin vice.

Pinning an Ogre Gladiator Step by Step

Our test subject today is an Ogre Gladiator from Black Tree Design. Although the arm socket is well designed the arm is quite heavy and will be much stronger if pinned.

1. Prepare the figure
Clean any flash and mould lines off the figure in the usual way and then dry fit the figure and check that all the parts go together smoothly. If they don't, you won't be able to pin them properly as the glue won't take. File them down or otherwise remove anything that is in the way.  You may discover at  this stage that there's going to be a gap between the two parts. If this happens, fear not as you can fill it easily using green stuff after you've pinned the model.

Dry fit the figure and make sure the parts go together smoothly.

2. Find a pin and a suitable drill bit
An ordinary metal paper clip makes a fine pin.  If you have to pin something particularly heavy, you could use a bigger and therefore stronger paper clip. To find the right size drill bit, line the paper clip up with prospective drill bits until you find a match. A slightly larger drill bit is okay as the super glue will fill some space around then pin.

Find the right size drill bit for your pin by lining them up

 as in the picture.

3. Drill the holes
Pretty self explanatory this bit. Some miniatures are made of a harder metal than others so the effort of drilling can vary. I prefer to make the holes deep rather than shallow but be careful not to drill all the way through the arm and into your finger; it hurts. Yes, I speak from experience.

It's normally possible to line them up by eye but at times you may want more precision usually on very wide surfaces. There is a method for this but I didn't need to do it on this figure and forgot to include it as one of the steps. I'll do in another post soon.

Holes drilled into the arm and the body.

4. Cut and insert the pin 
Using a pair of clippers cut off a short length of paper clip. Cup your free hand around the clippers as you do so to stop the bit you cut off flying across the room.

Without gluing anything insert the pin and fit the pieces together. If the pin is too small, cut a new one. If it's too long you'll see there is a gap between the pieces as shown in the picture below. When this happens, it's generally best to simply deepen one of the holes until it fits snugly.

Cut the paper clip and check it fits in the socket.

5. Glue it together
Superglue the pin into the body and allow it to dry. Apply superglue to the pin and the area around it and put on the arm. Again leave it to dry. And that's it. Job done. :-)

Miniature pinned at last :-)

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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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Showcase: Hasslefree's Mckenzie (a) and Grant

So here are couple more figures from my collection... After painting Debra I decided to add a couple more figures to my Cadian Imperial Guard.  Grant was one of the earliest figures from Hasslefree. I've often thought he would make great Sly Marbo but I've never gotten around to fielding him as that. Mckenzie I've always figured for a driver who's gotten out of her vehicle and is about to defend herself!  There is, by the way, another version of Mckenzie with a rifle which I'll post in the future.

Two soldiers show the power of drybrushing.

The painting on both figures was quite straightforward as they're basically just three colours. Together they show off a couple of simple drybrushing techniques quite well.  Drybrushing is when you wipe of most of the paint from your brush until there's almost nothing left. The brush should basically be dry rather than wet, hence the name of the technique. This can be a bit hard on brushes so either use an old brush, a cheap brush or a purpose made drybrush!

I painted Mckenzie's fatigues brown, probably Graveyard Earth by the look of them, and her armour and accessories in Olive Drab. I then drybrushed all of them with Khaki with an old standard size brush. It's a quick and easy way to give them some texture and highlighting.

You get a lot of bald, tough guy miniatures - not least of which are all the Space Marine sergeants I've ever met!  Whilst there's nothing wrong with that, it isn't really hard to give a figure buzz cut. Honest! I did Grant's hair and stubble by dry brushing Scorched Brown lightly onto his head. Obviously you need to use a small brush for something like this! So long as you do it gently and build it up gradually it's not hard though. When you're painting it's always easier to add more than to take off excess paint.  So long as you keep some flesh tone on your palette you can always go back and touch up the skin afterwards if you need to.  Cleaning up mistakes is something every painter does - including the pros!

Better Painting for Beginners: Undercoating your miniatures

It's often the basic things that help people paint better and more easily. In our rush to paint a shiny new miniature it's often tempting to skip those basic but rather tedious steps that give you a good foundation to work on. Today we're going to look at undercoating or priming your figures.

Whilst you can undercoat with a brush I think that most people tend to use spray paint. What could be easier I hear you ask? It's a spray can... Actually there's a bit of a knack to it if you want best results.  So here are my top tips gleaned from years of doing it wrong the first time....

1. Spray outside. Aerosol fumes are toxic and unpleasant and you don't want to breathe them in. Really.
2. Wear marigolds, you know, the gloves people wear when washing up.  Unless you really enjoy washing spray paint off your hands that is. If you wear gloves then you also have more choice about how to hold the figures because you're not fussed about getting paint on your hands.



Blue Tack is your friend when undercoating...

3. Mount you figures on a nice piece of wood about three feet long. Use some decent Blue Tack so that they stay on firmly and you can move them around without risk of them falling off.
4. If, like me, you live in the UK it's rare to get a day where there is no breeze at all. If possible try to find somewhere sheltered from the wind, otherwise take a moment to move around so you have the wind at your back. This stops the paint getting blown back at  you and away from the miniatures.
5. Hold the can about 30cm or 12" from the figures. If you get too close the paint will pool and obscure shallow details like on the miniature of the king.  If your spray from too far away you'll get a dusty look. This is because the paint starts drying before it hits the model and means the paint won't stick as well when you get down to the fun part of painting.  Neither of these are fatal if you're just painting up a few grunts for your army but they won't provide a good base if you want to paint the figures up nicely.



Oops, sprayed too close!

6. Start spraying just before the first figure and move along the row. Stop spraying just after the last figure. This should give you a nice even coat. You may need a couple of passes. That's fine, it's much better than doing one coat which is too heavy.

   

   Start spraying just before the first figure and move along the row.

7. Don't worry about getting the spray into every last area. Trust me, it isn't possible. Just touch up the areas you missed afterwards with a brush using a paint that covers well. If you missed a lot then reposition the miniatures and spray them again.
8. Leave the figures to dry before touching them. Ten minutes is long enough, although I think that half an hour is better - it gives the odour of the aerosol a bit longer to dissipate too! I've heard that professional painters leave them overnight but frankly at my level I don't think it would make much difference.

One neatly primed with grey paint and accepting
the paint well. :) Note that the crossbow needs a little
tidy up where the spray missed. Typical!

Finally a few things to avoid - you'll just wish you hadn't bothered and, yes, I have done all of them over the years!

• Don't undercoat in the dark or bad light. You'll miss loads.
• Don't try undercoating in the rain and juggling an umbrella. Picking up minis out of a puddle is not fun...
• Don't forget to check they are securely blue tacked.  Trying to find your minis in the bottom of a hedge is not fun either.

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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!

Showcase: Hasslefree's Debra, Female Sci-Fi Trooper

Back in the days of fourth edition Warhammer 40k I was a devoted Imperial Guard player. Most of my collection was Valhallans, which I'll have to post pictures of sometime just to show what you can paint with a sponge! But, like everyone else I toyed with different colour schemes and army lists and at one time thought about doing some Cadians.   At the time I had just discovered Hasslefree miniatures and their fantastic modern day range.  I think Debra was their only sci-fi mini at the time.  I bought her as I thought she'd make a good female Cadian and painted her up to test out the colour scheme.


In terms of painting the figure was quite straightforward as it's mostly two colours. I started with a black undercoat since I wanted a subdued, natural look. After base coating with Vallejo olive drab and khaki it was mainly a case of using Games Workshop washes to do the shading and dry brushing almost everything to put on some highlights.

Since it was a test piece I spent a bit more time on the base than usual. I chose one of the lipped ones as they give you more room to work and painted part of it to look like swamp water. A coat of gloss varnish gave it a wet look. The rest of it got the usual brown earth paint job and static grass finish.

I spent a bit of extra effort on the face and it came out quite well. One if the eyes is wrong if you look at the close up but it isn't noticeable from a distance. The red lips and helmet light add a bit of colour to model.

I never did do a proper Cadian army in the end but I liked the colour scheme a lot; olive drab and khaki is simple to do and gives sci-fi soldiers a more realistic look. In fact I liked it so much that I continued to paint up the occasional trooper here and there, so watch this space for the rest of the squad..