Tactical Squad finished

I thought I had posted pics of these guys before but it seems I overlooked it.  I did manage to finish up the first of two planned tactical squads, but with the Ex Tenebrae Lux (ETL) painting competition coming up on the Bolter & Chainsword forums, I put the second squad on the back burner to assemble and prime as much as possible before the 3-month event begins on May 1st.

I am not satisfied with the picture - the painting results came out nice but didn't photograph well, and for some reason it was hard to white-balance it properly.    Everyone got some nice edge highlighting and I'd say the final result was a high tabletop standard.

Stay tuned as I begin painting more units starting next week - I have prepared a Librarian biker, an Interrogator-Chaplain biker, the DV Ravenwing Squadron (which will become part of a full-strength Ravenwing Assault Squadron with 3 more bikes, an attack bike, and a speeder), Sammael on Sableclaw, and a Deathwing Command Squad.

HeadHunter's Thinner Recipe

(Updated: 05/14/2015)

We've talked in the past about the necessity of thinning your paints.  It's of utmost importance to control the consistency and flow of your paint to achieve the best results.  The main questions are "what do I use?" and "How thin do they have to be?"

Consistency is sometimes a little arbitrary and often difficult to explain.  General rules of thumb are a 1-to-1 ratio of thinner to paint (be sure to do this on a palette!) or the consistency of milk.  It's more important to describe it in terms of how it flows from your brush and onto the miniature.  This is something that comes from experience and practice.  What you want is paint that flows freely from the bristles without needing to drag or scrub the brush onto the surface.  In that case, your paint is not thin enough.  On the other hand, if the paint pools off your brush and flows uncontrolled onto the model, ruining your work, it's clear that your paint is too thin!  It's a fine line between control and easy application - but when you get that consistency right, painting becomes easier and looks better.

What are the benefits of proper consistency?  Most importantly, it allows you to get pigment onto the miniature without obscuring the fine detail of the model.  A few thin coats will accomplish this better than one thick coat.  Also, when your paint flows nicely from the brush, you will not get the streaky surface that shows brush strokes and ruins the illusion of authenticity.  It will also allow you the maximum level of control, permitting greater detail, finer lines, better highlights and layering, and a more professional finished product overall.

So, now we have talked generally about "how much" you should thin your paints, and why it's important to achieve the proper consistency.  But what should you use?

There are a lot of products available, and much of it is up to individual preference and what else you might be looking for in your paint.  We're going to confine our discussion to acrylic paints (because in my opinion, enamels are for amateurs who don't know any better or true professionals who don't need my guidance - there is no middle ground) and the products that work with acrylics.

There are various supplemental products one might add to paint to change how the paint performs.  Chiefly among these, let's talk a little about flow improvers and drying retarders, as these are the two things you're most likely to want to change about off-the-shelf paints.

Flow aids work by increasing flow and absorption and decreasing film tension and friction in your paint.  In layman's terms, that means the paint leaves your brush more easily (allowing greater control over application) and gets into all the nooks and crannies of the surface you're painting on.  In a previous article, we talked about the self-leveling characteristics of AV Surface Primer and Citadel shades.  Flow improver basically helps to impart this characteristic to your regular paints, allowing you to achieve more uniform coverage and thinner coats.  It also slightly slows the drying time of the paint.  However, slower drying time is not the main benefit of the product, and there is in fact a better product made specifically for that purpose.

Drying retarders (sometimes called slow-dry medium) increase the working time of the paint, allowing you more time to blend layers as well as keeping paint from drying on the brush as quickly.  This helps you achieve more natural transition between layers, more natural shading and highlights, and incidentally gives you more time to fix those occasional mistakes that require another clean, damp brush to remove paint unintentionally applied where you don't want it!

There are a variety of vendors that sell these products.  Hobby paint manufacturers like Reaper and Vallejo sell small bottles of these mediums, but for best value and performance, try a store that sells art supplies and look for products by Liquitex, or Winsor&Newton (yes, the company that makes those great Series 7 brushes!)  Instead of paying $3-4 dollars for a half-ounce of the stuff from a hobby line, you can get 4 ounces of professional artist-grade product for about $10.  You end up paying 25-30% as much by volume, and a 4-ounce bottle of each will last you a long time.  We will see why in a minute.

The aforementioned products do not, in and of themselves, work directly as thinners.  Dilution is recommended on the product labels.  Flow aids are recommended for use at a 10% ratio, and retarders at no more than 5% of volume.  This is because neither product contains a binding medium.

So let's get back to talking about what you might use directly to thin your paints.  For a long time, I used the AV acrylic thinner, a milky-white fluid that works fairly well for the purpose. I do not, however, recommend using it with metallic paints and certainly not for washes or shades because it is not transparent when applied (even if it dries that way in normal non-metallic opaque colors).

A better medium to use for thinning paints is Citadel's Lahmian Medium.  This is a transparent liquid that is great not only for thinning paints, but also for turning them into washes or shades when used in a greater proportion.

However, both products suffer from the same expense issue as the other mediums in a hobby line - and if you're aiming for a 1-to-1 ratio with paint, you'd eventually go through a dropper bottle of it for each dropper bottle of paint you own.  Do you really want to double the cost you're already paying for paint?

Some people have used isopropyl alcohol to thin acrylic paints.  I used to do this long ago and I do not recommend it!  Unless you are using something like Vallejo's Liquid Metal series or other alcohol-based acrylics (which require different care and techniques), avoid using alcohol to thin acrylic hobby paint.  It works by breaking down the binding medium of the paint, which reduces adhesion, durability, and can ultimately ruin your paint.

The least expensive, most common and ultimately best recommended product to use for thinning acrylic paints is good old water.  Tap water will do, but if you can, I recommend distilled water.  It is free from all of the minerals, trace chemicals and sediment that you may find in your tap water and will not cause your paint to react in unforeseen ways.

Into the water, you will add other fluid mediums as desired, mixing well.  I have a large dropper bottle into which I mix the following recipe:

1 part drying retarder
2 parts flow improver
1 part Lahmian Medium
6-10 parts water

"But HeadHunter!" you exclaim, "You said earlier that you should use no more than 5% retarder and 10% flow aid!  That formula uses twice as much as the recommended amounts on the label!"
Well, that's true - but that's because of our target 1-to-1 ratio of thinner to paint.  Only half of the fluid, of course, is thinner.  The other half is the paint you are trying to thin - so 10-20% in the thinner bottle is actually 5-10% total in the thinned paint.  Hopefully that clarifies the confusion.

I keep this bottle on hand to thin all my paints to the desired consistency.  Until you have sufficient experience, I recommend transferring paint to a palette and thinning it there - but some more experienced painters will thin their paint right in the bottle or pot, once they can eyeball it for the proper consistency (or know what it should sound like when shaken).

I use a Citadel Palette Pad - it's basically the size of a half-sheet of paper and contains 20 sheets of stiff, non-absorbent paper with a glossy finish (you could use both sides if one gets too covered with paint from a series of projects).  Transfer a few brush loads of the color you'll be using onto the palette (be careful not to get paint up inside the ferrule!) and then add one small drop of thinner a bit off to the side - not directly onto the paint!  Use your brush to draw a bit of the thinner into the pool of paint and mix it around.  Draw your brush away from the paint onto a clean spot to draw off excess paint and point your brush.  You should now have a moist brush loaded with enough smooth-flowing paint to last a minute or two.  No more dipping the brush in the pot every few seconds!

Basically, this recipe costs me less than $20 for about 3 pints worth of thinner - enough to last you a very long time indeed.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Getting Your Army Finished!

If you've been playing tabletop miniatures games for any length of time, you surely have a backlog.  As user "Spaced Hulk" said on the Bolter & Chainsword forums:

Indeed. It's actually the 31st Law of the Lion: "Thou shalt buy more than you build, and build more than thou paint. So it is, and so it shall ever be, until the Sword is reforged."

I've only been doing Dark Angels for a month now - but according to Battlescribe, I already have enough models to make a 2500 point list.  And that's assuming I don't increase the squad size of my Black Knights or any of the Terminator Squads, or paint up the unused box of Scouts in DA colors.

So what am I doing to keep from being overwhelmed and to stay on track?  I'm trying to set goals for myself.  For a goal to be useful, it needs to be reasonable, realistic, and definite.  Saying "I need to eventually finish my army someday" is not a goal.  What I recommend:

1. Know your capabilities:  If it takes you two weeks to paint a 10-man Tactical Squad, you probably shouldn't expect to paint three squads a month.  Repeatedly falling short of your goals is more likely to discourage you than it is to motivate you.
2. Push yourself a little:  Allow yourself some flexibility to account for things which might impact your hobby time (work, family obligations, illness or other unexpected events) but don't take it so easy that you don't get anything done.  Again, if you can put out a squad in two weeks, setting a goal to do one squad a month will take you twice as long to finish.  But if you maybe set a goal of painting two squads this month, plus an independent character, you may find that you can do a little more than you expected!
3. Don't obsess with perfection:  This one tied me up for the longest time.  I like every model I paint to be to the best of my abilities.  It's fine to take pride in one's work, but painting your entire army to competition standard is only useful if you actually intend to enter it into a painting competition!  If you're looking to paint an army you can play with on the tabletop, you'll get one a lot faster if you don't paint every trooper like an independent character.  Besides, most of the time, you'll be viewing your miniatures from several feet away.  You want an army you can be proud of - and hopefully, one that looks better than your opponent's, for reasons I've explored in a previous post - but if you want to get the army finished, you'll have to decide what constitutes a "good tabletop standard" for you.  Sometimes this might mean realizing when "Good is good enough" and proclaiming a model "done", at least for the time being, so that you can proceed with the rest.
4. Find ways to speed up your production:  The best recommendation for this is an "assembly line" approach to squads.  Instead of painting each figure individually, one at a time, you'll be more efficient if you do each step on a squad of five or ten at once.  Assemble and clean the entire squad, then prime them all, apply basecoats to them all, wash them all at once, and so on.  You'll find that each step goes quicker and you'll finish them faster than you have before.  Also, seek improvements to your techniques that will get the same (or similar) results in less time.  For instance, I am not a fan of drybrushing when it comes to painting heroes and leaders.  But if I can get acceptably good highlights on my rank-and-file this way, in half the time, you had better believe I'll do it!
5. Reduce your backlog:  Many of us have a tendency to buy models and miniatures we'd like to work on "eventually" - whether this is due to a long-range plan for the overall army, a new release, or just something that catches your fancy.  Consequently, this can lead to an ever-growing pile of boxes and blisters, awaiting assembly.  As your backlog increases, so too can your discouragement.  Feeling like you'll never finish the army is a big barrier to even getting started!  My recommendation - don't buy anything new until you've painted what you've got.  That takes a lot of willpower, and if you're capable of sticking to it you are more dedicated than me!  Obviously, when starting a new army you will probably buy a large chunk of it at once, but if you must buy new models for an existing army, don't buy more in a month than you can paint in a month.  The idea is to continually shrink your backlog, not increase it.
6. Avoid distractions:  It's all too easy to eat up all of your hobby time surfing the Web, watching TV or playing video games.  But even if you are at your desk for a few hours a day, you might not meet your goals if you don't stick to the plan!  It's tempting to assemble that model you just got, but painting it isn't part of your immediate goals.  Before you know it, you've got a lot of stuff built and unpainted. I have a small "staging area" near my painting table, where I keep assembled models and works in progress.  If it starts to get overly cluttered, I know I need to get it under control.
7. Set a definite time frame and output amount:  This is perhaps the most important part of setting the goal itself.  If you tell yourself "I will paint a 10-man squad every two weeks" or "I will paint 500 points a month", you have set a definite goal - one that has a time frame and gives you an idea of what you will have in the end.  I find that points value tends to work very well for this, as leaders and larger models such as vehicles take longer to complete, but tend to have higher points costs in game.  
8. Participate in challenges and vows:  If you are a member of any sort of group, whether it's your local gaming club, a Facebook group, or an Internet forum, you may find that your group will occasionally conduct a painting challenge.  The scope of these challenges varies, but the idea is to motivate painters by publicly declaring what you intend to complete within the duration of the challenge.  Making a vow is good motivation to complete your work, because of the gentle peer pressure.  If you meet your promise, you will be able to show off your work and bask in the esteem of your peers.  If you fall short, you may get a friendly ribbing from those who lived up to their goals.  There's no real punishment if you fail to complete your vow, but announcing your goals will help you to feel accountable for them.

How does that apply to me?  Well, obviously I have not been able to meet my promised goal of updating this blog weekly.  I try to make up for that with useful content when I do post, rather than feeling pressured to "come up with something" this week.  However, I have been able to meet my other hobby goal - to complete my Dark Angels army in a reasonable amount of time, I have set a goal of painting 500 points of miniatures each month.

For March, I wanted to complete my squad of Deathwing Terminators from the Dark Vengeance box set.  Terminators have always been my favorite unit - I like the aesthetics, design and fluff, regardless of their performance on the tabletop.  And the squad is 245 points, a convenient size for a little Kill Team while my friend and I reacquaint ourselves with the latest rules for 40K.

But that's only about half of my stated goal.  The other thing I really wanted to do was to make my own version of Grand Master Belial.  He's my favorite Dark Angel character, and while his official model is nice, it lacks flexibility in loadout (I prefer to equip him with Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield for close combat power and survivability).  He's nominally only 190 points, but each of the three individual loadouts works out to about 30 points.  So doing all three sets of weapons is like painting up a 250-point miniature in terms of time it takes to build and paint it.

The works in progress were featured in the previous post from a couple weeks ago - but now I can proudly announce that Belial and Squad Barachiel are complete!

This is the first photo I've taken with my new light box.  I'd like to get a portable light that is bright enough for overhead use, to illuminate the box a bit better.  The photo was taken with my HTC One M7 phone, using the DSLR Camera app.  I then used Paint.NET to adjust the color balance and levels to make it look as close to the actual work as possible.  

So, there's my 500 points for March.  What's on deck for April?  I'd like to paint up the backbone of any Space Marine army - my Tactical Squads.  I have two such squads from the Dark Vengeance boxed set, each a 200-point squad with plasma weaponry.  I also want to paint up Company Master Balthasar, who can count as Azrael if I wish.  That's 515 points over the next 30 days - a little more than last month's 495-ish.  I've broken it down informally just to have a benchmark of if I'm staying on track.  Allocating a given amount of time to assemble and prep each squad, as well as how long it will take to work on the details for leaders, heavies and special troops, allows me to stay on schedule.  So hopefully, by Tax Day I'll have the first squad done, and before May I'll have both of them and Balthasar to show off.