Preparing for painting

Preparing for Painting Miniatures

When I decided to paint my models I did some research in historic books to see what they US and Nazi army wore for the arctic and winter warfare. I found that the US either wore just wool olive green uniforms with some brown or they wore white smocks. The Nazi’s pretty much did the same thing but grey. I also found out that the US wore different shows than the regular infantry. Their shoes looked just like the other infantry with the coverings but they wore mostly black winter boots underneath. So when I found this information out I decided to brainstorm and figure out what my paints are going to be for each unit. I decided for the Allies the Olive green is going to be used obviously and a bluish white. While the Axis I am going to use grays and a grayish white.  Their shoes are going to be brown and black for the Allies and black for the Axis.

Paints are a big part of the models if and when you want to paint you models. I like Games Workshop and Valejo Paints. There is also P3 paints, flames of war have their own paint line that would work, or you can just go to an arts and craft store like Michael’s Arts and Craft and get apple orchard bottle of paints. You will know a difference between cheaper paints and more expensive paints though, like ability to blend and thin the paints.  If you want to use the same colors as I but a different paint company just download the chart for the paints of Games Workshop paints and compare.

I tried to remake the exact green used as the primer for the models in Games Workshop paint colors and I found that 1:5:2 chaos black, camo green, and dark angels green works the best. The axis is fairly easy it is just Codex Grey. The shoes I decided to use a technique I found where you highlight using darker colors. The technique is applying Kommando Khaki brown and wash with Devlan Mud and Gryphonne Sepia. Then highlight using Beastial Brown. It gives a nice leather look to everything. This technique will be illustrated later but for now I am just saying do some research and pick the colors. Valejo paints also has military model colors that are perfect for painting. For the shoes will be black whit gray highlights. I would make the white for the models differ depending on the force you want to paint. I plan on making the Allies a bluish white so I am base coating with Space Wolf Grey and Highlighting with Skull White. I plan on making the Axis to be a grayish white so I am basing the models with Fortress Grey and Highlighting with Skull White. The look will give the same result but the white will be slightly different and show the distinguishing differences between the 2 forces. Washes are also nice with for making the shadows stand out better. I used Devlan Mud on the Allies primed models to give a dark brownish green look and I used Badab Black for the Axis to give a dark gray look. I also used water down washes of Asurmen Blue on the white for the Allies and Badab Black on the white for the Axis to give a control of adding shadows to white. Metallic you will mostly need just various silvers Boltgun Metal, Chainmail Silver, Mithril Silver.

Mostly paints all depend on preferences and your skill at painting, brushes do as well. I like just the plain brushes you get a Michael’s Arts and Craft. They come in different brands and different types of hair. I prefer Synthetic bristles but again this is all you preference or wallet. Synthetic brushes are fairly the cheapest brushes and are perfect for acrylic paints. Do not get brushes like for Testers Paints you will not have control of the paint and it will look really bad. Nice thing that brush companies make is packages of brushes. This usually comes with between 6 and 10 brushes. The pros are its cheap and you get a lot of brushes. The cons are that the brushes if not treated well will fall apart and you will be replacing them often. The individual brushes are the complete opposite. The pros are that they are durable a bit more and don’t fall apart as easy. The cons are that they are a bit pricey and you only get one at a time.  The type of brush should all the same though. You should have a round 2 and 4 size brush for overlaying paint and brought coats of washes, round 1 or 2 size brushes for dry-brushing, and various round and liner 3/0, 2/0, 0 and 1 size brushes for details. Also for dry brushing you may want a round bristle brush with a flat top on it. These brushes all depend on how much detail you want to add to your figures. If you want to add a lot of detail I’d go as low as the 3/0 but you if you only want a couple of layers of detail go as low as a 0. You will want a bunch of 1 or 2 size brushes for dry-brushing because you will go through a lot of them if you decide to dry-brush I would buy cheap ones of these since you will be replacing them anyways.

On top painting supplies remember you will also need something to put the paint on and blend. I would recommend a small palette with a bunch of spots to put paint. They cost like $2. Also 2 cups for water you do not want to make it a normal drinking cup unless you plan on cleaning it every time you are done.  You want 2 because if you do not do it when you use metallic paints the metal flakes in the paint will come off of the brush in the water and when you use your regular paint you will have a metallic look to it.