Age Of Sigmar Painting Guide

[Aureo Harvey]

Paintingyour first Warhammer army can be a big challenge. The number of options and pitfalls are staggering and most never people actually finish the projects they start. This is a beginners guide to painting your first Warhammer army (be it Age of Sigmar or 40k).

Over time I have developed a quick and clean method of finishing models and armies quickly. This is the method I am going to describe here as a step-by-step guide. The painting will be tabletop standard, so do not expect to win any awards. What it will do is get a painted army on the tabletop.

If it all possible, it would be great if you had an experienced painter that could help you along. It will really cut down on how long it will take to learn to paint if you can get some tips while you acutally paint.

Pick a colour for the skin, the cloth, the metal, the bone, the wood and so on. Find a shade/wash paint that you think will work with that colour (Agrax Earthshade for wood and bone, Biel-Tan green for green and so on). I like the shades that Citadel makes, but others are also very good.

The method you will be using to paint your models is primarily via a basecoat and shade/wash, so it is important to pick some colours that will look great when you do not highlight the shaded miniature.

For the example used in this article, I am going with a Bonesplitter Orruk. Seeing as he is predominantly green (and green is easy to paint) that will be one of my colours. Directly opposite very light green on the colour wheel is purple, so that is my complementary colour. Everything else on my test Orruk is neutral colours.

Now go ahead and do a test model with the colours you have picked out. If the result does not satisfy you, change a few colours and do another test model. Repeat the process until you are happy with the colours you have picked for your colour scheme for the army. Remember, you are going to have to paint a lot of models with this so it has to be quick and easy but also look good.

When you are done, write down a recipe of exactly how you are painting your army. This will be a lifesaver if you ever take a long break because you can always come back and pick up where you left of with the project.

You now have your model or unit assembled and ready. It is now time to lay an undercoat of paint on the models. The undercoat (or primer) is necessary because it will make your paint stick much better to the plastic and it will create a more even surface for you when you paint. I strongly recommend only painting on a miniature with undercoat. Painting on bare plastic is just inviting a lot of trouble into your process (paint falling off, thin paint pooling up in areas and generally just a pain in the bum).

Some people swear by grey primer and others do black. Some find that black is easier for beginners because if they miss a spot it is not that visible. I find that is a poor way of painting for a beginner. Some find white hard for beginners because any missed spot will stand out. My thoughts on that are that you should not miss a spot, and even if you do miss something, some shading will cover it right up okay.

So it is time to lay down some paint. The first layer you of paint you put on a miniature is called the basecoat. This is where you decide what colour each part of the model is and apply basecoat of that colour.

Now all parts of your miniatures have basecoat on it and it is time to add some shadows. When you look at the miniature right now, it will look very flat and dull. After we are done shading it, it will look much more lifelike.

A good looking base is one of the things that will make or break how your model and army looks like. Even though the base is really important for the overall look of your miniature, I still suggest that you find a simple way of making some good looking bases.

For all Destruction bases I use Agrellan Earth, dry brush with bleached bone and followed by a lighter toned dry brush. To that, I add a few tufts, some skulls and some homemade mushrooms mode greenstuff.

When you decide on a texture paint to use, think about how that colour will interact will all of the different colours of your miniature. I picked a very neutral looking base, but with red mushrooms to catch the eye from a distance.

This step is skippable, especially if you are going to paint a horde army. That said, doing just a few extra bits can take your the look of your army to the next level. This does not have to lake long, maybe 5 min. extra pr. miniature.

While painting your first few models, you will find things that are working less well for you. You should adjust your process along the way, so the next models and units will become easier and better.

This sounds like the easiest thing to do, but is actually the hardest. Getting those first few units done is the easiest because you are so excited about the project. The hard part is the end stage, once everything becomes boring because you have done it 50 times.

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Isopropyl alcohol (IUPAC name propan-2-ol; commonly called isopropanol) is a compound with the chemical formula C3H8O. It is a colourless, flammable chemical compound with a strong odour. As an isopropyl group linked to a hydroxyl group, it is the simplest example of a secondary alcohol, where the alcohol carbon atom is attached to two other carbon atoms. It is a structural isomer of 1-propanol.

The best thing about this stuff to strip paint off miniatures is that it is the same everywhere. No matter your locale, IPA is IPA, I normally buy about 5 litres at a time as the more you buy the cheaper it is. I got 5 litres in 5 separate 1-litre bottles for 5.

There are a few options here, do it outside, open all the windows but risk your house smelling IPA with others breathing in the fumes. If you have an Airbrush extractor turn this on. Or my personal Favourite Use an airbrush face mask if you are planning on stripping models for a few hours.

The ones pictured below are not the ones I used but when I looked for images to go in this post I saw these and they looked awesome. You can get them from here. You just need a basic toothbrush with bristles only. Nothing with those plastic bits for cleaning your tongue. Just a classic toothbrush. If you have one an ultrasonic toothbrush would do a better job. Just Buy a Normal Toothbrush

The first round was not as successful as the Deathwing Terminator above. this has removed all of the acrylic paint but the Chaos Black Spray needs a lot more elbow grease. Elbow Grease is 3.99 a tub on eBay.

This is the How to Strip Paint Off Miniatures headline model. As you can see, the before image shows a terrible paint job. I was painting this up as part of another blog tutorial and it came out very poorly. To top it off, I dropped him. I struggled to get the flesh layers down and then went far too heavy on the wash. This was primed in Vallejo Black Airbrush Primer and painted with Games Workshop Acrylic Paints.

Again with the blue in the middle of the image, Time to check my camera lens. As you can see here, my scrubbing caused his head to fall off. There is still some cleanup to do again but I can get this easily with another pass of soaking and scrubbing.

On the rear, you can pretty much see the same, app the points and tips have come away. The hair strands have lost their detail, most noticeable toward the bottom left corner. and I even pushed my thumbnail across the hairline to see what damage it would do. This crease was permanent.

Thanks for your in depth and comprehensive tutorial! It has clarified and improved my knowledge to cleaning miniatures with isopropyl alcohol.

I have a some questions about reusing 99% Isopropyl for paint stripping my miniatures.

I have reused the isopropyl to the point that it has gone black and some miniatures have a slight dark residue too them. Do you know if its safe to paint over this residue?

Also, when do you decide to dispose the isopropyl alcohol before using a new batch for painting?

If you follow the guide and leave them in for a limited time I have found that there is no impact at all on details. Thanks for the shout out about the Face Mask. I had this comment preciously and added this mask as an alternative from the previous one I recommended. but yes, the suggestion of ventilation is right, this is enough.

Ok Mat the reason your figures are comin out a bit dark is simply the old paint which is in your ISO, simple solution is to filter your iso after each session. Coffee filters will act as a suitable filter paper.

The writer of the article [ointed out that they are not a chmist, my background however is lab monkey. Ok, yes heavy duty cleaners may clean your figures, but, they will almost certainly leave a residue on your figures that will be almost impossible to paint over. ISO is what we use in labs to give a final clean to glassware. Plastic figures you need to keep a good eye on because ISO can dissolve plastics.

Thanks for this! managed to pick up a cheap Leviathan box with only a handful of figures painted, and it wasnt a great job and since i do a bit of electronics I always have isopropyl on hand and just stripped my first one a lot easier than I expected! Thank you!

My Fyreslayers are from a place called Ashenhold, which is a citadel that stradles the realms of Fire and Death via a realmgate deep within the keep. The Hrukvorn Lodge (as I have named them) venerate the duardin god of death - Gazul - almost as much as they do Grimnir. Because of this, there is a lot of black in their weapons, armour (well, what little there is) and iconography. And I wanted my battleforge - a piece that would be appearing on the tabletop irrespective of the construction of my army henceforth - to reflect the grimness and stoicism of the Hrukvorn Lodge. And that is why I have painted it as I have.

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