How To Paint Your Warhammer Army (5 Tips)

You’ve bought a bunch of miniatures. You were hyped to start a new army, and here you are, after the dust settles, surrounded by boxes. Now your pile of stuff (I’m not going to call it “of shame” yet) is sitting on a shelve next to you. What have you done? Here I share my tips on how to paint your Warhammer army.

How To Paint Your Warhammer Army? Enter the rabbit hole..

SO this happened to me a while back. It was the End Times on Earth, everyone was stuck at home because of Papa Nurgle, with too much time on my hands. What better thing to do then buying loads of Warhammer? You know I love me some Warhammer every now and then. What about a whole Gloomspite Gitz army? Yea, I reckon that’ll do. Let me just pop onto eBay real quick..

One. Do your homework – paint a test model

This is something that I learned recently. If you need to undertake a big project, you need a plan. And if you need a plan, you need to prep.

I have seen it and read it in a few videos and blogs about the subject, but it never stuck with me. You should take the time to do a test model first! I will save you time! I always thought: wouldn’t it be faster if I just go straight into painting without doing the homework first? See, I am usually not too bad with visualizing a color scheme, but I wanted to try this other approach this time. And thank God I did.

Having a test model helps you settle into a colour scheme (by the way, Blue and Red or Purple and Red worked much better!). The other thing to do is is obviously take notes on the steps to reach the desired colour scheme, this way you don’t have to think when it comes to batch painting the lot.

Here is my recipe after some experimenting:

And here lies the crux of the problem: you want to save time, and if you don’t have to think about which colour to choose and how to apply it, then you’ll save time over a big project.

Two. Keep it simple – every step of the way

Admittedly, not quite following this myself. But the main idea is to streamline the process of paint and minis as much as possible. I have a few things I’m leaning on for this task.

First of all, your painting recipe should not have that many steps. The logic is simple enough, less steps take less time, therefore you’ll be faster at finishing a single model. For instant, you could skip highlighting if a wash reaches a good enough result. Be mindful when batch painting: you might find ways to achieve what you want by speeding up some aspects of your colour scheme, like removing steps which are overkill to troops, or dropping the second pass of highlights.

I think this is particularly important. I discovered this myself while doing the first batch paint. I realised that I could skip an orange highlight by using contrast paints, basically achieving the same result. If you can streamline the process as you go you’ll gain momentum and velocity during the project, which will keep you motivated.

Easy Techniques

Another thing I lean on for this is using simple techniques. This makes it so it’s not too time consuming when batch painting. Techniques to have in your arsenal that might come handy are:

• Washes
• Contrast Paints or Speedpaints
• Drybrushing
• Streaking Grime
• Oil washes

I personally will never finish my Warhammer army if I were to building the highlights and shadows by brush only (also, I don’t have the skill to do that!!), so this provide worthwhile shortcuts while delivering good quality product at the end.

Lastly, keep your bases simple! God know I made that mistake and now I’ll have to keep going with it to maintain a consistent look 🙁 I have far too many steps for building my bases, which eat a lot of time. Also, complicated bases require a more involved paintjob, which again will take time.

Three. Use an airbrush – no seriously, just do it plz

I know, not everyone has one, yada yada yada. Just remember that rattle cans are you friends too!

These tools are great for basing, zenithal highlights and quick basecoats. My Gloomspite Gitz army is composed mainly by squigs, so it makes sense to spray the whole thing in red to begin with!

Another cool thing that you can do with an airbrush (or rattle can ok ok) is undershading as it makes the model pop way more. Just hold the model upside down, give it a spray and BAM, professional looking mini in a second. I’m quite a fan of this technique as it is easy to do and super satisfying. I’m using it on my squigs to give me both a blue underbelly and overall shadow: they look awesome!

Quick and Easy Colour Transitions

Speaking of undershading, what an airbrush can do is giving you amazing color transitions in no time. I’m planning to use this for my squig army in order to boost the highlights of the models, and combining it with another easy technique to get some really nice results. Here’s my plan, after undershading:

• Spray an off-white on the face on a 45 degree angle.
• The spray goes on the face but also lightly on the knees and the top bits of the model.
• Then use Contrast or the like to tint the white. In my case is orange.

This gives a great highlight, quick and easy. What’s more, it focuses the attention on the front of the model, so I don’t have to spend much time on details on the back.

So yea, in conclusion: buy an airbrush plz.

Four. Don’t beat yourself up – you do you

I think this is important. After countless hours of painting minis I usually end up seeing only the faults. But it’s a hobby after all, there is no pressure coming from anywhere, just yourself.

I try to remind myself that perfection doesn’t exists. So I shouldn’t worry too much if my models aren’t. Do I like them? I do. Then it’s all good mate. Miniac has a great video that resounded with me titled “You are a good painter”. You should check it out as I found it very inspiring.

Another aspect of the hobby that I always worry about is spending too much time on one single model or unit. As I’m usually a slow painter, it happens fairly often and I get stressed about it. Thing is there’s no need for this stress. I just want everything painted and now. But where is the joy of the hobby if I focus only on the finished product.

I think this is the wrong approach. Again, it’s a hobby after all, we should all enjoy it however we like it. Which brings me to my last point.

Five. Don’t focus on the end goal – all about the journey

So I think this is absolutely crucial. The journey to a fully painted army is long and filled with ups and downs, so focusing on the end goal only will detract the joy of the act of actually painting it. I definitely tend to focus on the end goal, but I try to maintain joy in the journey. Here’s how I do it.

First, I’m breaking it down. I relatively enjoy batch painting, I enjoy getting a few models all done in one. I do struggle with it when I’m getting towards the end. My issue is that I love the beginning, but the closer I get to finish, say painting a 10 men squad, I cannot wait to be done! So many itsy bitsy details that take forever.. oof.

Break It Down, Mix It Up

So instead, I’m doing just squads of 5 at a time. I know it isn’t a big number, but I get to batch painting a bit and I’m done sooner. Being finished sooner is very powerful because seeing 5 dudes finished makes me want to start the next 5 asap! Basically I’m left myself wanting more on purpose! This way I’m driven to do the next batch and so on.

The other thing that I do is that I mix it up. Maybe 5 squig riders not, then 5 squigs and a squig herder. Then a Loonboss on giant squig. At the moment I’m even painting a Blood Bowl team instead! What I’m saying mix it up so that you don’t burn down painting the same thing 20 times.

I said about trying simple techniques. I’m trying to do different things on each little batch. Some squigs have a blue underbelly, other ones have a purple underbelly. This keeps it interesting to me and different enough to make me carry on.

So yea, enjoy the journey. Namaste.

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(Bonus) Keep it consistent

Easier said then done of course. But there is something that you can do.

I know, countless hours have been spent discussing about procrastination, and how to beat it. What can you do about it, how to fight it etc. etc. But just listen to me one sec.

The thing for me is that if I don’t paint for some time, the whole painting thing becomes a big whole scary monster in my head. Oh my God it’s so much effort, I’m not feeling it today, I’m tired, I’m feeling meh, not today, maybe tomorrow, feeling lazy etcc. But tomorrow never shows up!

So here my friend, I’ll give you the ultimate secret to win at life.

Just show up.

No, seriously. I was skeptical about this too. Then I tried it. One day I wasn’t feeling it at all, but I just sit down and started building a model. Once that was done I left it, still not feeling it too much. The next day I wanted to paint it. And so, after months of not touching my brush, I managed to paint something. I basically hacked my brain into motion and my lazy a$$ followed. Isn’t that wonderful? There you go. You go conquer the world, my friend. Let me know how that works out for you.

How to paint your Warhammer army – Conclusion

So.. easy for me to keep blathering non-sense to you. Where I am right now? Is this Gloomspit Gitz army finished yet? weeelllllllllll… no. I have not finished yet, the process is obviously long and I interleave it with other painting projects in the middle. But I’m getting there. Here’s what I have:

• 20 Squig Hoppers
• 10 Boingrot Bounderz
• 2 Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig
• 2 Mangler Quigs (one is a Loonboss build)
• 1 Colossal Squig
• 10 Squigs + 2 Squig Herder

For a grand total of 47 models. That’s nothing to sniff at, it’s a sizeable chunk if you want them all looking nice and pretty. So unless you are doing hobby full time (I wish) this will take months.

But, but, but… So far I have painted quite a few things:

• 10 Squig Hoppers
• 5 Squigs and 1 Herder

For the grand total of 16 models. Only 31 to go. I think next I’ll move to do 5 Bounderz, then back to finish the squigs herd, then maybe a Loonboss on Giant Squig. See I mix it up?

I might do an update once the army is finished. Will it be done soon? Doubt it, but it will be done nonetheless.