Ramos crew in a morning : An Example of Speed painting

[studderingdave]

Following my McMourning crew I got a few messages and PM's to illustrate my use of speed painting to get crank models out quickly. So I am offering my most recent crew, a Ramos crew i got mostly second hand through trades.

A bit of background first. I am a speed painter by commission, and ive been painting for most of my adult life. I take on commissions for people who need armies done in weeks, not months. I also personally only play with painted models, so speed painting has become ingrained in my own personal paint style.

so I have this Ramos crew:

Contents:

Ramos

Ramos, Avatar of Invention

Steamborg Executioner

Soulstone Miner

Mobile Toolkit

2x Electrical Creations

2x Arachnid Swarms

6x Arachnids

I prepared the models as normal, with various pinning and gluing techniques. I always advise using a pin vise when building models. One of the electrical creations was on a scenic base, i left it on for speed. i also left the lighting bolts off the creations and the "ring of fire" off the avatar. So at around 8am i sprayed them down, using 1.99 black paint:

i see lots of people love their 12-15 dollar primers, but i have been using this paint for years now with no issue. different strokes for different folks on that one.

another good idea with speed painting to is select a restricted palette of colors, you dont want to go crazy with colors or the idea of speed painting is gonna go out the window. i selected these colors:

on top of colors, i grabbed some washes. washes are one of the mainstays of speed painting. i used to make my own washes over the years, but these citadel washes are pretty good:

so we rip into our models. i like to seperate malifaux crews into chunks that are going to share a lot of color, and since this crew has a lot of mechanics, i chinked it into 2 lots, the masters and everything else. i also like to spend a few more minutes on the masters, so they stand out a bit. so i went through the non master models fairly quickly, applying base colors and washes to get bases down:

after the base washes dried, i went back and finished off the majoity of the crew, then i went to Ramos and his Avatar:

after finishing off the rest, i sealed the models using brush on sealer:

After sealing i cleaned up the bases and any large mishaps that happened over the process. thankfully this time around nothing really slowed me down:

finally, i wanted to spruce up the bases, which is pretty mandatory in my processes. i selected tuft foliage. i like army builder's tufts, but you can find these elsewhere:

after some tufts and such, we have a finished crew, ending in approximately 4 hours not counting drying times:

really enjoyed the crew. hope it helped some people out to get their models off the shelf and onto the table. feel free to ask any questions. thanks

[Ebonstar]

4 hours! And I thought I was fast at 6 for a boxed set! Great work and great time!

[studderingdave]

thanks for the response. it might have been a tad longer if i had more flesh to paint but im pretty used to flesh so it wouldnt have been that bad. this is one of my last crews as well, unless i get henchmen then im sure ill paint a few more celebrate.

[Stonedog-7]

So the whole army is basically base, wash, highlight with base colour again? or is there more than that

Considering i can get through about 3-4 minis in 4hrs painting time i'm blown away, really nice work

[studderingdave]

more or less.

in simple terms i follow this checklist:

1. PRIME

2 BASE COLORS

3 WASH

4 BASE COLORS AGAIN (now highlights thanks to the wash)

5 HIGHLIGHT (optional)

6 BASING

it is so fast. i just finished 160 points of trollbloods in 4 days.

[Huang Da Wei]

I couldnt do it, takes we weeks to paint 1 model. it even takes me a morning of caffeine just to get motivated

[Guild Monkee]

That'd be a good looking crew even if it wasn't painted in 4 hours, nice work!

[Mirarii]

So in the time it took me to paint one showgirl, you did a whole crew... And they look just about as good, if not better... I'm not sure if this motivates me or makes me sad.

[studderingdave]

it definately takes time to pick up speed painting, and its not for everyone. when the occasion arises i like to slow down and take my time, but usually i just want to get them on the table. and since i dont play with unpainted models, speedpainting happens.

[Sevorin]

As an IT guy, that computer makes me sad.

Nice work for the speed.

[Backno]

As a speed painter out of necessity I say the OP hit the nail on the head. When I was playing 40k Orks and Fantasy Skaven I worked in batches of 20-30 at a time. By the end I had my Ork Boyz down to an avg of ~12 min per boy and Skaven Clanrats down to ~16 min per rat.

A couple of tricks to help speed you up

- Washes of any sort are your friend, use the heck out of them.

- Get good at drybrushing. When used in combination with washing you can give 3 or 4 layers of color in a couple of brush strokes

- Pick a color, paint it on EVERY MINI that needs it, then paint the next color. This lets things dry while you work so you are not stuck waiting.

- Paint inside out. That is start with the inner most part of the figure, normally this is the skin, and work your way out. This lets you be a little more sloppy with your first layer (ie faster) because you will be covering up your mistakes with your next color. Also the natural difference in depth between the skin and the clothing means ***your paint will stay off your skin.

*** This requires good brush control, properly watered down paint, having just enough paint on your brush, etc.

- Get in the mindset that minis painted this way are not going to look as nice as the stock artwork or win a painting competition when examined closely. That is ok, you painted that min in an hour vs the days and weeks that where spent on those mins

- To go with the previous point, the goal is a fully painted army in a good amount of time. Playing with bare metal or night camo minis just isn't as fun. Besides it is a scientific fact fully painted minis preform better then their un-painted counter parts

- Take some extra time to make your commander/big pieces look a little better. Add another highlight, paint a few more details,etc. By spending the extra time on those "key" minis they help tie everything together. Those are also the first minis many people will want to look at.

- After you are done you can always go back after the fact and clean up your minis, add another highlight, fix the small spots where you put some extra paint on, etc.

The hardest part is you have to put in the time actually painting minis so you can get your brush strokes fast but neat, as well as getting used to color combos that work well and what not. I link this often but I built, painted and sealed this Doomwheel in about 8 hours (4 hours of clipping, cleaning mold lines and what not, 4 hours painting)

And here is one block of the Clanrats

Edited December 28, 2011 by Backno