Let's start with some history: I came into miniatures gaming via roleplaying games. I was always interested in the miniatures and painting them, but mostly in the RPG context. Therefore I never had much need for huge collections of miniatures (and couldn't have afforded them anyways).
As far as painting goes, that also resulted in a desire to paint
single miniatures as well as possible instead of producing multiples
of passable paintjobs fast. I always liked the painting and modelling
for its own sake, yet I've still to encounter the game I'd love so
much I'd rush to play it with unpainted armies.
This is perhaps best illustrated with an anecdote: I had bought the LotR Two Towers game when it originally came out. An old friend of mine was visiting and was anxious to try it out. I told him I needed to paint the miniatures first...
...well, I still haven't played that game.
Over the years my painting style settled into a clear pattern: I would paint each color individually, mostly wash it individually and also add individual highlights. Thus for a miniature with three distinct colors, there would be nine distinct coloring phases.
Practice perhaps makes perfect, but even perfection has its limits. At
my peak I was spending roughly an hour painting each typical infantry
figure. Slightly less for very simple figures, but not that much
really.
As my interest shifted from RPGs to wargames, this became something of a problem. Apart from the smallest skirmish games the figure requirements for most wargames far surpass those of RPGs. In RPGs you may need a lot of miniatures, but you need lots of different types and only a few of each whereas in wargames you often need literally multitudes of the same figure (and this was often reflected in the catalogues of classic figure manufacturers, many troop types were only available in a single pose and even head variations were a novelty).
Quite simply put, I wasn't painting fast enough. At my rate producing a 100 figure army would take about 100 hours. Putting in 2 hours per week, well that's a whole year. Ok, I put in more hours but I also had wide and varied interests. A year is somewhat long to wait for a game. Something needed to be done.
Since
giant lottery winnings and retiring to a painting studio continually
eluded me, it became apparent that to increase my production I had to
change my painting style.
I dabbled in the Foundry/Dallimore 3-color style, which was kinda fun in itself but not really all that much faster.
I did some limited experiments in smaller scales, but never really enjoyed that. I just couldn't paint them well enough and wouldn't accept good enough. Quite simply, I did not enjoy doing them and that pretty much was the end of it.
Yes, you probably have guessed by now that the next experiment was dipping. I dabbled using some colored furniture varnishes and while the results were okay for zombies and the like, they didn't really work for more complex color schemes.
Recently I ran into Vallejo's washes in a modelling store. They are available in at least black, gray and sepia shades. Unlike furniture varnishes, they a water-based so I don't need to kill any more brain cells with nasty solvent fumes. And they are ready to use straight out of the jar. I find the sepia one most useful, though the gray one is good for figures with lots of white (all those ancients in undyed linen). Haven't found much use for the black one yet.
To test out the washes, I took a bunch of my Black Tree Russians. I had painted a bunch of them years ago, but the force was a bit too small and I never got to painting more of them. The WWII Russians seemed like a perfect subject for the washing experiment, since the uniform colors varied greatly anyway and the color palette is pretty much kinda brownish all over.
So I proceeded to slap on the basic colors, made no attempt to address small details like eyes or buttons and then just sloshed brown wash all over the figure. After normal basing etc. I finished the batch of 22 Russians in a week, in seven painting sessions. Didn't measure time more accurately, but assuming an average of two hours per session that would be 14 hours total or about 38 minutes per figure, start to finish.
Then I ordered a few more from the The Assault Group and repeated the experiment. Again, no accurate measurements but the general impression was similar.
Given a little more practice I could probably streamline this process a little more. Let's call it twice as fast.
But the final question remains: Is there a noticeable difference in painting quality? Is the saved time worth the lower quality?
I'll let you be the judge on this. The following pictures show side by side one figure from each batch: One rather old figure done in the old skool style and then two new ones.
As for the quality, there is no chance to mix these up on closer inspection. However, the quickie jobs are IMHO reasonably good even without resorting to 3-foot rule or some such. I like taking closeups of my figures and using them as wallpapers on my computer.
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And here are the three contestants. On the left, Assault Group quickie, in the middle Black Tree quickie and on the right and old skool Black Tree model, all in glorious 28mm. |
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Closeup of the Assault Group mini. They actually come with bayonets attached, which is period accurate (the Russians gave bayonets to basically everybody, but very few scabbards or frogs), but unfortunately this guy lost his already in the blister. |
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Closeup of the Black Tree mini done in quickie style. I just blocked in the basic colors, drybrushed the metal slightly and then slapped Vallejo Sepia shade all over it. No attempt was made to include details like eyes or buttons. |
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Old skool Black Tree Russian I did years ago. This is the way I used to do basically every mini. Each color is washed and highlighted separately, the eyes and other small details are done even if not in too great detail. This level of detail takes me about an hour per figure done on batches of about 10 minis. The brown boots are probably incorrect, but there was huge variation in Russian equipment anyways and they could be civilian items. |
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No miniature review would be complete without a butt comparison. Let's face it, as the owner this is the side you usually wish to see on the table. |
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Another closeup of the quickie Assault Group mini. Limitations of the technique are most prevalent in the hair, I think. |
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Black Tree butts in line. The quickie mini is noticeably darker shade, but then again Russian uniform colors varied greatly. |
The Russians are probably an ideal subject for this treatment, given their subdued color palette, generally scruffy appearance and mass army nature. Orcs, apemen or similar might be other good candidates. Ancients would sound otherwise good, except their white linen IMHO does not really suit to this treatment.
Here are some hoplites I did in a similar style. The important distinction
is that the linothrax was washed with gray wash, the flesh with a separate
flesh wash and the rest with sepia shade. This is quite a few steps more
than just a single wash.
So, in conclusion I do think this is a valid technique, but only for limited subjects.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Copyright 2003-2021 Mikko Kurki-Suonio
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