Trying to start

[stinlin]

Hi all - Gen Con came and went and landed me some really wonderful deals on minis. But I'm sort of at a point right now...I have no idea how to start these minis. On top of that, some of them have lots of areas to paint, small/crazy detailed stuff and I'm a bit lost as to how to start, as well. I haven't painted in a while, though the last thing I painted came out pretty OK for me (well, one of the best ever thanks to spending hours watching Miniature Mentor videos!!! Fricken SO useful to watch step by step how to's). But I'll give an idea of what I got so y'all can see what I'm getting at. I managed to nab a nice couple of Rackham minis at a crazy discount:

http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/...s/Dwarfs - Tir-Na-Bor/Hirh-KahntheEnraged.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/...rfs - Tir-Na-Bor/Thermo-PriestonRazorback.jpg
http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac348/RackhamMiniatures/Orcs/SonOfThunder.jpg
http://underthemountain.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/yh-ibensethefbc8cdominant.jpg

I managed to get these all for $15 - gotta love ridiculous sales!

On top of that, I managed to grab 2 Darksword minis for $2 each via their speed painting competitions! Frog Wizard and Raccoon Thief!

But again, I'm just lost. Call it stage freight, I don't know...But with so much to paint and so many little details and no real, well, AREA to paint, I just have no idea how nor where to start. Are there any tips out there from you experienced painters that you can give me that you've learned from yourself being in this situation?

Also, some of these have a fair number of parts. I plan to pin them together, but how does gluing the pinned minis after painting work without ruining the paint job?

 

[internal38]

Just a hint. All assembly of said mini is done 1st, even before priming.

 

[Einion]

Congrats on that deal, sweet when you luck out like that!

Call it stage freight, I don't know...

Is that pulled behind a locomotive? :cute: It's actually very common to be nervous about painting something more intricate than you're used to, and it might account for a lot of the stuff in people's collections that never gets started... adding to the growing grey armies most mini painters have.

Not just because you haven't painted in a while but that too, I would suggest you not paint one of these immediately. If you have something simpler and easier to paint it could be good to do that first, then segue into painting one of the Rackhams, say Kahn The Enraged. On the other hand, these are metal minis and if you screw up badly you can always strip and start again if you had to.

In terms of how to approach something like this, it might help to take the "How do you eat an elephant?" approach (one mouthful at a time). Just start somewhere - the feet are good - and work your way around the sculpt piece by piece, bit by bit and eventually everything is done. Then put it aside for a couple of days, take it out and have a look at it with fresh eyes, see if you need to adjust anything, add more highlights overall to tie stuff together etc.

If you can assemble a model before priming and still get access to all areas to paint it's often a good idea to do that. On the other hand some people much prefer to paint in subassemblies (I do), but this is only really practical if during final assembly everything fits together tightly without gaps. I often wear vinyl gloves when handling painted parts during glue-up.

Einion

 

[stinlin]

Wow, I don't know why I typed freight instead of fright. I'll leave it for lulz.

And the reason I feel like I have to paint some of these guys un-assembled is because of how detailed they are. The Son of Thunder (3rd link) for example, has some crazy stuff going on with that little guy on his back. I mean, I guess if I assemble him first, I could just ignore the super hard to reach areas - they'll be very hidden in shadows, so they may not even be worth painting.

I've got a few mouselings I could paint to get back into the swing of things. I'm not too good with fur, but I'll start hunting some tutorials on that and hopefully get a better feeling for painting again. Thanks for the pro-tips!