in this video i want to tell you how i got good and did it quickly
i have been painting models since about 2013. i got into this hobby with warhammer 40k sixth
edition starting with a box of necron death marks nine years of painting that's not an
insignificant amount of time but really i would say that i've only gotten good at painting in
the last three years for the first six years of my painting i only really did army painting
i didn't like how my models looked one at a time i thought they looked best in a group i didn't paint
a proper hq model until about two years in and all that arm painting was great for developing
the fundamentals learning my way around a wet palette paintbrush and an airbrush but there was
a downside to all that batch painting units for armies i got really good at painting my necrons
my space marines i learned how to efficiently paint my specific schemes but if you had dropped
a unit i had no experience with in front of me it would be like starting from scratch so let me take
you on a little visual journey through my recent paint projects this is the nuka-cola girl from
fallout and i painted this model about three years ago and this was the very first non-40k
wargaming model i ever painted in fact it was the first non-4k wargaming model i ever purchased and
it's because i'm a huge fallout new vegas fan it is my favorite video game of all time and that is
what gave me the courage to take some of my hobby dollars and say okay this doesn't have to go into
one of my 40k armies i can i can suck it up and spend a little bit of money on my favorite video
game of all time and i'm so glad i did because this model turned out way better than most of my
40k miniatures and i had so much fun and i found it such a rewarding experience paying this model
that it opened the floodgates and now i could paint anything i wanted and have a great time
doing it knowing it was going to be a rewarding painting experience quickly after that nuka-cola
girl now i was in the mood to pick up any model i fancied and i found this plague doctor from reaper
miniatures i decided to pick this up and paint it while i was quarantining and i had a lot of fun
i decided to kind of let myself do whatever i wanted and so this plague doctor actually ended
up in kind of bright pastelly colors which is an interesting choice for the subject matter but i
really really had a good time painting him i had a really good time freehanding tiny little skulls
on his little bottles of plague and i had a lot of fun painting this knife i kinda did it in a little
bit of a cartoony fashion that i never would have tried if i was stuck painting my regular 40k
stuff but i super duper love how this model turned out it gave me a lot of new experiences and trying
new things and it was just continuing this new saga of painting random stuff after the plague
doctor i picked up some of cobra mode's hanzaki salamanders cobra mode makes some of the best 3d
printable miniatures you can get and these guys are super duper fun and i was definitely drawn to
them when i saw them and this guy in particular i had a great time painting and because this wasn't
tied to any particular war game i had no plans for using it in dnd or for any gaming in particular it
kind of gave me the freedom to try anything i wanted and i couldn't really make any mistakes
if this model turned out poopy i could have just put it in the drawer and forgotten about
it forever but it didn't turn out poopy i super duper love how this model turned out i decided
to glue him onto a cylinder of wood i made this a space that's exploding ground moving upward as if
he's just sprung right out of the earth i gave him this little chain that's wrapping around
his weapons so that it frames him very very nicely and this is the very first model i tried out games
workshop contrast paints on and i think it went really really well it was just continuing this
new story this new time in my hobby career where anything goes after the playful little exercise
of the hanzaki salamanders i picked up on a whim some of anvil industries model and in particular
this eod gunner and i really really loved this miniature and i was i think i was playing a lot
of call of duty at the time and so i thought i was going to do something a little bit more realistic
but i ended up totally not this guy is super neon and silly but i absolutely love it to this day
even though i painted this like over a year ago i think that this is one of my
best miniatures of all time better than a lot of the newer things that i've painted
i absolutely love how this model turned out i really got into a flow state with this i painted
this live on camera on one of our youtube live streams and i think it turned out great i think it
might have even been a viewer's suggestion to do the hazard striping which makes the model it looks
so so striking and the day after i finished this paint job which it was a quick paint job i decided
to throw together this base and once again i think this is one of my best bases of all time
just carefully sculpting and creating this little corner of a street this little pile of
empty shells the little bit of leafy leaves on the ground i absolutely absolutely adore this model
i don't i don't i don't take it off the shelf and admire it enough i super duper love this model and
this model kind of proved to me that i was starting to get the hang of non-metallic metals
his gun looks pretty darn snazzy this next model i remember feeling really down in the dumps when
i was getting ready to paint it i didn't really want to paint i had a two-hour window in between
commitments and i decided to just sit down and paint something and that something was this this
little mantis model i don't particularly know where this model comes from maybe somebody in
the comments who recognizes this can tell me but i decided i was just going to paint it i wasn't
going to think about it i was just going to just going to go for it i probably had a podcast on and
i went for it and i actually ended up having a really nice time it totally turned my mood
around i had so much fun it reminded me a lot of another one of my favorite video games ftl
the mantis crew members that's what this guy reminds me of but his little white lab coat
his neon grain skin his little blue robotic parts it was just a really really fun model
and it definitely has a playfulness to it it seems to be kind of a trend where when i'm not painting
for my grim dark warhammer i tend to be a lot more silly and cute with my painting style but i super
duper love how it turns out one of my favorite things is on his ipad i drew a little red dotted
line with an x that marks the spots and i think that is a hilarious little detail and overall
again not not a terribly crazy paint job not a ton of really really amazing things being shown
off here but i just like it it makes me happy and this is the non-worrying miniature i am working
on right now it is from raging heroes digital line it is a little robot called fixer and i don't mess
around anymore if i see a model that inspires me or makes me excited i buy it and i really enjoyed
working on this model on his clothing i decided i really wanted to work on texture because i don't
think texture is something i'm very good at and i painted his clothing purple and then i did a
really fine thatching and i think it gives his clothing a really interesting burlap texture and
i really really like it and now that's one more skill that i can take from this guy and put it to
my real minis real minis but i really really had a good time with this guy and i think the next
time that i may be in a painting slump i can pick this guy up do a little something something crazy
on him and get rekindle my painting so what has made me better painting random minis i still army
paint all the time but branching out gave me the freedom to try every technique every color
everything my little heart could think of this is how to really practice painting not army painting
but odd irregular unplanned experimentation doing the same thing over and over gets boring i think
that's a big reason why a lot of hobbyists jump from army to army even in the same game systems
the army they started with just isn't that fun to paint anymore i think about it like
this those memories you have in your head of your best day ever the most fun you ever
had your favorite movie is probably something that was different that caught you by surprise
our monkey brains are designed to pay attention to changing stimuli and not repeating stimuli
some repetition is necessary for learning brush control but that'll probably occur naturally
through hours clocked painting is kind of the same thing over and over again but the more you branch
out into different styles colors temperatures and tones the more you will know and the better
you can get what is in your mind down onto the model usually your favorite models will not be
the models you sit down and try really hard on i went into this terminator chaplin project wanting
to try really really hard so that it would be good and it worked but it didn't really develop
anything i just put in the time and effort and got this a good product of my experiences but where
did i get those experiences from painting all sorts of random stuff and speaking of
this stuff eob merch sweatshirts and t-shirts available on our website in the description below
so i think if you want to level up your painting try something weird you don't have to give up army
painting keep painting your white scars but maybe you can even insert a little variety into that
maybe if your scheme is typically white with red accents you can try red with white accents it'll
still look good when they're all together in a group if you like the videos you make and you want
one more a week we have that over on our patreon we also have tons of wargaming terrain stls and
weekly discord hangouts if that sounds interesting to you you can find it in the description below
if you want to learn new things you have to try new things keep an eye out for models that catch
your eye don't think too hard about it don't think about what your army needs or if that new
box is a good way to start the eldar just if you see a minion it sparks a little something
inside you grab it tear it open and paint it it'll probably become one of your new favorite pieces