Painting

Painting

If you've never tried your hand at painting miniatures before, don't worry! While many Legion players are skilled painters, many others are mere beginners.

You can see some of my initial efforts in the links below, which have been focused on the Imperial units from the core set. I've taken a very simple approach in order to quickly get some painting units on the tabletop. In each link I've also included a list of the paints and other supplies I've used.

Darth Vader (work in progress; link to be added soon)
Stormtroopers (work in progress; link to be added soon)
74-Z Speeder Bikes

Be sure to check out Sorastro's Painting Youtube channel for more in-depth painting guides (link in the sidebar.)

Supplies

To start painting there are a few essentials that you'll need: primer, brushes, paint, thinner (distilled water should be fine), and something to use as a palette. While not strictly necessary, I'd highly recommend some sticky tack or poster putty as well and something like wooden kebab skewers or some old pens; these are for mounting some pieces so you don't have to handle them directly while painting. And of course you'll want old newspaper, cardboard, or the like to catch drops and spills.

There are several brands of acrylic paint that you can use; personally, I mostly use Vallejo Model Color. In my experience they are good quality without being too expensive, and I like that they come in dropper bottles.

Conveniently, Vallejo's Black and White set comes with almost all the colors you need to paint the Imperial side of the Core Set. Here's a link to it on Amazon:

Process

In general, painting a miniature consists of the following steps:

1) Prepare- You may need to remove some mold lines and do some assembly of your models before you begin painting. Having a clear area to work and something to protect it from spills and drops is important too.

2) Prime- Covering your miniatures in a coat of primer is an important step; primer tends to adhere to the plastic better than normal paint, and in turn provides a good surface for the paint to stick to. To save time, you can prime your figures in the same color that most of the figure will end up being, for example priming Darth Vader in black or Stormtroopers in white. If you are unsure of what color primer to use or don't want to buy multiple colors of primer, then gray should work fine.

3) Basecoat- Paint each part of the figure according to your desired color scheme. Don't worry too much about making mistakes, you can always go back and fix things later.

4) Shade/Wash- Using a wash is a quick and simple way to add some depth to your miniatures. Washes have a thinner consistency and so tend to collect more in recesses and areas that would naturally have shadows. You might also choose a darker shade of each base color and carefully paint the areas that should be in shadow.

5) Highlight- Once you have create some depth by darkening areas in shadow, you can create even more by highlighting areas that should most fully catch the light. You can do this by using lighter shades of paint.

6) Finish/Varnish- Once you've finished your paint job, adding a layer of varnish will help to protect the paint from chipping. Typically you will want a matte varnish so that they don't end up being shiny.