Okay. So normally, I paint really slowly. I also have a ton of minis to paint, mine as well as others! There is no way I can possibly finish all of them and still have time to sculpt. I can barely even put a dent in the mountain of minis. So I need a faster technique to accomplish this. Over the weekend, I tried a new method and here it is. It’s definitely not new to the hobby but its new to me.

I have had these Northstar Military Miniatures pirates for quite a long time. I have wanted to paint them for a long time. I have painted a few of them in the past, but mostly, they just stand around unpainted. They are the perfect test subjects! I started with a zenithal priming and pre-shading with my airbrush. I tried a couple different colors.

Next I attacked the minis with the army painter technique of base coating followed by the quickshade. I have way too many paints to choose from so for this test, I limited my choices to a small set of colors. Also, I did not use the dip cans but instead used the warpaints shades in the dropper bottles. I mostly used the strong tone but also spot shaded with dark tone and blue tone just to give these a try.

When these were dry, I gave them a quick coat of dullcoat so I would not chip them before they were even finished. With the varnish dry, I epoxied them to a base and then textured around them with a blob of greenstuff. Waiting for epoxy putty to harden is like watching paint dry. Boring and takes forever.

So, when the greenstuff finally cured, I used brush-on primer and then painted the base. This went pretty quickly.

Finally, I added a little foliage to the base and then gave the whole thing a couple more coats of Dullcoat.

So, that is 3 out of the 4 models complete. Three seems to be the optimal number I can work on at a time. Or at least it was for this batch. They definitely are not the greatest painted minis I have ever done, but they are not horrible either especially considering the total amount of time that I spent. Total time spent was probably 6 or 7 hours not counting waiting time. I think this is a viable method for me to attempt to tackle my personal mountain of metal. Also, I am excited that I actually completed them. I have honestly been dreading painting as it takes away from sculpting new stuff, but with this method, there might be hope for me.