Painting tutorial: get rid of your grey armies! The Area Painting Method

What if I told you that you could paint your full army in just a weekend ? The Area Painting Method

Painting your Miniatures can be an intimidating task. And we know that many Raging Heroes customers are especially intimidated by the amount of details on our miniatures. So how can you deal with that?

It's to answer this question that we designed the Area Painting Method. Using it, you could paint a small army in just one weekend!

The logic behind it is simple: the most overlooked aspect of painting is the choice of an effective colour scheme. It has nothing to do with your dexterity with your brushes.

Why? Because a strong and homogeneous colour scheme will make your army stand out on the table even if the painting is not very detailed or great.

So how we do that? Let's use only 3 colours + the skin tone. If you look at our studio painted minis, you'll notice that the basis for most colour schemes we use is built around 3 colours, sometimes 4.

The next step is to determine on which area you're going to use which colour (hence the Area Painting Method). Once you have studied your minis and made your choices of colours and areas, painting will be simple and fast.

Let's get started!

In this session we will make a speed painting of one of our Machines of Prodigy. It's a large model with many parts and details.

1 - Assemble the mecha and the pilot separately

(check out an assembly tutorial that uses magnets!)

2 - Apply a golden undercoat to the entire mecha

We can recommend the Retributor Armor spray (Citadel). You have to use the spray by making light passes at 20cm from the model so as not to cover the details with the undercoat.

3 - Apply white primer to the pilot

4 - Shade the Mecha

Apply Agrax EarthShade (Citadel). This will give contrast to the model, deepening the shadows.

5 - Highlight the details

Apply Auric Armor Gold (Citadel) with the dry brush technique.

And we're done for this part! Now let's do the pilot.

Painting the Pilot

6 - Paint the skin (one layer)

Use just one layer of Guilliman Flesh Contrast paint.
*CONSTRAST paints can be used directly from the pot undiluted. On the other hand, Common paints should be diluted with water until a texture such as milk is reached and it should be applied in thin layers. In most cases, two thin layers are enough.

7 - Paint the clothes (one layer)

Use just one layer of Blood Angels Red Contrast paint.
Leave some strips of clothes unpainted for now.

8 - Paint the mechanical parts and armor

Use Retributor Armor (Citadel) and attach the pilot to the mecha.*

9 - Shade the golden parts and the remaining clothing strips

Use Agrax Earthshade.
*Liquid SHADE paints can be used directly from the pot undiluted.

And it's done! Your model is ready for the game!

If you want to go one step further, paint some details like the rotating saw and the weapons with Gun Metal. Oh, and eventually, don't forget to decorate the base!

Once you have explored this method, you can revisit your miniatures!

Pictured here are Ansaliah on the Pulpit of Exaltation and a Troop of the New Exemplars Sisters.

Want a great deal? The Machines of Prodigy are available in awesome VOW packs for an epic tabletop!

We hope this tutorial was inspiring and useful, please don't hesitate to share your feedback and tell us your about your experience!

Feel free to join our Facebook Painting Group here.

More tutorials

Check out this assembly tutorial with the same models, creating mobile joints!