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My preference is for a self-etching spray primer like Krylon or Rust-O-Leum as a primer, Reaper Acrylics as base, midcoat and highlights, and Citadel washes, which I only use very sparingly at 3mm scale.
What Chapters are you thinking of painting? I can recommend a pretty slim starter set of Reaper paints; they manufacture them in sets of three so that you get coordinated base, midcoat and highlight colors that all work together. That’s the reason I like them – easy to work with, not as much mixing. But don’t go whole hog to start with, just gradually build up your color set from a few starters.
For a force of Blood Angels, for example, I would recommend the following as a basic list:
Rustoleum 2X Cover Flat White Universal Primer
Reaper Deep Red (or Dragon Red)
Reaper Blood Red
Reaper Fire Red
Reaper Clear Red
Reaper Fire Orange
Reaper Pure Black
Reaper Pure White
Reaper Midnight Blue
Reaper Shadowed Steel
Reaper Flow Improver
Citadel Nuln Oil
Spray prime your miniature – do it in two light coats. Prime once, thinly, then prime again ten minutes later, and allow to dry. Aim for about 50-60% relative humidity when you spray. Let it dry a full 24 hours before you paint.
Basecoat the figure with a mix of five parts Deep Red or Dragon Red to one part Flow Improver. This is a homemade version of the “Contrast Paint” you’ve heard so much about, but you have more control over how you mix it. A 5:1 ratio gives you a good, thinnish mix that will cover your figure very well. This is the deep base coat, and will make all your shadows nice and dark.
Mid-coat using Blood Red. Only add a very little amount of water to get the paint flowing – don’t “thin it out” like they “pros” say, or it’ll go everywhere. What you want is it to be smooth, not watery. Apply it to the main areas of the miniature, but try to pick out the panels and high spots, don’t let it run into the cracks and crevices, to preserve the shadows and relief. Fortunately the Vanguard 3mm minis are great for this – tons of detail and it’s in very deep cut relief, so easy to paint that way. I like a #1 watercolor brush for this – you can get them pretty cheap in bulk and replace them when the tip blunts. Keep them clean and snap them sharp after every use and they’ll last a good amount of time.
Highlight using Fire Red. This is just hitting the highest points, real highlights. Think of this as the “new” paint, and the bits that show through of the base and mid coats will read like older paint that is worn and dirty.
Add Clear Red on top of this. This is just pigment in binder with no base, so it will not have much color on its own but will enhance the reds below and blend them together. You’ll notice this puts a red-orange cast on the whole figure. There are a whole spectrum of Clear Colors that are good for this.
Then hit the edges with Fire Orange. This defines the very sharpest edges and gives the whole figure a nice contrast.
Finally, paint any plain metallics with Shadowed Steel. This is a very thick paint and needs water to be smoothed down or it’ll stick like gobs of glue. Use it sparingly. I also use it for the treads on my tanks.
Then treat the metal parts with Nuln Oil, to deaden the shine and give them a nicely worn, greasy look. Treads work particularly well with this technique.
Any black insignia can go on with Pure Black, now, and I like to then go over the black bits with Midnight Blue, which gives it a bit of depth. White insignia I just paint on as is in Pure White.
Base and you’re done.
This is an example of a Blood Angels unit I did at 6mm scale using this technique, but it works equally well for 3mm scale, I might argue better.
This is based on a Blood Angels-style paint job but can be modified for any color scheme, the techniques remain the same: Prime, Base Coat at 5:1, Mid Coat, Highlight, Clearcoat, Second Highlight, Metal, Insignia. Seems like a lot but it gets to be a bit of a rush after a while.
Also, be forewarned that, unlike what you see in video tutorials online, there is ALWAYS a point at which, using any multi-layer blending technique like this, the miniature will look like an unrecoverable mess, and you’ll think you did something wrong. Push forward! It has to pass that threshold to get to finished. It will seem discouraging for a moment, but you’ll see the parts come together at the end, and that will be the really rewarding part. Plus, you’ll get used to seeing mistakes as they happen, because they’ll actually happen in slow motion as it were, between layers, and you’ll have the next layer to blend out the little blemishes and errors left over from the last one, or you can go back with a bit of the previous layer’s color to build up parts a little further if they’re not reading, etc. In the end, this makes a nice-looking figure easier to do, because no one stroke is going to wreck them for you, as can happen with more delicate, stroke-by-stroke techniques.
If you mean the base labels I use, those I draw myself in Adobe Illustrator and print out with a color laser printer. I’m doing something similar with vehicle cards for my Nowhere-Near Official Dirtside II stats for the Vanguard line. I always like to add my own fluff to things to get me into the spirit of it.
This is the back of a black board, painted with iron-doped resin paint, then painted over. The terrain is built on top of magnetic rubber strips. The units are likewise magnetically based. The whole thing can be turned at a 45 degree angle with nothing moving out of place. At 90 degrees, only the really big and heavy metal buildings fall: everything else stays put.
Set up and take down is simplicity itself. Furthermore, terrain bits can easily be draped and layered on top of each other. The idea is to hang the blackboard on the office wall for messages and to do lists when I am not using it.
We get slapped around, but we have a good time!
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