Army Painting on the cheap and easy.

So I am sure you all know Army Painter. If you don't, go there and check it out there are lots of places around where you can get load of information on their products. I have traditionally been very impressed with their product and the results that you can get using it. Just yesterday I saw a Blood Bowl halflings team and some beastmen painted up with the Army Painter soft dip and they looked wonderful. I have decided to try and replicate the process on the cheap and what better time than when I am trying to start a whole new system on the cheap - fantasy.

Army Painter has some really amazing primers available. Basically you spray it on to get the base colour of your miniature. They are very fine mist and vibrant colours and at a cost similar to GW primer, I would certainly recommend trying them. I however don't have the $15 that I am willing to spend on them, I am going to try and get this whole army painted for around $15 total, so we will have to cut a corner here.

Recently a friend has recommended that I try using flat black Krylon spray after the ridiculous price of GW primer as well as some unsuccessful runs with Board to Pieces and Armoury primers. Krylon isn't the most amazing thing I have ever tried, but if you know what you are doing it works just fine, it only requires a little more work. The biggest advantage that Krylon has is that you can get a can of it for under $3 from Walmart.

Well I wanted to merge the two ideas together as Krylon has roughly 100 different colours. Unfortunitly not all of these are matt, most of them have a glossy finish to them, but as I was planning on dipping the mini's anyway, I didn't really care too much. I used Krylon Satin Brown Boots from the Indoor/Outdoor range.

I picked this up at Walmart for $2.97. You may be tempted to go for the plastics range or to get a matte finish. Don't bother, we are trying to go as cheap as possible here. Honestly, I don't think it will matter that much in the long run. I think the plastics brand is really meant to adhere to the hardened outdoor child type plastics. This one works fine on the models, although obviously it gives them a bizarre sheen that may be unsettling.

I then blocked in a few key areas with some of the foundation paints, mechrite red, dhened stone, and some chainmail really quickly and was ready to dip.

I chose Minwax Wood Finish Dark Walnut in an 8 OZ container from Home Depot. It was $4.45. It was one of their darker colours as I wanted my Skaven to tend towards the darker side of things. I was hoping that this would simulate a really dark hue for the dip and accent the lighter brown spray colour. The stain was very well mixed, I put on gloves and actually dipped the models in, shaking them as hard and as vigorously as I could off to the side.

Well the models came out way too dark - although the balsa wood on the side of my movement trays looks amazing! One of the main problems was the thickness of the dip. It wasn't the consistency of a wash, it was closer to the consistency of maple syrup and once it got stuck to a surface, it was stuck there. Manually shaking it removed and settled only a very small amount of the varnish. It took a full day to dry and was still sticky beyond that.

It works fine enough, but certainly needs some work; unlike Army Painter. For these models, I will likely reapply the foundation paints as highlights and hit a few spots here and there for the front row. Luckily only about 5-10 of these guys need to be painted up to a table top level, while the rest just hide as masses behind them as Skaven tend to do. Whatever I do, the models will need to be brightened and lightened up as the current models are rather dark. Some of this will happen when I add some lighter colours to the bases.

Next up I will repeat the same colours and either dip in the un-stirred can, or dilute the Minwax significantly or try another colour on the other 20 rats from the Blood Island set. I also have recently had a friend recommend that I glue large nails on the bases of the mini's with hot glue and then stick the nails into a drill to violently remove the Minwax.

If you have an option that you prefer, let me know in the comments. I may end up giving several of them a try, including army painter. It will be funny if this process ends up costing more than just buying the spray and dip from Army Painter.

Total cost so far: $7.42