One of my favorite hobbies (other than staring at a blank monitor for hours on end, but I guess that's more of a pastime than a hobby) is painting miniatures. It's a pretty relaxing hobby except for when I get lazy and don't keep my brushes in good shape. Then I either end up spending nearly a whole day trying to get them back in good condition or whining to my husband to buy me more.
A while back a friend of mine bought me a Tyranid Tyrant Guard (thanks Ed!) and I really love the model and thought it would be cool to post a progression of the work I do on it.
The first thing you have to do to any miniature is prepare it to be painted. Most miniatures have little excess peices of metal on them that are left over from the molding process. These all need to be trimmed, scraped or filed off. Then the mini needs to be cleaned. I use plain old soap and water and scrub it with an old toothbursh.
Most of the mini's that I have painted have required some assembly, and this Tyranid was no exception. Here are the pieces of the mini after it was prepared and cleaned.
Assembling this one was a bit of a bear. Since the parts are big and heavy I decided it would be best to pin them together. Pinning parts consists of drilling a small hole into each piece and connecting them with a small metal rod to give it extra stability. I've done this with many models in the past, but for some reason this one gave me difficulty. After assembling the model I cleaned it again.
Next I primed the model. Some people skip the priming process and base coat instead (painting the entire model in the one color that will dominate it) - some people prime and basecoat - some people just start painting straight away on the bare model. In most cases base coating is probably adequate, but primer does make everything stick better. I would never recommend painting on bare metal.
Because of the technique I currently use, priming in white is key...
(more tomorrow! promise!)
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