~Ryan McSwain
United States
Amarillo
Texas
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Since I had both the base game and expansion to Shadows over Camelot, I decided to use the minis as my first painting experience.
I had two goals for the project: (1) that it would be cheap, and (2) that it would be fun.
I ended up doing everything for fairly cheap. I went with garden variety acrylic paints from Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby. My wife already had a large box of different paints, so I just made a list of the few extra that I needed. I also bought a new pack of brushes, a bottle of black ink, matte sealer, and a can of white spray primer.
I read as much as I could about how to paint online, and I was surprised how much of it seemed to contradict itself. I ended up using tidbits of instruction from a multitude of sources, and ended up with my own little system.
First, I did my best to trim off excess plastic from the minis. This is probably where I did the poorest job, as it was just so hard to see what was detail and what was superfluous until after the figure was painted. I had some tiny files, which were useless. A small hobby knife was much better for trimming. I then washed the minis in dish soap and let them dry thoroughly.
I then taped the minis into a cardboard box lid and sprayed them with the white primer. I did very thin coats to avoid losing detail. The catapults had to be flipped and primed again, as they were the only figures not on bases.
After they were dry, I lathered on the base coat. The most used color I had was gunmetal, which was used for armor on nearly every mini. I tried to paint every major area with its primary color, including hair and other larger details.
When the paint was dry, I did an ink wash. Since I cut corners and just bought a bottle of India ink, I had to experiment. My first coat had too much water, so it looked great until it dried, and then it didn't show at all. So I used closer to 50% ink and 50% water. I slathered it on pretty thick, and used my brush as a tiny sponge to suck up watery ink where it pooled too much.
After the ink wash, I did some dry brushing. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but I had trouble with this method. I was able to make it work with a little more paint than I was comfortable with, but brushing over the painted area usually dulled it to where it looked right, especially on the armor and capes of the knights.
After the dry brush, I did some detail painting, like the gold piping on Arthur's armor, and the waves of the water on the Excalibur piece. Occasionally I experimented with blending different colors on the many capes and on the Excalibur piece.
For the groups of Saxon and Pict warriors, I tried to add some diversity with their hair color and the Pict amulets. The Picts' kilts were challenging, as it was difficult to judge what colors would look good until they were on the actual mini, but I'm happy with how they turned out.
I did the catapults last, as I wasn't really looking forward to painting a dozen of them. Fortunately, when I googled for catapults, one of the first images gave me a very clear view of how I wanted to paint. It was nice to see that the counterbalance on the catapult was also a large piece of stone.
Would I recommend Shadows over Camelot as a first painting project? Absolutely not. There are just too many minis. However, the sculpts are excellent and work very well for painting. If you have the time on your hands, I say go for it.
As for all the mini bases, I decided not to cover them up with model grass or the like. I wanted the minis' coloring to still be clearly visible, so I just painted the bases to match the players.
I really struggled with some parts of the painting process. It was difficult to paint eyes onto the minis, and I ended up not doing Braveheart-style war paint on the Picts because I wasn't sure I could do it as well as I'd like. I also should have done another ink wash after painting the Holy Grail more gold.
But in the end I was extremely pleased with how everything turned out for my first mini painting project. I learned it wasn't that scary to paint minis, and that an ink wash magically makes my minis look better.
A special thanks to everyone who posted their painted minis in the gallery--I looked at every one, and used them for guides. I would have had a much, much harder time without them.
This post was largely inspired by: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/574246/beginning-talisman-mi...
Pictures were taken with my iPhone. Sorry they aren't clearer--I learned how to clean them up right after I uploaded them.
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Jeff Lingwall
United States
New Haven
Connecticut
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They look great!
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Wow, they do look great. I have been tossing around this idea for a while now too, but I don't know where to even begin.
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~Ryan McSwain
United States
Amarillo
Texas
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xWilcoXx wrote: Wow, they do look great. I have been tossing around this idea for a while now too, but I don't know where to even begin.
Just give it a go. What's the worst that could happen?
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Alan Eshelman
United States
Windsor Heights
Iowa
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Wonderful!
I started on painting my SoC minis last night but already ran into a problem.
I'm using Enamel paint; it works great for plastic model tanks, planes, boats, so why not minis?
I worked on the catapults first, brown base then a black wash to fill the cracks. The results...
1) The enamel paint is still tacky after 12 hours of drying. This is not the way it behaves on other types of plastic, is this softer rubbery plastic that different?
2) I thinned some black paint for the wash. Well the thinner used to thin the enamel also took off some of the brown base.
So a couple of questions...
You said you used acrylic paint, but I have read those don't wear well with handling?
You mentioned washing with India ink, sounds like a good route to take so I don't dissolve my base with thinner-based wash... but why do you consider that "cheap"?
Thanks for any tips.
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Posted Wed Nov 3, 2010 8:07 am
