so today is the day where we show you how everything is done from buying your first miniature and assembling that like a pro priming it basing it and painting it and that is including all of the tools and products that we recommend that we've been using over the past five years and even picking out the right miniature for your paint jobs chapter 1 buying the right miniature the first thing we need to figure out is why am I painting miniatures is it to play a game well then you've probably narrowed down your selections to the game that you're going to play the two biggest games using Miniatures are definitely from Games Workshop Warhammer 40 000 and age of Sigmar but there's also tons of smaller miniature games like conquest by Parabellum games and Moonstone the game but there's also tons of miniature that aren't for games and personally I enjoy painting those maybe even more than the gaming miniatures some of my favorite brands for display Miniatures are terrible kid stuff mind work games and black Sun Miniatures and if you want to get crazy me and the guys running this channel are currently running a Kickstarter releasing our first 75 millimeter line of Miniatures and these display Miniatures are sci-fi elves mystical Orcs And a necromantic human race and if you want to check that out I will put all of those links down in the video description because these are pretty freaking awesome foreign if you're one of those that's buying a miniature that's not for gaming it is very important to not just select a miniature that looks cool because if you pick a poorly sculpted miniature with a lot of details that doesn't give you a lot of room for painting you're pretty much forced to sculpt yourself with the paintbrush and if you're a beginner that's really tough if you check out the brands that I've mentioned earlier as well as the ones that we've designed ourselves we've made sure that the Miniatures have well-sculpted features and when you pick a miniature like that the brush will pretty much follow the shape of the miniature meaning that you will not have to fight against the sculpt to create something pretty and painting a miniature like this will not only be easier but you'll probably have a much better end result than if you pick a miniature that has tons of details that just cover up all of the shapes of the mini and with that you will also become a better painter an example of this is what I like to call the classic balloon muscles where there's pretty much just bulges representing muscles on the miniature as opposed to something say sculpted by Jacqueline palathios where the muscles are sculpt realistic yes still keeping the fantasy Vibes another big issue that I found with a lot of these Miniatures is that they are over the side just take a look at these two examples we have the classic Space Marine over here quite simply designed with great shapes and then we have this one over here with not just metal armor it also have patterns over all of the armor it also have gemstones it has backpacks it has tassels on the backpack and it has emeralds on the tassels it has a cow on the helmet with horns and tassels on the helmet and painting this as opposed to this one will definitely not only take more time but would also probably make you a less good painter if you're just starting out so start off simple and give yourself easy wins the two most common materials we work with as miniature painters is plastic like polystyrene and resin most of the bigger gaming miniature Brands work with polystyrene like Games Workshop and the conquest Miniatures while the smaller Boutique brands that produce are smaller quantities of minis like these ones as well as the Moonstone ones are made in resin over the last couple of years there's also been the addition of 3D printing and that gives us a huge possibility to find unique Miniatures and print them in our home the same day that we find them and to me it's just awesome how many creative Miniatures we have to select from foreign this is a box of Gore chosen of Drome a warband of Miniatures from the game Warhammer underworlds a perfect start if you want to dip your toes into Warhammer without spending a few hundred dollars for an entire Army this one costs about 30 dollars when you bring out your Spruce they come out looking something like this and if you're lucky the Miniatures you purchased included an instruction on how to build them like this one but when you purchase display minis or Miniatures from smaller brands that might not be the case but when it comes to building Games Workshop Miniatures I always recommend following the guide because many times there are parts that you might not be able to add if you don't add them at the right time you'll need a set of Clippers a hobby knife and glue you can start your hobby journey by buying cheap Clippers or maybe even using tools that you have at home from other projects but trust me when I say there are advantages to buying better Clippers with a flat side that go through plastic almost like it's butter just like this one from Red grass games when you cut your miniature from this Brew you want to be able to put the flat side of the Clippers as close as possible to the model if you have an unsharp tool you will either end up with stress marks like this one going into the miniature and if you don't have a flat side you'll end up with leftover bits like in this case and that is where you bring out your sharp hobby knife a new sharper blade is always preferred to scrape off any leftover Parts on the miniature it is incredibly important to remove any of these type of leftover bits on Miniatures especially if this leftover is on an area that will be connected to a different part later because if you leave this one on you will be left with a major Gap once you glue these two parts together and that can make your miniature look really funky sometimes and once you're done cutting your miniature apart you're going to end up with Spruce like this with maybe some bits left over and of course all of the plastic from the edges the extra bits you can save for later if you want to maybe have some conversion ideas for the next figure you're gonna buy or you can reuse the weapons for that figure and the edges of the frame well either you throw these out recycle if you live in a place where they can recycle polystyrene or you save them for something we're gonna do in a later step just hang on we're gonna get to that on any miniature you purchase whether it's from Games Workshop or the hand cast Miniatures like these ones there's always risk for something called mold lines and that is created when the two different molds are pushed together and the plastic or resin is injected into that mold some of that resin or plastic is going to seep through in between the two different molds that are pressed together the by far easiest way to remove this is by scraping it off with the hobby knife but another one of my favorite ideas is by using a nail file sanding sponge not the hard ones but the softer ones that's kind of squishy you can also get these sponge strips that are great for reaching into tighter areas and personally I prefer scraping off any mold lines before I start building because sometimes depending on the miniature design it's going to be difficult to scrape off the mold lines once you've started gluing the miniature together before we add any glue I always recommend to test fit the parts because that way you'll know where you need to add the glue also you'll know if you need to cut off any extra parts before you start adding the glue and if you're using resin models there might be some parts that are warped that's going to need some sanding and again with Games Workshop kits often they are quite over designed so it has happened not just once that I've put glue in the wrong place and when I finally add the part to the miniature I was supposed to add the glue to a completely different area okay so the Miniatures are cut up they are cleaned up they're ready to be glued together when building polystyrene Miniatures my favorite sort of glue is plastic cement also known as plastic glue I've got a few different brands from army painter Tamiya and Citadel my favorite one is definitely this one from Citadel as it's got a really nice metal tip that helps me control where I get the plastic tool if we get it in areas where it's not supposed to be it's going to muddy up the miniature and melt some of that plastic because that is pretty much its purpose it's going to melt the two different parts together in sort of a weld and when it's hardened it is like there's never been a gap between the two areas and unless you cut it apart the parts are not separating the other reason I really like the plastic cement is because the gaps you get when putting two parts together pretty much vanishes when you use the right amount of plastic glue but there is also good reason to pick up the Tamiya plastic cement if you have leftover plastic bits you can cut these apart and add them to the plastic cement this will dissolve all of the plastic and will create something that we call sprugu this is pretty much liquid plastic that you can use as glue or filling for smaller gaps if you on the other hand purchase a resin miniature or have the older metallic ones you're going to have to use super glue or siano acrylates again there are tons of different brands personally I'm not a big fan of the gorilla glue and the Loctite one is quite expensive so usually I go to Dollar stores and pick up some cheap super glue the favorite one in the office is from build Tema which is a hardware store that sells them together with super glue activator outside of that I don't feel like super glue needs any more detailed introduction just add the glue to one of the parts and put them together unfortunately because it's not melting the two parts together like the plastic glue we're often going to get something called gaps and these gaps can be filled with a few different things either the spruego that we mentioned earlier or you can use something called green stuff milliput liquid putty liquid green stuff or just regular wood slash PVA glue if you have that at home I found that there's a place for all of these different techniques but my favorite one to use when I really want to get nice Miniatures is milliput the milliput is a two component modeling epoxy you've got the paste and the activator mix the two together in equal parts into the amount you need and push it in place it's easy to use easy to move around and most of the times I don't even have to sand it to have a smooth transition between the milliput and the miniature itself you can moisten any sculpting tool that you have so that it won't stick to your tool and just shape it in the way that you want and when you're going to blend the milliput against the figure and using a brush don't use an expensive brush maybe you have some old hobby tool from an Ikea paint kit or something like that or dollar store brushes that you can use and remember to clean up the brush after after you've used it against milliput because otherwise it's going to be ruined forever easiest to use is definitely the plastic putty which you just squeeze out of the bottle where the Gap is and then remove any excess if you need to again bring out the sanding sticks and sand between the two different parts okay with that we have both plastic and resting Miniatures looking amazing but they're still missing the most important part the paint way before I even started this YouTube channel I picked up my first red dress games wet palette and I fell in love and now I come full circle because now they are paying me to talk about the product that I already purchased myself and earlier this year they released version 2 of their wet palette and they've listened to the audience not only have they made their smallest wet padded slightly bigger but they've also made the big one a little bit deeper and the foam is about 50 thicker which means that you can fill it with more water and it will last longer until you have to refill it and to me that means that they are serious about continuously making the best wet palette even better to me though the best thing is the new membrane this is the wet palette paper and not only does the paint last longer on it and it's easier to work with because over the past eight months we've tried it and it's clearly superior to the old ones but it's completely unique because the best thing is that you can actually clean the wet palette paper and reuse it the pre-order for this wet palette and a smaller one just went live so if you want to be among the first one to get it that wasn't part of the kickstarter you can just follow the link down below I promise you you will not be disappointed this is a terrific product and now let's get back to teaching you how to paint and now we're going to dive deep into the most common techniques for beginners to learn and the steps you're gonna take after today there's quite a few tools you need to paint your first miniature first an obvious one is a brush there's a few different ways to go at it but if you don't have a strict budget I always recommend to start with three different brushes the first one is a Kolinski Sable paintbrush this is a brush made from natural hair and the reason you buy one it's got an unmatched Precision the tip is the sharpest one you can get for miniature painting and it keeps the tip sharp for a very long time the good thing about the Kolinski as well is get a good Reservoir meaning that it can store paint in the bristles of the brush much better than a synthetic brush and the last one but also probably one of the biggest one is that the flow of the brush the way that it follows the shape on Miniatures it cannot be replicated on any synthetic brush that I've ever tried so once you've tried a really good kulinsky brush You Won't Go Back foreign the second brush I recommend you to get is a cheap synthetic brush usually I buy these from a dollar store or a hardware store 10 pack for maybe seven dollars but previously I've also purchased stuff from Amazon and wish and all of them have worked greatly for the purpose this brush is gonna have because where the kolinsky brush is like a Ferrari you cannot drive it on a Forest Road but when you're on the racetrack it's unmatched in speed and precision the synthetic brush is your tractor it's gonna do all of the dirty work it's going to be perfect for painting areas where you can't reach with the kolinsky brush without breaking the bristles and just generally stuff that's bad for the brush like washes contrast paints and metallic paints but when you want to paint details like getting the Final highlights or maybe painting eyes or tiniest stuff on the miniature the kulinski brush is going to be unmatched and just having one of each of these brush is going to let you paint for a very long time without having to purchase another brush the last brush I like to recommend people to get is a dry brush my painting technique don't include a lot of dry brushing but for beginners I feel like it's a great way to bring out detail quite fast without having to learn a lot about light and light placement I would recommend you to get a cheap makeup brush but you can also use a old broken synthetic brush for this as well but you don't ever want to use your kolinsky brush for dry brushing because dry brushing destroys any brush that is not made for dry brushing if you like dry brushing a lot there are fancier dry brushes like the one from artists Opus series D but for a beginner I feel like this is a cost you can save for later so the second thing you're gonna need is paint and to start with that a primer a primer helps seal the material that you're painting on and it also gives a better adhesion for the paints that you're gonna add with the brush and the ones that I mostly use to this day are spray can primers I just find that these stick the best and it's the fastest thing to use now When selecting primer there's a few different ways to go at it if you're painting on Army wear all of the figures are going to be red or blue maybe the best way to go is to buy a blue spray cam primer that can work as the base color for your army if you're more like me you like working from the shadows and up I prefer starting with a black primer we've tried so many different brands of primer and the finest ones we found are Citadel and Valejo but the Army painter one is quite good as well it doesn't quite have the same pressure but the color and the adhesion is really good there's also something called a circle Prime and this is achieved on top of your black primed miniatures by spraying with a white spray can from above and and this is done for a few different reasons the first one and the main reason that I often do it is to create a volumetric based priming on your miniature meaning that the brightest point of the miniature is going to be raised towards senith which would be the sky where the light mostly come from and it would leave the Shadows darker this is awesome if you're using translucent paints or inks to paint your figure it kind of gives you free highlights and shadows but it also gives you a higher saturation in the highlights because the brighter the undercoat you have the more of the color of your next layers is going to shine through and having a completely white undercoat primary Miniatures white gives you a much more vibrant tone especially if you're using colors that have a quite poor pigmentation usually that's colors like orange red and yellow another reason why I really like use things is because it helps bring out the details my eyes are not quite what they used to be so having white from above really helps me see what all of the different details on the Miniatures really are as opposed to an everything is just a matte black let's get to the regular paints in today's hobby there are so many different paints and so many different types of Brands and all of them have their purpose but today we want to break it down and make it a little more accessible the three most common ones are regular acrylics washes and the new contrast paints speed paints dipping inks depending on which brand you're gonna buy but there is also enamels and oils but we're going to leave those out for today because for a beginner the regular acrylics washes and contrast paints are way enough the regular acrylics don't need a big introduction these are regular paints that you are going to layer upon your miniature most of them cover quite decently and you can mix them like any normal paint to get new colors or new variations of colors and in my opinion really the only must-haves on this channel previously we've done a massive test trying hundreds and hundreds of paints from over 20 different brands and we came to the conclusion that for a beginner the most easy Brands to start with is either Vallejo model color or Citadel but we also really enjoyed the AK interactive third generation paints as a beginner paint and watch this is a type of low viscosity paint that seeps into the cracks and crevices and the most common usage is recess shading meaning that you're adding a darker color into all of the areas that are folded on your Miniatures leaving the raised areas the same brightness as they were before the second biggest usage is to use it as a glaze meaning that you paint something with a really thin down collar to either just slightly color something or to smoothen out a transition between two different areas foreign the last type of paint we're going to talk about is something called contrast paints it is named that because the first brand that came with this paint named it that but other brands like Army painter call them speed paints or green stuff World dipping inks Vallejo also have one coming up but it's not quite released yet this is a low viscosity High pigment translucent paint the purpose of this paint is pretty much to give you a one coat paint that leaves you with a highlight a shadow and a mid-tone and it's often used over a white primer or if you want to use its full potential over a senateful highlighted miniature this will leave the most raised areas at the Highlight tone the mid tone the part between the shadow this area will also be the most saturated as it's a translucent and vibrant paint over a white primer and in the shadows you will still have the same Shadow tone that you had from your priming and this type of paint is awesome if you're painting a lot of Miniatures maybe you're batch painting an army or maybe you have 20 figures to finish for the Dungeons and Dragons game this evening with the contrast paints speed paints you're going to have something that looks quite good with just one coat but if you're getting into painting at a higher level or want to paint for competitions contrast paints are more like a complement to the regular acrylics a great way to add your first coat that you're then gonna have to work up on later and in my opinion combining the two is almost like cheating it gets a great looking Miniatures in a really short amount of time but the big problem it's gonna be quite pricey to start out buying both acrylics and speed paints we're almost ready to paint our first miniature but first we need to talk about the wet palette outside of getting a brush with a really nice tip this is going to be the most powerful tool in Your Arsenal if you paint it directly out of the pot the paint is going to be too thick and you're going to get Blobs of paint that's going to remove some of the detail on your miniature there are three major reasons for using one the first one being that it can keep your paints moist for a long painting session it can stay wet for hours instead of just minutes especially if you're living in an environment where it's a very dry air like Sweden in the winters or maybe Texas in the Summers the second reason is that it's a lot easier to mix paint because the paints are going to stay wet during your entire painting session meaning that you can add all the paints you're gonna use on the palette before you start with this you can also mix the paint between one another meaning that you don't have to open up pots and add paint and mix them and then when you're going to use the same mix the next time it's already dried and the third one and the biggest one it's so much easier to control the consistency of the paint meaning that if you want to paint with the layer consistency you can do that and if you want to create a glaze you can do that directly on the palette with your brush instead of having to mix a glaze of paint every time you're gonna do a glaze it's all just gonna happen seamlessly so what is really a wet palette well it's pretty much just three things it's a sponge filled with water it's also a tray where the sponge is gonna be lying and it's a paper that just lets a little bit of water through all the time just a perfect amount to keep the paint wet you can purchase wet palettes this is my favorite one from Red grass games we've done a big test and this one just came out as the single best one at least in our opinion but they do cost a bit so when you're starting out I definitely recommend you just make one at home my recommendation for a beginner is to find a low plastic box I then add a cellulose sponge cloth and fill that with water for Europeans this is something that pretty much everyone have in in their everyday home the most common one is from the brand vetex for Americans and people from outside of Europe you can find these on Amazon these are just on another level compared to using like a regular sponge or something like that because they can stay moist for so much longer than the regular sponge and keeps more water and the last thing we're gonna add is parchment paper not the waxy one because that one doesn't let enough water through but the regular just parchment paper and this is a perfectly fine wet palette when I started painting I used this for like six to nine months something before I purchased my first wet palette because when you're getting started maybe it's more fun to have more paints than spend 60 bucks on a nice wet palette and if you live in a place where you just can't get hold of these sponges don't worry buy a regular sponge that's thin or the even more DIY way is use regular paper tissue this works but it doesn't hold the water for as long so it's more of like a temporary one that you replace the next day you're getting started okay my guys we're ready to start painting we got all of the tools you know how they work you know how to use them and I'm going to paint three different Miniatures with you today showing the three different most common techniques that used for miniature painting we start off by bringing out the wet palette and adding all of the colors we're gonna use for the session on the palette something that can tremendously help in your painting Journey it's a good daylight balanced painting light as our eyes are so much better at seeing details and colors in daylight so just switching out your regular desk Light lamp bulb for a daylight balanced one is the perfect start we're going to start off with our cheap synthetic brush Wick the brush into water to moisten it we didn't remove any excess water and the most common way of doing that no matter how disgusting we think it is is to remove the water in your mouth this also helps me reshape the brush but if you find that a bit nasty then you can remove any excess paint on either a piece of cloth or a paper tissue and the brush should just be slightly moist like this it follows the shape of my hand when I move it around and it doesn't split and I want my first painted layers to be of layer consistency so to get the right control how do you do that well we're only going to dip the brush about halfway into the paint we then stir the paint gently into the brush on the wet palette with this we remove any excess paint and we get the paint into the belly and the reservoir of the brush and this is the perfect time to check the consistency on the back of your thumb if it's thin like this you've created a glaze that means that it's too thin for our initial layers and you haven't stirred enough paint into the brush if it's like this you have a perfect layer consistency back let's start with the regular and most common way of painting maybe we can call it the Games Workshop style of miniature painting we got our primed miniature and are going to start off by blocking out the colors I like to start with the ones that's covering the biggest area and some paints don't cover enough meaning that you have to paint it two or three layers before you have a full coverage but before we add another layer we need to make sure that the miniature dries fully otherwise we risk to reactivate the paint and remove that paint from the previous layer leaving us with some areas that's going to have patches of the primer shining through this is how the miniature looks after one layer and one coat and about three four minutes of drying and really you don't have to wait 3-4 minutes to be able to continue your painting because while the first layer is drying you can start painting another area on this miniature we're also just going to start with the mid-tones and the reason for that is because we want to add the shadows in a later step and the highlights after that meaning no super dark colors and no super bright ones so with the basic skin tone added in two separate layers we have something looking like this now we just gotta add the base coats to all of the other parts of the miniature with green pants beige gray rocks we're also giving him somewhat of a blonde hair and using that same color for all of the robes and lastly a dark brown for his horns and as you've seen on all of these shots the colors that we've added bar from the horns are all mid-tone no dark colors as the Shadows are going to be added with the washes in The Next Step so time for washes for the skin tones we're using rikeland flesh shade and we're adding the washers somewhat richly just making sure that we don't have pools collecting in any of the raised areas if we do we just move that around using our brush for the pants we're using ethonian camera shade and for the hair ropes and beard we're using agrex Earth shade and always remember this is one of those painting steps where you don't use your kolinsky brush because the paints can seep back into the brush and break the bristles for this you want to use the cheap synthetics so with the washes dried up we have brought the miniature to this place it is now a lot darker but also Messier and this is one of the negatives using washes and why I maybe don't use them as much in my painting but I cannot deny the positives if you just want Miniatures painted quickly you already have something that looks like it's ready for the table top at this stage and we can make it look even better adding a few layers of highlights and that is what we're gonna do now we're going to start off by reusing the same colors that we used to add our base coats and placing the highlights on all of the areas raised towards senif and this is where we finally bring out your fine kolinsky Sable paintbrush in this case Lucas is using the squidmark Mark 1 kolinsky brushes and the size medium we're still going to use a layer thickness adding the colors and he's adding that to any flat surface in any surface that is angled upwards and when you're adding it to muscles make sure that the Highlight is placed placed all the way up to the edge above it as an example check out the pectoral muscle where the Highlight is all the way up to the muscle going towards the edge of his shoulder so that it really feels like the brightest point of each muscle is the one that is placed closest to the light source we're also going to add a final highlight layer and we're doing that using the same color again but then mixing in about 50 percent of light flesh and this time we're adding it to the same area as previously but only going down about 30 meaning that we leave about 30 percent of it completely in Shadow the one that we've had with the washes then 70 of the area with the first highlight and then about 30 of the area covered with the final highlight and this will now be repeated on the rest of the Miniatures area on the pants on the ropes and on the hair and you do this until you reach a point of the highlights where you feel happy if you want to go even brighter maybe going with clear light flesh as your final highlight or maybe even adding white or Ivory to punch it even a bit more that is completely up to you but this is a great base and a nice place to start out and one thing I think is super important to keep in mind is you don't need to use these exact colors every paint brands have similar colors that have just a small marginal difference of the tone and it doesn't make any sense to go out and buy new paints every time you follow a new tutorial just use the ones you have at home to start with and then as you develop as a painter and keep painting more that is the time when you start buying more paints to get more tonal variation another thing to remember is that whenever you're painting with your Clean Skin brush and want to have a fine tip make sure that the brush is always moist and refill it with new paint the second it starts drying on your brush and depending on where you live that might be more often anything but this is the first key to make your brush control a lot better to highlight the Rocks we're gonna use dry brushing this is pretty much the opposite of using a wash we start off by moistening our dry brush and when using a dry brush you need to make sure it's a lot less moist than with the normal paintbrush think of it maybe like a two percent moistness you shouldn't have any water leave the brush when you're using it on a piece of paper or on your hand but it shouldn't be completely dry you then stir some of the paint into your brush and then Wick most of that paint off on either a piece of cardboard paper or pretty much anything that makes the brush dry hence the name dry brush now dry brushing is perfect for areas like rocks so we're just gonna Wick the brush on top of those areas and it is only going to leave paint on the most raised areas and this technique is just perfect for doing bases maybe wood and rocks anything that's got a lot of texture and is on a slightly larger area so with that I think it's time for the first out of three grand reveals foreign technique out of three total that I'm gonna show today and there are some positives and negatives with this one the first and positive ones are that these are quite simple techniques just learning to block in the colors and using a wash the highlights on the other hand obviously requires a little bit more of a practice and control but it can get you to a nice level the negatives though I'm not a huge fan of the washes because no matter how good you are at using washes you're giving up a little bit of your control for Speed and another big problem is if there's an area that you want to repaint during your highlighting steps it's going to be impossible because you're firstly going to have to repaint it with the base coat and then add the wash again because if you add wash on top of washer you're gonna have some areas that are even darker and some areas that are bright so it's a little limiting in my opinion but now it is time for technique number two foreign that I think is best for all beginners because it's probably the technique that is easiest to get something good looking without any previous knowledge at quite a fast pace and this is the way of contrast for this we start out with the cruel boys Warhammer miniature Centerfield primed with the black undercoat and then with white from above our mission now is pretty much to just block off the colors of the miniature with the contrast paints that fits best with what we're trying to achieve so for this Orcs skin tone we're using gut Ripper flesh to get a nice green soft tone all over we're using aldari Emerald for its shield and as you can see we're filling it in richly with paint using a larger synthetic brush so that we don't ruin any of our nice brushes we're using gor granta fur a dark saturated red Brown to paint all of the brighter leather Parts all wood Parts as well as the belt is painted with Wildwood this is the darkest contrast paint you're gonna use I just love this one so much to block off different colors and get separation between different areas and when adding these darker colors on top of the brighter one like the gut Ripper flesh make sure that you're really careful with your application because if you get this dark brown on top of the green skin you can't really go back and add that green again because in a similar way like with the washes the contrast paints mostly are translucent meaning that if you add the gut trip of Flesh on top of this dark brown you're gonna have the dark brown shining through but if you had a little bit of bright green leaking to the area that you were going to paint with a dark brown it doesn't matter as much because the Wildwood as an example will pretty much fully cover that area so I always recommend starting with the bright colors first to give the miniature a little bit of a brighter pop we're adding blood angels red on the tassel on top of his helmet the only part that's left to base coat now is the metals and we're using my favorite metal color gunmetal gray from Vallejo metal color and with that we have a miniature looking really good seriously only with these base coats I think the miniature looks tabletop ready and as opposed to using regular acrylics and washes we did this with just one coat in my opinion it looks better than the three first coats with the first technique but now you're here to learn how to take this to the next level just like with our first miniature we're going to bring out the acrylics to add in highlights I'm painting leather and fabric I really enjoy having some painted texture in there we're going to start off with an orange brown Death kill Brown and stipple in some highlight stippling pretty much means you're going to add tiny dots on top of the miniature foreign we're also going to add a second set of highlights using the same death claw brown but mixing that 50 50 with light flesh and focusing this highlight mainly on the edges of the areas and on the most top parts now let's move on to the skin we're mixing mood green with light flash about 60 40. starting out using the same highlight technique as we did on our first miniature every angle upwards towards the sky or a flat surface once the first highlight layer is added we bring out our second highlight mixing it about 30 70 this time so about twice as much light flesh as we did with the first layer adding this to the same areas but a slightly smaller surface compared to the first layer and again if you want to draw more Focus to the most important areas around the face area or the weapons we make sure to add more of the Highlight around the face then we do for example on the bottom of his torso now we're just gonna add the Final highlights to the rest of the parts as well I'm bringing in a brighter turquoise on the shield and a helmet Japanese uniform on the straps then we're gonna Block in the teeth with wild wood to get some separation in the face washing the spare with null and oil to just bring out some shadowy contrast on the steel and finally it's time for the final details on this mini that is just going to bring everything together and make it worth for people to pick up the mini and see what you've actually done with it we're going to highlight the steel with the metal color silver using the edge of our brush and just adding it to the edge of the sphere and painting the eyes with a super nicely tipped kolinsky brush just using some Ivory and adding a DOT of black on one of the sides and with that guys it is time for our second Grand reveal this is definitely my favorite beginner techniques because of the fact that your miniature is going to look pretty much amazing just using the contrast paints if you then feel brave enough to add in highlights with acrylics you're going to have something high-end after a very short amount of time once you've actually learned to control your brush work but we have one more painting technique to show you guys and this is the one that I use the most together maybe with some contrast paints depending on which paint job I'm doing we started this paint job off just with a black Space Marine and then cenaphil primed it using a blue spray can primer we're now going to add in highlight layers mixing colors in different steps and this is the technique to use if you want to have full control of where you place the highlights and to not get any blotchy areas that you might get with contrast paints or washes and to get the Highlights and shadows exactly where we want them and getting smooth transitions we're going to mix every step of each highlight together with the previous color we start off with a blue mixing that with a little bit of turquoise we're then going to add the second highlight using a clean turquoise and then adding more light flesh as we go and I'm not going to get into the deep details on where to place the highlights and exactly how to use the brush to control it to get the best Blends you should consider this more as a demonstration of what you can do once you've mastered the control of your brush because as we work our way up from the darkest color to our brightest highlight we can control how much the light we want on each of the areas and we're also going to get a very painterly almost hyper realistic Style foreign the biggest problem with this technique working our way from the darkest color to the brightest in layer upon layer it is that it takes a lot more time so maybe this is not something that you do if you're gonna paint an army of hundred Space Marines but more if you're just gonna paint one miniature for display or for a competition or maybe it's that one hero that you're using in your role-playing campaign that you want with the perfect paint Scheme this is also a technique that requires a lot of control both in your brush but also in knowledge of where to place the highlights but guys I think it's time to finally show you how all of these three Miniatures look together and how the different end results look between the different techniques time for the third Grand River foreign and the last thing that I'm going to show you guys today is how to make simple bases to go with these Miniatures there are tons of different ways of making miniature bases I have Miniatures where I've spent probably more time making the bases than I have painting the Miniatures but for this specific paint job when you're painting your first meaning you want to keep it simple and the two most easy ways to make miniature bases is one using sand and glue you can either use pivot glue or super glue remember to use fine sand because if you use two big pieces of rock it's not going to look scaled proper meaning that they're gonna look like huge Boulders instead of fine sand I just glue the sand in place let it dry overnight paint it with a dark color as a base tone and then dry brush with a slightly brighter neutral color so if you want brown sand maybe start with a dark brown and then highlight it with a beige if you want it to look like more gray rocks start with black and dry brush with the gray to top this off I like buying a set of miniature grass Tufts and these just add so much life to the bases just gluing one or two of these or maybe three in place of the base is going to make a huge difference or if you want to go nuts just fill the entire base with grass Tufts and you got a nice Meadow but there are easier ways of making bases there is something called basing textures or Texture paints many different brands make these but my favorite is from Vallejo these come in many different sizes and colors you just pick the one that you like the most it contains of pretty much just an acrylic medium a color and sand so once you put this in place using a spatula don't use your expensive brushes because they're gonna get messed up once these have dried you can pretty much just dry brush them with a brighter color and you're done and you save yourself the gluing and finding sandstep it's just the base texture and a dry brush so guys I hope you enjoyed this video that you learned something if you did don't forget to subscribe also recommendation once you feel ready for it check out this week's sponsor redgrass games their wet palette is beyond amazing as I said I even purchased them myself before I started with this YouTube channel and have never thought about using a different brand also if you want to help out you can check out our Patron maybe pledge a dollar or two like all of these amazing people no pressure at all but if you can help we deeply appreciate it and with that said have a great day everyone bye bye