[Epic] Painting the little guys

From: Erik K. Rutins <snowdo1_at_...>
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 08:50:36 -0400

> On another Subject...To all you really good painters out there. How
do you
> paint your infantry? I hear about people doing skulls on shoulder
pads ect?
> How on earth do you do that? The best I can manage is I usually paint
the
> guns and then do a swipe with a big brush to get the hats. Not to
> impressive, but pretty quick, and not bad looking.

Well, I think I was accused of the skulls on the shoulderpads and it's
true. It just requires patience and a steady hand (and a really small
brush!). My marines are in black armour, so I wanted to do something
besides drybrush to make them stand out. I started by painting the
rims of the shoulderpads in the company color. This looked nice, but
the shoulderpads still looked empty. Just for the heck of it, I took
out my smallest brush (I mean, it's VERY small) and tried to paint a
tactical symbol (arrow pointing up) on one side. This turned out
remarkably easy - just a straight swipe and two diagonal swipes pretty
much did it. I then got more ambitious and decided to paint the
chapter's symbol, a skull, on the other shoulder pad. The way I paint
the little skulls is a bit more complex. I paint on the solid shape of
the skull, but leave no room for eye sockets or nose cavity. Instead,
I then take black paint and dot in the nose and paint in diagonally the
eyes. I paint the eyes in a stroke, so I usually paint over what would
be the border of bone around the outside edge. I take a little dab of
white to re-border the eye sockets and the result is a really good
looking skull (for Epic scale). I also paint the edges of the guns
boltgun metal and paint in the eyes red (if I overpaint, I just
re-border in black).

Being a little rough is OK, because you can always touch up with the
base color afterwards. I've found the key is experimentation and
practice. I learned how to paint miniatures by painting fantasy
battles Elves (lots of little decorative stuff on 'em) and Dwarves
(much easier). Between the two of them, I learned how to paint quickly
and how to do detail. I guess I was as surprised as anyone when it
translated really well to Epic Space Marines.

Regards,

- Erik

"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble
up, if you will ever dig."
- Marcus Aurelius
Received on Mon Aug 11 1997 - 12:50:36 UTC