Painting Standards.

[Sean Clark]

When I first got into wargaming properly around 1989/1990, I joined the Stoke Wargames group. The club has several rooms above a row of shops  that we rent so can leave games set up from week to week. The room I joined played ACW exclusively using Dixon miniatures on beautifully sculpted terrain on a 10'x6' table. As a poor student I couldn't afford Dixons and so turned to 15mm, firstly Essex and later Peter Pig. I remember those first ACW sculpts Martin did with great fondness and I spent vast sums of my grant on them.

My painting developed really quickly and I began to emulate the 'Dallimore' 3 level highlight method. I got quite good but I was slow. I built up both sides (as I still do today) for the battle of Stones River out of the Fire and Fury scenario book but that took me the best part of a year.

As I've grown older I have begun to take more and more shortcuts. From a black undercoat and one layer of colour to priming in the main colour, adding a few details and then painting on Army Painter dip. I rarely now go back and correct mistakes. If oyu pick my figures up and scrutinise them from a few inches away, they will look somewhat rough. At arms length though they look just fine.

I was thinking about this today as I painted two units of retinue foot for Bloody Barons. I bought them a while ago, based them, undercoated them white and then washed with a brown ink. They were then put away and forgotten about. Today I got them out, splashed some colour on and painted the dip on. Each unit probably took 40 minutes to do 24 figures.

Essentially, I just want figures on the table that look reasonable with as little effort as possible. As a well known sports psychologist says, "You have to give up control to gain control". That's what I've done. I no longer worry about buttons. All the belts, hair and shoes are painted the same brown. Although at last count I have over 300 pots of paint, I bet I only use a dozen or so with any regularity.

My motto now is keep it simple and lets play!

[Leman (Andy)]

I do like to spend some time on my figures, although I'm not as pernickety as I used to be. I can rattle off 2mm and 3mm figures at a rate of knots now for the really big battles. I'm going to try some of the shortcuts suggested for the Great War armies.

[Duncan]

I seem to spend ages on everything nowadays trying to do my best but to no avail. I do not appear to be much better, if any than I was years ago when I used to rush things. It seems for me the extram time and effort does not pay off. Still I like to try.

[Colonel Kilgore]

Isn't this simply about doing what we individually feel happy with?

I have no painting talent but like to get things as neat as I can. Which takes me yonks.

But, since I'm unhappy if I don't feel I've done my best, this approach works for me.

I like the much-quoted bit in Phil Barker's "Ancient Wargaming" Airfix Guide querying why your figures should fight well for you if you don't love them enough to give them a decent lick of paint.

Not that this can be counted on to guarantee victory, but every little helps!

[Sean Clark]

The best painting tip I ever saw was in Wargames Illustrated years ago in a Duncan Macfarlane editiorial.

Paint 1000 figures. By the time you reach the 1,001st, it shouldn't look too bad.