Welcome to the fourth entry of Paint Like a Pro, a series in which our talented painting team consisting of Thomas, Steffen, Tyler, and Adam shares their top tips on various subjects related to miniature painting with you!
We’ve looked at a list of beginner must-haves and airbrush tips with Steffen and learned some valuable tips about brushes from Thomas. This time, we’re taking a look at the ins and outs of one of our most beloved ranges – Speedpaint! This range of vibrant, time-saving paints quickly became a fan favourite, and for good reason, too. While they’re pretty straightforward to use, there are also plenty of tips, tricks, advice, and more advanced techniques you can master with Speedpaint.
Social Media Specialist and Studio Painter Tyler Mengel is on hand today to go over his top 10 tips for using Speedpaint with you miniatures.
Getting Started with Speedpaint
Tip 1: Understanding Speedpaint
This may seem like a basic one, but it’s an important topic to cover since Speedpaint definitely behaves in a unique way compared to paint most people are familiar with. When you typically think of paint, you’re likely thinking of acrylic (such as Warpaints Fanatic and Air), oil, or even latex paints. These are designed to cover whatever object you’re painting in an opaque layer of the colour. When painting miniatures, to add depth and volume, this would be followed by further layers for highlights, as well as something such as our Washes to add shading.
Speedpaint forgoes this traditional method entirely! Instead, Speedpaint is designed to give you a 3-in-1 solution to painting miniatures – with a mid-tone, shadow, and highlight layer all in one coat. To achieve this, you’ll need to apply the Speedpaint over a fairly light undercoat, such as Matt White, where it will then flow into the recesses and gather, providing a darker shadow whilst also staining the flatter surfaces and pulling away from the raised surfaces and edges, giving you a highlight. For example, if you use the Speedpaint colour Blood Red overtop a Matt White undercoat, the flatter areas will be stained a vibrant red, with the shadows an even darker red, and the raised edges will have a slightly lighter tint to them, as the Matt White shows through more. Due to their nature, Speedpaints are much thinner than your average acrylic, behaving more like water than the more viscous acrylics. This means, when in the bottle, they will appear much darker than they will once applied to your model, which leads to the next point...
Tip 2: Why doesn’t my Speedpaint bottle look like the colour it’s named as?
Until you’ve used Speedpaint on a model for the first time, they may seem a little confusing. You’re telling me this bottle of almost black liquid is actually red? Since the paint is meant to be applied over a light surface and then flow into the crevices to collect, the colour will not accurately reflect its true colour within the bottle or even on a piece of paper. They are designed to work on a three-dimensional surface, where the various textures allow it to maximise its potential.
This can seem particularly confusing with some colours, such as Speedpaint Zealot Yellow, which will look quite orange within the bottle. This yellow paint does have a heavy orange tint to it, but that’s what collects in the shadows of your miniature. The colour it tints the flatter surfaces is, in fact, a deep yellow with just a hint of orange to it. Another common culprit for this misconception is our white colours of Holy White and Blinding Light. Since Speedpaints are not opaque acrylics, it’s impossible for them to paint on as pure white. That would defeat the purpose of the 3-in-1 solution. Instead, these white Speedpaints are designed to be painted on top of a pure white undercoat, where they will collect as a light grey in the recesses, tint the flat areas slightly off-white, and leave the raised edges as a pure white.
When in doubt, it’s always best to test a Speedpaint colour on a spare model sprayed with Matt White to see its true colour once applied.
Tip 3: Loading up your Brush
Just like with how Speedpaint behaves differently from a standard acrylic, it also needs to be applied to the model in a different manner. Common miniature painting advice teaches you to apply thin coats of paint to the model. This works great for acrylics, where you want to build the colour up over time, but can lead to unfavorable results with Speedpaint. When applied too thinly, Speedpaint can leave a streaky, filmy mess on your model. Instead, you want to make sure you have enough Speedpaint loaded up on your brush that when you touch it to the model, it flows smoothly and evenly across the surface. This is what allows it to pool in the crevices and stain the flatter areas a consistently smooth colour.
At the same time, you don’t want too much on your brush, or it could flow out of control, tinting areas of your model you didn’t intend to paint. Your best bet is to load up a bit more than you would with a standard acrylic and try it out. This balancing act is something that will become second nature to you as you work with the paint more, and pretty soon, you’ll be able to judge the perfect amount each time. If you accidentally put too much Speedpaint on, and it gathers in an unsightly pool somewhere on the model, just use a clean, dry brush to quickly soak up the excess.
It’s also best practice to work in chunks, as Speedpaint can dry a little quicker than you think. For instance, cover all of one leg before moving onto the second leg, then the torso, and so on. This ensures you cover the entirety of an area before it starts drying.
Tip 4: Medium is Just Right
While you can thin your Speedpaints down with water, just like with any other miniature paint, you’ll get the best results by using Speedpaint Medium instead. This clear, liquid magic is essentially Speedpaint, but without the pigment, meaning you can thin your Speedpaints down as much as you want without losing any of the unique properties that make Speedpaint what it is.
This is great for something as simple as getting a lighter version of a particular Speedpaint colour to turning your Speedpaints into something more akin to a wash. If you’re running into an issue of blotchiness on your model with Speedpaint, you can combat that problem by applying several thinned down coats of Speedpaint instead of one thick coat, to slowly build up the colour and intensity.
Tip 5: The Perfect Painting Palette
Wet palettes are great for painting, except for when it comes to Speedpaint. There are several issues with using Speedpaint on a Wet Palette. The most important factor is that the extra moisture can negatively affect the properties of your Speedpaint, as touched upon in the last point. Even though you’re not directly mixing water into the paint, it will still seep in via the palette and slowly start diluting the unique properties of the paint.
A secondary issue is staining on the Hydro Foam or sponge of your wet palette. Most of the Speedpaints contain so much concentrated pigment that it will seep right through the paper and into the sponge. While this won’t affect the performance of your wet palette, everyone wants to avoid unseemly stains when possible. Instead, we recommend using something like the hard plastic Paint Well insert in the Wargamers Edition Wet Palette. Once the Speedpaint dries, you can easily remove it from the well using only your finger.
Tip 6: Pre-Shading For The Win
So far, we’ve talked about applying Speedpaint over a solid, light undercoat, such as Matt White, Ash Grey, or Brainmatter Beige, but due to the translucent nature of Speedpaint, there’s another great option as well – pre-shading! Since you can see some of the undercoat showing through the Speedpaint once dry, if you apply a little bit of shading beforehand, this will greatly enhance your finished result. The most common and easiest method of pre-shading is called Zenithal Priming. This involves priming or spraying the model with a darker colour, followed by a lighter colour at a steep angle so that the darker colour is still showing in the recesses and on the lower areas. This way, the Speedpaint will further enhance those shadows and essentially just tint the work you’ve already down with the colour you’ve chosen.
Another popular technique is something commonly referred to, and famously coined by Rob the Honest Wargamer, as the Slapchop method. This is very similar to a Zenithal spray, but instead, you start with a dark basecoat and then apply an almost even drybrush across the whole model with a lighter colour. The most common method is to use a black basecoat followed by a white drybrush. Again, this allows your Speedpaint to further enhance these existing shadows, giving your model even more contrast than if the Speedpaint was applied over a solid basecoat.
You’re not just restricted to black and white here, though. In fact, depending upon your colour scheme, it may make sense to use a combination such as a brown and a tan. Which leads to the next tip...
Tip 7: Adding a Little Colour to Your Undercoat
While it’s most common to use colours such as Matt White, Ash Grey, or Brainmatter Beige as the undercoat for Speedpaint due to their light nature, you’re not restricted to them. Sometimes, it’s even better to use a different colour, such as Skeleton Bone for a colour scheme that will feature a lot of warm reds, browns, or earthy greens, as was used on these Cadian Guardsmen. If you’re using a particularly dark Speedpaint colour and your model doesn’t have a ton of texture for the paint to flow around, you may even want to use a darker colour like Uniform Grey. This will negate some of the “highlight” effect you normally get with Speedpaint, but it will give you a smoother mid-tone colour. I’ve used this to great effect on things such as power armour for Ultramarines and Salamanders, where a smooth mid-tone is essential to the overall Space Marine aesthetic.
Tip 8: Amazing Glazing
Another effective use of Speedpaint forgoes its unique 3-in-1 properties entirely. Instead, it leans upon the super saturated and vibrant nature of the colours as a glaze. Glazing is when you apply a thin coat of a colour to either tint or boost the vibrancy of an existing colour. Thomas provided a great example recently when he used the new Bloodmoon Red Speedpaint from the John Blanche Masterclass Paint Sets to tint all the colours on the Grimdark Marine’s armour a more saturated red.
As opposed to trying to get the paint to flow into the crevices to add shading, you’ll want to apply a more even, all-over coat of the Speedpaint. This is achieved with a little less paint on your brush but also by wicking away that pools too much before it dries. This is a great way to boost the saturation on your model and to play around with subtly, or not so subtly altering the overall colour.
Tip 9: Using Speedpaint Through an Airbrush
Speaking of applying glazes with Speedpaint, airbrushes are great for this. Speedpaint through an airbrush, madness, I hear you say! Not so. You definitely won’t get the 3-in-1 properties of the paint in this manner, but it’s a great way to apply a Speedpaint colour to a large surface area or to apply a glaze. You can also thin it as much as you want to make the effect even more subtle and to give you more control when building up the layers. This can be done with either Speedpaint Medium or Airbrush Medium. It’s also a good idea to add a little bit of Retarder to slow down the drying time a bit.
Tip 10: Cross-pollination with Warpaints Fanatic
Another great way to expand your painting palette and options is to mix Warpaints Fanatic colours directly into your Speedpaints. This can be done for several situations. Are you looking for the perfect colour to highlight that area you applied Speedpaint too? Why not mix in a lighter Fanatic colour that’s close? That way, the Speedpaint will slightly tint the Fanatic paint closer to the desired colour. Are you looking to do some blending and gradients on your models? Well, you can mix the Fanatic paints into your Speedpaint while it’s still wet on the model for quick and easy wet blending. Just applied some Speedpaint to an area, and it turned out a little blotchy? Find a close colour in the Fanatic range, mix it with your Speedpaint, and use it to apply thin glazes to even out the colour on the model.
By mixing any of our 216 Warpaints Fanatic colours with our 90 Speedpaint colours, you dramatically expand your painting options beyond the vast choices already available to you.
Speed Painting Your Way to Victory
As you can see, the world of Speedpaint has even more avenues of creativity open to you as you expand beyond the straightforward uses.
Stay tuned for more tips and tricks in our next edition of "Paint Like a Pro"!
