Speed Painting with Quality 101 Pt. 1 (Thousand Sons example)

Alright, we all have those models in our army (or for some of us armies) that we have and barely use and we like to pretend we will take the time to paint some day. Well, I got sick of seeing my old Thousand Sons sitting around and I decided I would paint them, but that I wouldn't take a ton of time doing so (after all, I have a greater Plague Daemon and a Nurgle Prince to paint this weekend). Just because I am using Thousand Sons in my example, doesn't mean it couldn't be done with Ultrasmurfs or any number of armies out there, so maybe this could help you. Hopefully the hobby purists won't hang me for this!

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So I decided to try my hand at speed painting and in the process put a little tutorial together for those of you who don't have the time to sit and painstakingly paint every last model in your army but you want the to look good.

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The models were already primed black, but I of course don't want to sit around painting them blue so I found a color that was just a shade lighter than I wanted them to be when they were finished. In this case it was KRYLON PERIWINKLE BLUE SATIN FINISH (Ultramarine Blue is a decent equivilent.)

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Spay the models from about a foot and a half away as this stuff can be a little thick and pick a day where it is not too humid or rainy as it will cause the finish to look like a dried Mud flat. Don't freak out about the flash, it will be corrected before completion.

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With your Thousand Sons decked out in Periwinkle, now it is time to give them a very generous wash of Asurman Blue wash from GW. Use a good sized brush to slop it on and then brush the liquid wash downward across the model, forcing the dark blue to pool in creases and in areas where natural shadow should fall. Then let it dry (I did the spray and wash one night and then painted the next day).

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Next, I wanted to paint the trim its metallic gold color the 1k Sons are famous for. Now I could have easily done this with a brush, but with speed being the theme, I decided to use a metallic gold marker I found at Wal-Mart (they come in a pack with silver, blue, green, and magenta). I did all the trim, but the stripes in the head dress were done using paint, but that is in the next step. I was suprised by how well the gold looked coming from the marker and it is really the point where I figured that these models could look really good even for a very quick job.

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My next step was to bust out the Folk Art paints available in the entire color wheel and found at Wal-Marts and Hobby Lobby stores across America for pennies! I used Kings Gold and a very pointy brush to do the stripes on the Egyptian Headdress (took only two coats). The tabards were brushed over with Titanium White (very good at covering). I could have gotten away with one coat, but the second didn't cost me much time and it really pops.

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The last step of this tutorial is to wash the tabards with Gryphonne Sepia, once again brushing it to get into the folds and creases. At this stage, I have put a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of actual labor time into this 9 man squad (which includes the aspiring sorceror) and I am actually impressed with the quality at this point. I am going to take an hour and twenty minutes Friday to paint the details (bolters, powerswords ect.) and then base the models. At this point, I will have completed a 9 man squad in 4 hours of actual painting. We will leave the final judgements to the second half of this tutorial, but I must stress that this could be done with almost any army, but especially ones that have colors in the same wheel as the GW washes ... So Ultra Marines could literally be done with these same colors, Salamander and orks could be done with greens, Blood angels with reds ect, ect.. While this may not be for everyone, I hope it proves useful to those hobbyists who have units they do not have the time or interest to perform epic level paint jobs on. As always, comments are more than welcome.