DO NOT Paint A Stranger's Warhammer Army!

[Music] i'm good to see you again hobby friends you know at some point in your miniature painting journey it's entirely likely that someone's going to approach you and ask you if they can pay you to paint a miniature or two for them and you shouldn't be afraid to feel good about this it means people admire your work and look up to your artistic abilities but should you take the job and that's the exact question i had to ask myself when a wonderful gentleman by the name of nick approached me and asked me to paint this 2 000 points of adeptus mechanicus oh there's more now the way i see it is if i do one massive stress test i'll experience the greatest highs and the lowest lows of this whole commission painting process and i'll determine if it's actually worth the squeeze but while we're at it we'll also have some fun figuring out how to paint an army that i've never painted before also i could use the cash i recently had to get one of these new uh insulin pumps and even after having good insurance my copay is roughly equal to that of buying a decent mid-size sedan used thanks american health system now hidden under all these boxes is the most important first step for this process whether you're painting a big project for yourself or from someone else and that is to have a written down plan of attack now recently in a different video i painted my own nightlords army and i forgot this step and i think the whole project suffered from it and this doesn't mean that you need to have it all figured out before you ever pick up a brush it just helps you visualize the project and be more efficient with your time like with priming for example why prime a whole model black when you can prime it in the color that's most prevalent on the model i just love this particular series of krylon metallics they're super durable and extremely shiny and don't get me wrong i love my airbrush but when i'm priming a ton of models at once nothing beats a high quality spray can primer and speaking of time let's talk about assembly of models yes i had to assemble all 120 models for this army before i even could begin painting it and i'm not exaggerating when i say that it took me longer to put together all these models than it did to actually paint them i bring this up because understanding the full picture of the task ahead is really important prior to agreeing to it knowing if the models are already assembled the quality of how they're assembled the intricacy of the quality of the paint job the client is expecting even what kind of basing they want done all of these factors affect how much time is going to take you and therefore how much it should cost for the job all right enough boring administrative mumbo jumbo about this project let's get on to basing there's a lot of really cool texture pastes out there for basing these days and many of them come with pigments already in them so to save a step i used a red oxide paste and planned that as the base color for the basing scheme by applying it after the models are primed i saved myself a step by not having to repaint a base tone on all 120 of these bases i went through almost half of this big jar in basing this army and i don't know i hadn't even considered materials as an important aspect to this equation your paint your brushes just about everything in our hobby is a consumable resource so even if you're thinking to yourself ten dollars an hour is a pretty sweet deal for something i already enjoy doing in miniature painting remember that not only are you making less than ten dollars an hour if you quoted a total price based on 20 hours of work it's going to take you 30 hours because you have to build the models but you're also using the materials that you purchased yourself and you're going to have to replenish now i personally think that armies look most striking and most cohesive when they have one to two important main colors and the rest of the colors kind of fade into the background not only does this make your army look cohesive but it helps you crank through everything a lot faster every additional color you add to an army is a pretty big time commitment and i'm not just saying this to speed through some stranger's army that you're painting i really believe that the fewer colors that you put on your army the more you can put the attention on those striking colors and if a paint requires you to do two coats for good coverage that means you're taking twice as long to paint all that color on i used unthinned paints for this whole project specifically ones i knew i could rely on for good coverage and yes this silver primer is a bit glossy and that made painting my main blues a little bit uneven with just one coat in some spots so i did go back through with the second coat on all the visible areas quickly if i noticed something wasn't fully opaque it's important that your primary army color really stands out vibrantly i will say that i lucked out a little bit in nick whose army this is that i'm painting he was really open in his communication he would get back to me really quickly when i had questions or wanted to discuss something he sent me pictures of paint schemes that he really liked and color combinations he liked and he was open to me asking him questions about tweaks that i thought would be cool and in the end that made this process pretty darn smooth but that doesn't mean that's how it always goes and i certainly didn't feel like i knew all the right questions to ask him prior to agreeing to the job and i could have easily gotten myself in over my head some people will just let you run with it and have fun and if you're thinking of trying out commission painting look for those people if you get a vibe that a person is going to be difficult to work with go with your gut and turn down the job another dumb mistake that i made is i didn't even ask him for half the money down up front which is a terrible idea luckily nick offered it pretty early on in the process and i was like oh yeah that's good so i don't just paint up all of these models and then someone just decides to not pay me and what do you do then all right i'll say that i think contrast paints are a good product for certain things but god damn it they're expensive and i don't like using them for big projects because it's so easy to go through a couple of those eight dollar bottles super quickly so i mixed up my own contrast brown for all the leather and brown bits i'm using the recipe that i detailed in the video from the past that's now linked on the top right of your screen and that reminds me if you're looking to pick up any of the supplies that i'm using in today's video i'll put those down in the video description below and that way you can support the channel at no additional cost to you so i appreciate those that support me that way it was about the time i got to painting the copper details on all 120 models of this project that i started questioning my life choices now i started to hear in my head all those things that people say around me why you don't do commission jobs because when you're doing a big project or even a small one sometimes there's parts of the project that are just a slog or they're boring or you just struggle to get through them but when it's your own models for your own army you make it through because you're excited of what the final product is going to be and i really struggled at certain points of this army this metallic part especially to get through because i didn't have that carrot at the end of having a finished product for myself to something to kind of push for and there's always that worry when you try to turn something you love into something that can make you money will it just be like i'm not even working because i already love doing it or will it take the thing that i love and make me hate it that's always the fear and i don't know the answer for each of us but it's something we need to be wary of if we're going to try to enter into the commission painting realm today's video was brought to us by the number one place that us creative types go to get our learn on skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creators explore new skills deepen existing passions and go down the rabbit hole of artistic enlightenment there's tons of applicable classes for our mini-hobby artsy-related things regarding color light and even artist productivity one i'm excited to start is called productivity for creatives building a system that brings out your best with thomas frank lord knows i struggle to make the most out of my hobby time skillshare is great because it's curated specifically for learning meaning there's no ads they're always launching new high quality classes by people that know their stuff and the classes are broken up into bite-sized chunks so you can learn whenever you have some free time over lunch on the toilet on a hot air balloon ride wherever if you want to figure out if it's something that you would like or not why don't you click on the link in the video description below and get a one month free trial that way you can kick her for a spin but it's only open to the first 1 000 subscribers that click that link so get on down there and enjoy your free trial big thank you to skillshare for supporting the channel now let's get these minis put away and get back to the video i like to try at least one or two new ideas with each big project and for this one i was excited to give something called under shading a try and i'm really glad that i did my goal was to find a combination of inks that would result in an interesting warm tone that i could apply to each miniature from below i thought this would be a quick way to give some interesting depth of color as well as light and dark contrast i wanted this tint to be a nice warm color to contrast the cool blue tones on the cloth any time that you contrast a warm shadow with a cool bass tone and vice versa it makes you look like you know what you're doing even when you don't the best part about this step is how much it brought to the models with very little time yes it requires an airbrush but i think that it makes such a big impact that i'll definitely be using this step on all of my future armies [Music] to me this actually highlighted one of the biggest positives i got out of doing this whole project trying new things experimenting and attempting to improve myself as a painter there's lots of ways that you'll naturally improve by painting this many models no matter who it's for but those improvements are usually harder to see things like better bush control and understanding where to place highlights but i found that taking risks and just trying something new at some of the most enjoyable aspects of painting and whether it's for me or someone else it doesn't matter because if it is for someone else and you screw it up who cares it's their mini now so they can deal with it i kept the momentum going by using a wonderful indigo ink on all the bases this time creating contrast by using a cool color for a warm base tone i wanted to create some depth on the bases to look like the army is coming from a darker area and towards the light again this step was super fast and i love how it brought out the texture from the basing paste [Music] i like using these little plastic containers with lids on them to put my homemade washes in especially when working on big projects oil washes when thing correctly are just like lull oil except for their 10 times better and 10 times cheaper with the right container i can seal it and start right up the next time i have time to paint mineral spirits evaporate much faster than water which are what we use to thin our oils so keeping them air tight whenever you aren't actively painting is really important i'm focusing the wash on all the metals and areas with lots of little detail if i get a bit on the blue cloth it's not a big deal you can wipe up any mistakes that you make with just a q-tip this wash is nice and thin so it creates depth while flowing immediately into the crevices and deeper portions of the model and it doesn't make me go back through with another step to clean off the oils where i didn't want them because it's so thin and slides off those top surfaces it's fun to experiment with different oil wash consistencies and you can see what kind of effects they produce based on how thin you make them [Music] to finish up the bases i bust out my artis opus dry brush and hit the front of each base with an ochre color i make sure to only make brush strokes in the direction opposite of the shadows this gives the impression that the light is coming from this direction and really adds more depth to our bases overall when it came to the highlight steps i wanted to be careful i damn near burnt myself out earlier and just base coating this model and if i get stuck in highlighting every little thing there's a good chance this is never getting done and i think that there's something to learn from that ourselves in each of our own armies at home it's never going to get done if you feel like you need to hyper highlight every little thing so i'm just going to focus on this blue cloth because it's a main focal point of the army and that's what my eye should be drawn to so that's what should have some nice highlights on it [Music] so [Music] and my final step is to add a bit of glow as a pop of color i feel like i've overdone this step a little bit in past armies and i wanted to keep this a little bit more subdued with this army while still offering something to really make them stand out and be unique on the tabletop i decided to go with orange for two reasons one it's a complementary color to blue so they should really meld well and secondly it kind of reflects the nice orange color in the bases and it makes the base and the model feel like they're in the same environment adding tints and glow effects with an airbrush really is one of the easiest and funnest uses of the tool and it's not easily replicated with just a brush because the color is so thin down and faint you can't screw it up very easily and you don't need to be very exact just make sure you spritz a little then blow pure air to try to get the layer to dry before adding another spritz of paint this prevents the paint from flowing all over the model and into the crevices when all is said and done i'm a little bit torn about this commission painting process i just didn't love the models and it's not that these aren't cool models it just wasn't my army you know when you're painting from something for yourself and you're excited about the final outcome and seeing that army on the table when that's not there the drive and the excitement just kind of fades and of course i couldn't help but thinking about my mountains of unpainted models that i wasn't painting because i was painting somebody else's instead but it certainly wasn't an entirely negative experience not in the least it feels good to paint something that someone else is excited to own and use and i hadn't really thought about it that way until i had the army complete and sent nick nixon photos i'm really happy for him and i hope he enjoys the army like i said earlier i didn't feel like this was wasted time because it helped me experiment and improve as a painter it gave me ideas on things i want to try on my next army ways to get a better result in the same amount of time and even get to make a fun video out of the process when it comes down to it it's really up to you if you want to give commission painting a try there's really no right or wrong answer i will recommend that you not paint an entire army for your first commission project maybe just start with one or two models the last thing i want to see is you drowned in an entire mountain of boxes that takes you like seven years to finish painting thanks for hanging out with me today i always enjoy the company and if you want to continue our virtual video relationship there are ways that you can support me the main way is to help me make more videos by joining me on patreon check the link below and find out about the rad rewards you get like hanging out with me on my discord server and access to my weekly vlog i'm hoping i see you again real soon and until then make sure you find some time to get out there and slay the gray for the paste me what the am i saying here but when it's your own middle um

Channel: Ninjon

Views: 132,479

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40000, painting warhammer, painting warhammer 40k, how to paint warhammer, how to paint miniatures, miniature painting, painting age of sigmar, adeptus mechanicus, space marines, chaos marines, army painting, speed painting, airbrushing miniatures, warhammer basics, 40k lore, 40k paint, games workshop, contrast paint, painting games workshop, 40k army, ad mech, commission painting, dungeons and dragons, squidmar, miniac, midwinter minis

Id: kMvYPCQYApw

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021