2.A. Black, white, or gray?

A thousand answers exist for this one. The best advice available seems to be use what you prefer. White primer makes colours go on brighter and is best for anything on which you want that effect. Black primer gives good shadows and is commonly used to base modern military and skeleton figures. Gray is rather neutral allowing for brighter light colours and decent shading. The best tip so far is to experiment and see what you like. Also, and the author likes this effect, prime in black and then drybrush raised areas in white before painting. This allows for the depth of the darker shade but gives the lighter base for the brighter colours.

3. What's the first step after priming?

Pick the colours you want for the major areas (skin, each piece of clothing and armour, hair, shield) and paint them on in layers. Think of dressing the miniature. Start with eyes, move on to face and hands, then clothing, armour, hair, lastly weapons. You aren't going for massive detail just now, you're only setting each area's base colour. Make certain the paint goes on smoothly and remember to paint from top to bottom. Once you have this part done, it's time for detailing. This is achieved by many different techniques such as drybrushing, washing, shading, and highlighting.

4. What are shading, washing, drybrushing, highlighting and glazing?

These are techniques to give a little realism to your miniatures.

Shading and highlighting give the illusion that there is light shining upon the figure. Shading details the folds and shadows and highlighting picks out the brighter, better lit areas. Washing, glazing, outlining and blending are all methods of shading. (See below.)

Drybrushing is a highlighting method, and is simply accentuating the high spots with a bit of paint a bit lighter than the base. (See section 4.B.)

Glazing is done with inks, as can be washing and outlining.(See section 4.D.)

Outlining is simply picking out the line between two separate parts of the miniature (i.e. sleeve and arm) and painting or inking in a fine line of either black or a darkened shade of the base in order to bring out the division between the two sections.

Blending is rather difficult and takes much practice. To blend one changes the tone of the paint as it crosses the surface of any non-detailed section, as Mech armour or unscaled hide. Darker shades are laid into any depressions and carefully thinned and blended into the surrounding areas using a damp brush. (This is NOT a technique for beginners. The author still has trouble getting his blending to look good, and finds nothing wrong with not shading miniatures at all. Again, try it and see if you want to practice the technique or not. Another personal-choice situation.)

If you're using acrylics, you can pick up several TONING MEDIUMs, which alter the brightness of the paint without the headache of black. I've started using a drop of white, a drop of black, and a drop of toning and mixing all four with equal parts of the color I'm using, so I get light - color - toned color - dark. My first attempt was on one of the mages in Partha's Forgotten Realms set, and the cloak looks better than anything I've done, and I haven't drybrushed or washed it yet.

And a tip from Christian Widmer a fellow painter : "Use a slower on acrylic colours. This slows them from drying but they do still not cover if they didn't before. Warning, oil colours tend to lose their colours and go brown-grey when I try this."

Nick Fogelson also shares his methods, which are far better than anything I could provide (used without permission): "The way I always do blending is to put a smudge of the two end colours in a strip, separated about 1.5 inches. I then use a slightly moist brush to mix them together into a spectrum. The colours near the original smudge will be closer to that colour, the colors in the middle should be fairly even mixes of the two. You then have a nearly infinite palette of colour to use. You can do a nice blend with only 5 or so shades that looks really good unless you magnify it. Alternatively: Say you want to go up red to yellow. Paint the entire area yellow. Put a block of watery red on the top. Slowly draw a moist brush down the area, drawing the red pigment with it. If you're patient, this method will bring the best results (but if you're not, you'll get a big mess)."

Kenneth Creta also has two good techniques: "This idea was suggested by Tom Harris and I added a little of my own touches. Let's say you want to fade from green to black. Just paint the whole darn thing green. At the point where you want it to fade, wash with a black ink. When dry, wash again but a little farther down and so on until the bottom is black. The first ink is not a smooth transition so when the washes are done, go back and dry-brush green over the first ink line and this will smooth it out. The washes may be diluted to the desired consistency."
"Start by painting a band at the bottom in dark green. While it's still wet, add some white and paint the slightly lighter green band above it. Use a second brush and paint along the line between. If the paint is still wet, they should blend together pretty good. I use a slightly damp brush. If you get enough bands, it's looks like a gradual colour change. The hardest part is the blending between the bands."

Here's another banding method from Roxanne Reid-Bennett a painter of Fantasy Miniatures: "I have a Water Elemental that was done in this style (Rafm). The typical way of handling this is to "blend" two colours together (which I have a LOT of trouble with). What I did was to paint the base (bottom 1/2") dark blue (RP Paladin) then used graduated shades of blue (about 5 different) up towards the top of the figure where I used a light blue (Sky) for the upper torso of the elemental. After the bands were in place I went back and used mixed intermediates on the band overlap areas. I kept this up until the graduated shading looked right. Some of the intermediates I watered down some so they wouldn't go on very thick. I really wish I could "blend" like the books and FAQ say - by mixing the two wet paints in the middle - but so far haven't succeeded. "For finishing work I used a slightly darker blue for wash on the torso to bring out the muscles. I used white on the tips of the water waves and washed in blue. Just for final effect I washed the whole figure in Pearl White (RP). Gives the figure a nice wet look - even with a flat seal cover. "So the hard way is to literally to paint stripes on the figure in shades close enough to each other that our (human) eyes can't see the distinct lines."

And here's a rather advanced shading/blending/tinting method from John Colasante , (used without permission): "Lets say you want to paint an orange tunic on a figure. Mix the base color and plop a pile on your pallette. Next to it, plop down a dark tint and a light tint. For orange,lets say dark brown and yellowish-white. It doesn't matter what kind of pigment you use, water base or oil base. Now, tint the base color with the dark tint and paint the entire tunic, or even drybrush the tunic if painting over a dark primer. When dry, paint the basecoat over the dark tint, BUT NOT ALL THE WAY TO THE EDGES. Also, leave tinted dark shade in the folds. Next, tint light and highlight the center and high spots. Note: this is similar to drybrush except you are painting color here, not actually drybrushing, so you get a certain effect which is different than pure drybrush. In fact, it often looks nice when there is a clear demarcation between the tinted shades on certain surfaces, almost like color contours. Use more than three tint levels for certain effects. It sounds tedious but if you use the palette it's very fast and the results often look much better than the purely drybrushed highlights, especially for larger, flat areas where drybrushing might miss."

4.A. How do I do a wash?

Washing comes before drybrushing. Take a shade darker than your base color and dilute it until it's about the consistency of milk. Now, brush it across, gently. It'll flow into folds and crevasses. Makes cloth look real good. Remember, you can always add wash, so start light and work your way up. Don't be afraid to wash, then darken and wash again, until you've reached the effect you like. Wash yellows with yellow-orange or yellow-brown, flesh with light brown, white with bluish-white or gray. Experiment, only you can set your style.

4.A.a. Why do my washes dry badly?

It seems that once in a while, even though the inks and washes have been mixed properly, they end up drying, not in the low spots like they should, but on the high contours. It has something to do with the density of the wash and the slickness of the surface; on matte surface the effect is more prominent than on glossy surfaces. It happens because a pool of wash in a recess starts to dry from the edges, then the rest of the paint in the wash adheres to the already dry paint, producing a ring of paint around the recess. There are four methods that can help solve the problem:

1. Add a small amount of rubbing alcohol to the wash. It lowers the surface tension, and dries faster. This may be a drawback for some painters. Some model railroaders have been doing this for a while now. (Thanks to Coyt D Watters for this tip.)
2. Add a little dishwashing detergent to the wash. It helps the wash stick better. (Coyt again...)
3. Use small amounts of wash, allowing each to dry before applying the next. Blow gently on the wash after applying, from the top, to keep the pools in the recesses where they belong. If the wash is thin enough, it'll dry with a minimum of blowing.
4. Mix a new wash, thicker. It might work better, being thick enough to keep from creeping, or maybe with just a little different density.

4.B. How do I drybrush?

First off, drybrushing is most effective when used with a colour a shade or two lighter than the base. White drybrushed over black primer also makes for a very good painting base. It also looks good as a stand-alone colour scheme on some figures. Take your desired colour and an old brush, as drybrushing wears brushes out and tears them up (the author has had good success in using cheap watercolour brushes for large drybrushing projects with acrylic paints, but for smaller areas a better-quality brush is still necessary). Dip it into the paint until the tip is saturated, then blot on a paper towel until no paint can be seen on a dark brush, or a light one looks pretty clean. Take the brush and gently draw it along the raised parts you want highlighted. A little paint will stay on the highest edges and give great depth. Many painters like to highlight in stages, lightening the shade a little with each level. This can be either overkill and a pain or an excellent technique for brightening and preserving detail. Practice yourself and decide.

4.C. How do I highlight?

Drybrushing is the best method of highlighting any large area or area with repetitive detail, such as armour. For faces, hands, buckles and the like, highlighting can be achieved by taking a slightly lighter shade of the base (mixed with white or a lighter tone) and going along the raised areas lightly. A fine brush point is required, as is a steady hand. For faces highlight the chin, nose, and cheeks. For hands go along the backs and each finger. For other detail, pick the spots that should show up best and give them the lightest highlights. It's common to highlight twice, each time getting lighter in tone and finer in line. A bit of blending is required to keep things looking natural, but this blending is easier than the large-surface technique. Simply keep a damp brush handy and brush very lightly toward the darker areas. Again, this technique takes practice, but is worth the effort when the miniature is completed.

4.D. What are inks, should I use them, and if so, how?

Inks are just that, semi-transparent tones that can be used to add colour and shading to a miniature. If you wish to go beyond the range of paints, you might wish to try working with them. Unless using for outlining, inks should always be thinned slightly for glazing and rather a lot for washing. A milk-like consistency is best for washing (or even thinner, since you can always wash again if more is needed) and about 50-50 ink and water is best for glazing. If you do not get the specially formulated for miniatures inks (the only brand known to the author is Citadel, and they're very good), then the best information available comes from Wade Hutchison, as posted to rec.games. miniatures and is edited and used here without permission: "A tip about Inks. If you go to the art supply store to buy your inks, be sure and get pigmented inks, not transparent ones. Pigmented inks, especially brown, work much better for a wash than the transparent ones.

Red and blue don't seem to matter as much. For shading white, there is a really good ink color called "Payne's Grey" which is a kind of blue-grey. It does a much better job than black when washing white or very light tans and greys." Recommended also have been Windsor & Newton inks. Inks are best used as washes, for outlining, and as glazes. When washing with inks on a matte surface (or on any other, actually), a gentle blowing of air from the top to the bottom of the miniature helps keep the ink from drying back up into the raised areas. The author usually blows lightly until the wash stops looking slick-wet.