Painting - Phase 1

Well, I was a bit ill this morning so I opted to stay home.  I rested up... napped some... and with the sun shinning around mid-afternoon I decided to get started.

With the Reaper Bones Kickstarter, I'll be receiving a whole bunch of miniatures between now and the end of March, 2013 -- all of which will need painting.  I have never painted miniatures.  However, I found out that a co-worker has, and does, on a regular basis.  He's part of that Games Workshop crowd and loves Warhammer.  He also obviously knew what he was talking about and was able to provide me some material and a lot of advice to get me started.  This invariably led to my first Games Workshop purchases late last week -- some primer, paints, brushes, and a Lord of the Rings starter kit.  Actually most of my first round of paints came from this kit.

This past weekend was too busy for me to even contemplate getting work started on the 'practice miniatures' I have in my possession.  And it was raining all weekend anyway.  With an unexpected window of opportunity (once I was feeling a bit better), I found myself a 'painting stick' and a 'cardboard box' and gathered what I needed to get started.  In short... I prepared / cleaned up and primed my miniatures (the undercoat).


For clarity ...  a painting stick is just a piece of wood where I can affix miniatures onto it for the purposes of being able to easily paint the miniatures from the front and back since I was using a spray can for the primer.  The cardboard box was to 'catch' the remaining spray from the can and avoid making a mess.  The box was important since I was doing this off my balcony (I live in an apartment building but don't have a backyard).

Once the paint was dry, I took them back in and continued and detached the plastic miniatures from the 'sprue'.  I then touched up whatever I missed in the initial paint job with a brush and affixed the miniatures to their bases.  The plastic ones were from the LOTR kit (and are goblins) where as the metal orcs were ones I had on hand for a few years.  All in all, I have 12 goblins and 10 Orcs to paint and I should be able to start the base coat colors soon enough.  The starter kit, came with paint and colors which will easily serve to paint the whole lot of 22 and had its own brush.  I bought a couple other brushes and a spray can of primer as well.  The lot cost me about $80 but will serve me beyond this set of miniatures.  I must say that I'm having a blast with all of this!  More to come.

M