I’m a newb here, I’m mostly interested in the painting section. I haven’t painted in a few years but, I’m getting back into it now. My skills are OK, not pro like some I’ve seen. My biggest weakness has always been choosing colours for a new project.

What strategies do you use when starting a new fig. Think individual figs, not units.

Love to get some feedback.

Starting with a somple basecoat then just visualizing how you want it to look when done works for me (most of the time).
After that, it's sometimes a lot of trial and error.

Which army or model you are painting is important too.

Marines that adhere to a certain chapter would follow a certain paint scheme.

Other than that, try something and post it here.
The folks on this site are very helpful expecially in the area of painting.

While you're at it, why not post over in the new members section and introduce yourself proper like.
Oh, and welcome to the site!

Time Wizard

If you're painting space marines the the space marine painter at bolter & chainsword is very useful.

Personally, when I start a project (and I don't that often) I get into the background & read, read, read (or write, write write) on what the army is, its background & quirks, and then I either go with the standard or pick my own.

Then I go to google images.

Then I google for painting guides. This was very useful for my new Trollbloods project, as I had been through everything, picked the clolours & wanted & BAM - BOLS had a tutorial with the (almost) exact colour scheme I wanted.

As part of picking a scheme I need to work out what colours to paint as base & highlight etc by getting out all the cpaint pots I own of that clour & holding the posts upside down (closed obviously) next to each other to get a feekl for how they blend into each other. Brown is a very good example of this - hold scorched brown on the left, then vermin, then snakebite & you'll see a progression from a dark brown undercoat to a nice yellow tinted leather as the final highlight - replace snakebite with graveyard earth & it's a much colder earthy progression.

Hope that helps.

It's also good to learn a little colour theory - plenty of sites out there will talk you through a colour wheel and how to choose your main, secondary and spot colours.

Thanks for the help.

For me, I don’t paint armies, so I don’t stick to any guidelines, I try to choose as I go. Which is my problem, I don’t plan enough. Most of my figs come out OK. I think if I can just break through this problem I will really take a big step forward in the quality of my finished pieces.

I have never checked google images to get ideas. I know it’s a good idea but, my creative pride has always stopped me.

timewizard wrote:While you're at it, why not post over in the new members section and introduce yourself proper like.
Oh, and welcome to the site!

Time Wizard

Oops, I didn’t see that board. I will.

The "How to paint citadel miniatures" books are usually pretty good for talking through the basics of planning and picking colours. Of course you can apply the techniques to any model although I bet GW wish you couldn't

Due to my colour blindness choosing colour schemes has always been difficult for me.
When starting an army I usually have an basic idea in mind (red/blue/green)then paint 4-5 test figures of the basic troops/core models each in a different way.
I find it's important so that I can see where the diferent areas on the model are going to fall and what bits i'm going to define as main colour, weapon colour, pouches skin ect.

It's nearly impossible to make these decisions with paint on a figure.
With the discovery of the stripping properties of Fairy Powerspray these test models won't be wasted and the time is no more than an afternoon.
Once I have these areas defined I have to record what levels of highlight I need and what mix I use as I cannot mix by eye - I need a record of percentage paint mixes. At this stage if I have a mixed colour that I will be using a lot I will mix a whole pot then retest the highlights.
It's not as much work as it used to be now I have a list of what has worked in the past I only need to make sure that I pick something that will work with the current figure.