Paint Your First Army Fast with Speedpaint & The Army Painter

How to use Speedpaint: prime your models white or light grey, brush one coat of Speedpaint over each area, and let it dry. The Army Painter's Speedpaint is a one coat paint that settles into the recesses as it dries, so a single pass gives you the base color, the shadow and the highlight at once. It is the fastest honest way to get a whole first army painted and on the table.

What is Speedpaint?

Speedpaint is a thin, heavily pigmented paint made to be used in one coat. Brushed over a light undercoat, it pools in the deep areas and thins out on the raised ones, which is exactly where a painter would put shadow and highlight by hand. The Army Painter describes it as a one coat painting solution with an intense shading and highlighting effect, and the current 2.0 formula was developed with feedback from the hobby community. It comes in 18ml dropper bottles with mixing balls already inside, so a shake is all it needs.

Which Speedpaint set should you start with?

For most people, the Speedpaint Starter Set 2.0. It is a ready chosen spread of colors with a basecoating brush included, so the guesswork of a first palette is done for you. If you already know you are in for the long haul, the Speedpaint Mega Set 2.0 is the big box, and it includes Speedpaint metallics, a one coat metallic the maker calls an industry first.

Prefer to pick your own? Four or five colors cover most of an army: one for armor, one for cloth, one for leather and one dark. Grim Black handles boots, weapons and dark cloth. Runic Grey, a bluish grey, does stone, steel and uniforms. Blood Red covers cloaks and heraldry, and Pallid Bone does skulls, parchment, rope and teeth.

Do you need Speedpaint Medium?

It is the one extra bottle worth owning. Speedpaint Medium thins Speedpaint to whatever consistency you want, which gives you lighter tints of any color and more control over large flat areas. It comes in the same 18ml dropper bottle, and in a 100ml bottle for anyone who uses a lot of it.

How do you paint a miniature with Speedpaint, step by step?

1. Prime light. Speedpaint needs a white or light grey undercoat to glow. A light grey model sprayed from above with white, the zenithal method, gives even more natural light and shadow. 2. Paint the big areas first. Work from the largest area to the smallest, one coat each, and let each area dry before you paint next to it. 3. Tidy up. Fix any spots where one color ran into another, and the model is done: shaded and ready for the table.

If you catch the bug later, add edge highlights and details on your favorite models. Ranked up on the table, though, a clean three step army looks great exactly as it is.

What mistakes do beginners make with Speedpaint?

• Priming too dark. Over black, Speedpaint has nothing to glow against and the colors go muddy. Prime white or light grey.
• Going back over a coat that is still drying. Let an area dry before you touch it again, or blend it with Medium while it is wet.
• Buying the whole wall. Start with a starter set or five colors. Add more when a project actually needs them.

Is Quickshade dip faster than Speedpaint?

It is the other classic fast method, and it suits a different kind of painter. With Quickshade Dip, you basecoat the models in flat colors, then brush or dip the tinted varnish over the whole model at once. It shades everything in one step, and The Army Painter designed it for 10 to 28mm miniatures. It is a little messier than Speedpaint, and brilliant for big blocks of rank and file troops.

What comes after Speedpaint?

When you want to push a model further, Warpaints Fanatic is the classic acrylic range from the same maker. The Warpaints Fanatic Most Wanted Set is 22 paints, including skin tones, metallics, a wash and a brush on primer. The Flexible Triad sets solve one color properly at a time, like the Ruddy Browns for leather and wood, or the Yellows, the color most likely to beat a one coat approach. For every blade, gun and buckle, the Warpaints Fanatic Metallics Set holds 10 metallics.

Painting grim, gothic armies? The John Blanche Paint Set Volume 3 and Volume 4 are built around that palette. Painting historicals? Uniform colors are where guessing costs you, so the WW2 British, WW2 American and WWII Imperial Japanese paint sets do the matching for you.

How do you finish the bases?

A painted model on a bare base still looks unfinished, and basing is the quickest upgrade an army can get. The Battlefields Basing Set puts brown battleground, rocks, grass, undergrowth, tufts and snow in one box with its own basing glue.

Assembling a new army first? Our guide to miniature glues covers which bottle does which job. Every color above is in the Army Painter collection.