Madness....or another way of saying my methods and materials.

There is madness to my methods, or is that the other way around? Either one seems to apply.  I thought people might want to know how I do what I do. I am a pallet painter, but this has not always been so. Many years ago, I never wanted to paint minis.  I thought the bare metal/plastic looked cool. Then, I picked up some cheap paints and a brush. I did not know the difference among the paints and actually used Testors enamels on old Grenadier and Warzone models. I think about those models, and I just want to cry. Later, I picked up Polly S and then GW acrylics, which had become my go-to for many years ago until I discovered the paint that changed it all for me-Vallejo

You have no idea how hard those lids were to remove!

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My arsenal

In the early 2000s, a small French company was making its name big on the scene called Rackham, they had some of the most dynamic models in the industry and were pushing the boundaries of what could be done with painting techniques.  All their painters were using Vallejo paint. The only place I could get them was online, but I found a game store up north called Games-Plus that carried them. I took what extra cash I had at the time and bought my first few colors. From that point on, I was using blister packing as my pallet, and I had become a pallet painter.  Years later, I took a painting class with James and Cathy Wapple, wonderful people and even better painters. What came out of it was the experience of working with my first wet pallet and an explanation of how easy it was. A trip to GFCs and the dollar store and I had created my first wet pallet.

 

I tend to use strictly acrylic paint, but I have experimented with alcohol based metallic paints. I use a ton of different paint brands over the years, but my personal favorites are Vallejo, Reaper, Privateer Press P3, and, most recently, Army Painter. I have heard good things about Scale 75, but their price and difficulty to get seem prohibitive. For brushes I tend to do use cheap Hobby Lobby brushes, GW brushes, and Kolinsky Sable. I grab what seems right.

Painting, it's kind of like that....

 

Back to my original statement about there being no method, that is 100% right. Jazz music is very indicative of my style- I follow no plans, I grab what color seems correct, and I slap paint where I feel it needs to go. To make things even more confusing, I very rarely paint one model at a time. I started as an army painter using an assembly line style to my painting, and I still use that to this day. I will put a color on my pallet and spread it across my projects. The brown I use for boots will be used for the hair of another model, a red color I use for hair might be used on a pouch.  You get the idea. I also paint different elements at a time. I might paint a staff on a model brown, use that brown on a different element for another model, then add another color, use that, only to go back to the original color in a different area. Yes I realize I have painter ADD, hell forget the painter part, I am pretty sure I have normal ADD.