Painting 6mm Miniatures Tutorial

Recently I grabbed a few stands of Squat infantry for NetEpic (6mm SciFi) to do some test figures so that I could finalize my technique and pick my colors. From left to right you can see (1) the figure after the wash of black paint, (2) the figure with the base colors and highlights over the black washed figure, (3) the figure with layered base colors over the black washed figure, (4) a figure primed with Armory Grey Primer, and (5) the figure with blocked in colors and dipped with Army Painter Quickshade Strong.

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I did the Army Painter figure on the end first as I thought that would be the best choice... and I was wrong! It was easy to block in the colors and apply the dip, but there isn't enough contrast at this scale. Maybe if I used AP Dark it would work better, but as it stands it fails in the contrast department.

5   4   3   2   1

Then I remembered that I used to paint my Baccus 6mm Napoleonics with a black undercoat without any highlighting at all; they just recommend bright colors. Now, my figures were already primed grey, so I decided to do a quick wash of black to put dark into the recesses and keep the raised bits light. Then I'd add my colors on top. So that was my next figure (3). In addition to doing a layer or two of paint, I also drybrushed the red quilt with a little red/yellow mix. It turned out very well. So well, in fact, that I decided that I'd try to improve on it by doing a Foundry style two layer job (black, then a base color and a smaller highlight) on the last test figure (2).

1   2   3   4   5

As you can see, there isn't much difference between (2) and (3) if you ignore the paint placement. The (2) starts with slightly darker shades and then has a brighter highlight applied. It was double the work for a minimal payoff when compared to (3).

I think that the middle figure is the best. What do you think? Comment below and let me know.