After selling some of my stock art recently, I had some cash to buy a few Battletech miniatures. It has been about 25 years since I last painted minis, and my old techniques would be out of date, even if I could remember them (I think they involved a lot of dry-brushing...)
I can't afford to buy lots of expensive paints and materials, so I decided to use some of the cheap and dirty techniques I picked up for making scale models. The result is good enough for me, and I think others may find it handy, because it is a very cheap way of painting, and it allows for a pretty good outcome without having to be a master (or a young person with super steady hands).
Step 1: Texture the base
I use some cheap wood putty that I got from a local stationary store. $2 a tube will last for probably as many models as you want to do. I spread it on and try to avoid covering the feet.
Step 2: Undercoat
Probably the most expensive part of my process is using rattle cans to get a good undercoat/basecoat. I would love to buy an air brush for this, but I really don't have the room in my apartment. So I spend about $10 on a Tamiya rattle can that will do about 12+ minis, depending on circumstances. There are cheaper paints, but this is one step where I don't want to skimp on quality. The base coat will affect everything that goes on top of it.
Choose a color that is close to what you want for your final mini. It's better to choose something lighter than you really want, since oil washes will make the paint darker.
This one was a bit darker than I wanted, and it's also semi-gloss. Matte paint is best for a base coat.
Step 3: Base colors
At this point, I decided to use a color scheme that my son Robert came up with for the clans. I let Henry (8yrs old) and Robert (11yrs old) paint the base colors on two mechs (see the two front ones, which I tidied up and added some decals to). They were a little impatient, and Henry's effort to use every possible color ended up with a dark, muddy brown. However, Robert's pink/lavender split looks pretty cool. Just outrageous enough for the Clanners.
You can use cheap acrylics from a tube, as long as you water them down. I've gotten good results from $2 artists acrylics. However, these days I get a cheap set from Academy models, which are about $13 a set. They last a long time.
I add a drop of dishwasher liquid to the water I use for mixing and washing brushes. It reduces surface tension and helps the paint flow.
Paint it on in two thin coats (not the one thick coat my sons insisted on). Make it a little lighter than you want for the end result. You can do metal or black areas now too. Paint the cockpit the same base color you want it to be for the end result. These are going to have a red canopy, so I used a dark red.
Step 4: Wait for it to dry
At every step, you want to really leave the models overnight. The drier the paint at each stage, the less chance of making a mess of the previous work when you start a new step. This is a process that works great with 30 minutes of painting a day. If that's not enough painting fun, then it's easy to paint 2-4 models at the same time.
Step 5: Decals
You can get some cool decals from China. For me, they were free shipping, since I live in Korea. I like to put on a bunch of generic warnings and stripes. If you want to spend a little extra money here, it's really worth the expense of getting some Mr Mark Decal Setter. It helps the decals stay on better, and gets rid of the shiny effect that some decals have.
An option at this point is to give your minis a coating of gloss varnish. If you want the oil wash to only affect the panel lines, and you don't want it to be a tint on the main color, then sealing the acrylic paint will give a very clean finish.
I don't bother though, since I want the oils to tint the paint, and I like the overall effect of a full wash.
Step 5: Oil wash
Thinner is something that gets used up quicker, but it's also pretty cheap. Make sure you get the odorless type, and leave the window open if you're using it a lot.
After leaving the decals to dry properly, I use a dropper or pipette to put some thinner in an old palette. I put some oil paint onto a paper towel. Make sure that the paint is not full of oil. You may have to squeeze out a fair bit before the pigment is coming out without lots of oil.
Mix some oil in with the thinner in the palette. How much? That's up to you. It took a while for me to get the hang of heavy and light washes. Use some black paint to darken your base color, but not too much, since a fully black oil wash looks horrible.
I used a red-black wash for the right side, and a blue-black wash for the left. Sometimes I use a wash for the base at this point too.
At this point, it looks a lot like I've used (or overused) some modern contrast speed paints. If this is your desired effect, you could leave it at this point, though it takes up to a week for the oil paint to dry thoroughly like this.
I leave them for 3-12 hours, for the oil paint to mostly dry. If I do the next step too soon, the wet oils will spread all over and take a lot more effort to wipe off.
Step 6: Erase the paint
An oil wash is like contrast paint with an undo option. I dip a cotton bud in to a little thinner, and wipe away the wash from any raised areas. If you don't use too much thinner, and the oil wash is fairly dry, you don't have to be very careful at this stage. This is one of the steps where waiting for the undercoat and base coats to be fully dry is important. Thinner may rub off your acrylics if you use too much, or rub too hard, or the acrylic paint isn't fully dry. Remember, you can seal the mini with varnish before this point if you're really worried about ruining it.
This is another point at which you might want to just stop. The minis already look good enough for the tabletop. Paint some black on the base and you're ready to play!
Or onto the next step.
Step 7: Details
At this point, I paint the canopy. You can find any number of tutorials on how to do this. I also do some chipping. This is the same method I use for scale models.
I simply paint on some highlights in a brighter color of the base, then I mix a red/brown/silver/black bare metal color and paint little chips on the highlights, making them smaller than the lighter spots.
An option is to do this before the oil wash. This will make the chipping more subtle and blend it better with the rest of the paint... if that's the outcome you want. I personally like it to be a bit over the top.
You can also use a bit of sponge to dab chips of light/dark paint onto the edges of the model. It's up to you. The chipping I did is way out of scale. But I don't really care, since it looks just like I wanted.
You can add more detail to the base. I use a kind of moss, which I dip in paint and PVA to seal it before applying to the base. My minis are all decorated for a kind of desert/alien world with reddish-pink soil.
Other details you can add include gun jeweling, and jumpjet ports.
Step 8: Seal the mini
The oil wash should really get a day or two to fully dry before you seal the minis, but it's not a disaster if you don't wait. I've only had one model which had a strange reaction to varnish going over a slightly damp finish. Even then, the result wasn't too bad...
Another little expense I like to indulge in is matte clear spray varnish from a rattle can. It requires fewer coats than an undercoat, so the rattle-can lasts longer. I've done about 36 minis with one $15 can, and it's still got some left in it.
I do have some paint-pot style matte varnish that can be applied with a brush. That's a lot cheaper, $6 for a pot that will last for the rest of my life. But it can be a little tacky and picks up dirt and dust much quicker than the spray varnish.
I also experimented with some clear, gloss spray varnish from a general store. I think it's supposed to be used on cars or furniture. That's cheap, at about $2 for a big can and it does an OK job, but goes on thick and doesn't spread out as well as the rattle can paint that's designed for use with models. So you have to be extra careful to apply it thinly over the whole model.
Step 9: PBM
If you've played any modern computer games, you may know about physics-based lighting and physics-based materials. These can look really nice, as metal shines like it should, and glass has a great glossy appearance, while matte objects like cloth or skin act like they should.
We can get similar results by using different paints and different finishes on the various parts of our models.
I like the armor of my mechs to be matte, and the canopy and any metal parts to be glossy. So after adding mat varnish all over, I get out my pot of gloss varnish and add a little watered down gloss to all the parts I want to look shiny and metal. You can't see the result very well in the photos, but in real life, it adds a lot to the finished model.
Conclusions
With this process, you can take as much or as little time as you want. It would be easy to speed paint a lot of models, as long as you have at least one night to let them dry properly before doing the oil wash. If you're not adding decals, it can be even quicker.
But you'll be rewarded by taking it slow and finishing the minis over the course of a week. It also gives me plenty of painting time from just a few miniatures. There's no rush, since I've already got a fair few mechs to choose from if I want to run a game.
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