I've never ever touched a miniature before in my life. Was never into miniature games, but Dust has really grabbed my attention with its simple mechanics and gorgeous figures. And so I've decided to venture into painting my set, something I've never done before. I've decided to do this not only because they (hopefully) will look better, but also because I'm quite annoyed at how hard it is to separate each squadron before playing, and even quickly telling them apart during a match. With individual colour schemes, hopefully it will make it easier and more fun to identify each different unit.

Anyway, where do I start? Paints, gotta have those. Unfortunately there aren't hardly any hobby stores around where I live, so all I could get my hands on were a few enamel paints, along with some I borrowed from a friend. The guy guaranteed me they were no different from acrylic paints, other than being soluble in thinner:

Since I'm no fool, I decided to start with the cover elements, leaving the figures for after I'd got some experience and learned from my first mistakes. VERY smart idea! I started with the tank traps, since the base color I wanted was the gray plastic itself. I quickly mixed a wash with black and some thinner and smeared across the tank traps. It flowed much less than I expected and it looked like the whole thing would turn black, so I quickly took a cloth and lightly wiped the wash away, which worked quite well since the wash remained in the recesses, but left the raised surfaces their original light gray. After that dried a bit I painted the base with a couple different browns for a muddy look, and finished off by doing some drybrushing with light gray. I was amazed at how effective the drybrushing was, all the cracks and jagged edges really popped out! Anyway, this was the final result, of which I was actually quite proud:

Then I moved to the ammo crates, and there things started falling appart. It immediately became obvious those things were NOT pre-primed, and the paint had a hard time sticking. This required several hands, and the result was far from smooth. The allied crates turned out all right, with a light green colour which should look good once I add some weathering. The axis crates, however..... First of all I picked the wrong colour, a dark blue that just didn't work as expected. To make matters worse I actually mixed the wrong colour (a gloss blue) on the caps, so it really looked horrible. As the final nail on the coffin, I tried applying a black wash to it and it didn't flow at all. It just stained the whole thing.

I was so disatisfied with the axis crates that decided to take the "tabula rasa" approach and start over by wiping the whole thing with thinner. Since I didn't know how well that would work, I only did it to one crate as a test. I think I'll try a dark gray instead.

Since I was clearly doing something wrong with the washes, I decided to take the flak cannon I wouldn't ever use from my Loth and do some tests with it. The wash dissolved in thinner clearly isn't working. I went back to the shop and bought an acrylic black, and later on I'll try to do a water-based wash.

And so, I decided to tackle my soldiers. While the wash situation is still not resolved, I'm already confident enough to do the base colours (realizing that you actually have to stir the paint was a huge breakthrough, as it took me a while to notice half the thing was congealed on the bottom o fthe can!). I chose the Recon Boys, deciding to use the base primer's green for the coats, which should make the job a bit easier. Painting inside all those nooks and crannies was a huge pain, I'm sure my brush is way to big, cause I can't imagine how some of you guys get the sort of detail you do. I'll have to search for somethig thinner. Anyway, no real disasters occured, and I think this was a decent start. I'm not happy with the pants colour, I thought it was a light gray but it looks white, not sure which colour to use. Once I get a smaller brush I'll try adding a darker brown to the boots and some details to the coat and backpack.

I'm just REALLy scared of when the time comes to dunk these in the dark wash....

Damn, why didn't the photos work. Let me try that again:

If these are your first minis you´ve ever painted if got to say: Well done!

If you´re going to apply a wash or shade like the "Armypainter" (Strong tone works best in my opinion) than use a brush. B´cause you´ve got more control over the whole work... at least better as if you´re only dippin´ it.

Btw.: I don´t realy like working with the colours you use. I´d recommend the vallejo colours to you. Don´t care if VMC (valejo model color) or VGC (valejo game color), cause the only difference is that the VGC´s are better thinned. On the other side you get a bigger range from VMC.

Yeah, first minis I've ever touched. So thanks!

I wasn't planning on literally dunking them in wash, just scrubbing them with a brush. I did some tests on the axis crates with an acrylic-water wash and it worked much better, though it still doesn't look like the sort of results I see on some youtube videos. Do washes even work properly on objects with relatively large flat surfaces like the crates or walkers? Cause the wash can't all flow to the crannies over a large flat area..

I'm afraid I don't have much choice in terms of paints. As I said, there's only one shop I know of around here, and this enamel line was the only one with a decent range of options... I'll just have to make do with what I've got....

They look nice, I would avoid the Army Painter Dip stuff because they are expensive and a bit thick.

My advice is to buy the GW Washes Set.

On your soldiers wash:

Badab Black: Armor, Green Clothes

Ogryn Flesh: Skin

Devlan Mud: Fatigues (White Ones), Boots

This way, not all your washes are one color, and it makes the models look nicer with shading instead of dipped.

If you need any specific help, I'll be glad to help. For tanks, drybrushing a light grey is your best bet. The washes use thinned oil paints over a gloss coat. That way you can wipe away any mistakes before you seal with Matte Varnish.

Thanks for the tips, but I really don't have access to all those nice paints. I have to make do with what I have...

Will it really look bad if I wash everything but the face with a simple black wash? The only acrylic paint I have is black, and I've given up on trying to make a wash with the enamel paints. Dilluting them in thinner just doesn't work.

Where are you located? GW has stores all around the world.

Yes, the face would look bad with a black wash.  You can't use acrylics and enamels together or something like that. I think the acrylic can go over the enamel but not the other way around.  For now I'd say to stick to your basecoats and wait until you can get proper washes, even with acrylics, mixing conisistant washes can be complicated.

Looking at the newspaper, you are in South America (Brazil?)? May be hard to get Citadel paints there...

Yeah, Brazil. Pretty sure there are no GW around here... You guys in Europe and the USA don't know how good you have it. I can't even buy Dust figures around here. I have to have them mailed to me across the globe, which takes months and costs a lot.

Are you sure I can't paint higlights with enamel paints on top of an acrylic-based wash? If that's true, I'm in big trouble....

Those look great especially for never painting before.

If you have a game shop that sells Games Workshop products, look for their Citadel paints and get some of their washes. Like Badab Black and Devlan Mud. Washes are great for showing detail, you paint the solid color like the faces you did on the men, then you take the wash and just paint over it, and it fills in the cracks and details real quick and easy :)

Guys... you're killing me. I know that if I got my hands on some Devlan Mud, everything would be peachy. I could just dab that over my figure and BAM, cool shadows all over it. However, I simply cannot find ready-made washes around here. Nothing by Citadel or anything like that.... I'll just have to try my luck with dilluting some acrylic paint in water and splashing my model with it.

oh sorry, misread that

Then if you want to make your own washes here's a good recipe..

you'll need acrylic paint and the stuff in tubes from an art supply store should work if you can't get model paints. Look for something called Matte Medium, they should sell it where they have the rest of the paints. Mix up something like 50% water, 50% paint and add a few drops of the medium. It helps the paint flow into the cracks and stay there.

You'll want to do a test first though, like paint it on the bottom of a base or something like that.. you might need to add a little more paint or a little more water, but adding the medium in there will help make it a lot like the GW washes. Without it, if you just did paint and water, it could bead up or form puddles that make it look bad when it dries.

You could also order the GW washes :) try places like The Warstore or even right from GW

It's looking like I'll just have to buckle up and import the Citadel washes from somewhere like Maelstrom Games or something. From what you're telling me, it seems I'll doubtlessly ruin my base paintwork if I go into this wash business on my own. If that's the case, however, I'll have to wait a couple of months for the stuff to arrive, so that sort of stops my painting project dead. If I do go ahead and order some Citadel paints, is there anything else I absolutely NEED to have? All I've got is what you see in that 1st picture.

Though, I guess I could go on doing the base colours for all my units until the washes arrive, then I can apply it and move on to the drybrushing...........

So far it looks like you're off to a great start. FYI, I use cheap acrylics on just about everything and have no problem. Some are better than others and so may need to be thinned, but if you mix for different colors, then it's a moot point anyhow. I actually think it's less about the brand of paint and more about learning to work with what you have. Good technique has to be somewhat malleable to meet the circumstances. With the cheap acrylics, I painted lips, brows, eye-whites, and irises on the German hero. The paint can take fine detail if your eyes can see to do it. ;)

If you're not afraid to experiment, you can dress up the ammo boxes w/ bullet / laser holes and robot stomp-crushes. I'll probably post mine as background at some point. It's pretty fun once you lose the inhibition of ruining stuff. A bit of copper wash/drip/streak is good for rust, too.

Keep it up. Looking forward to seeing more.

Damn, it seems I can't even import the stuff! The online stores I checked mention that these items have "restricted delivery" and will not ship to Brazil (it probably has something to do with toxic  liquids or whatever). So I'm REALLY on my own, and will just have to make what I have work. I doubt I'll even be able to find this "Matte Medium" around here, but I'll give it a try....   Anyway, I'm just gonna have to wing it and hope for the best.

I was already considering doing some battle damage on some of my ammo crates. Since I've already screwed up the axis crate quite a lot scraping off my horrible initial paint job, I have no qualms about screwing it up further. I'm thinking of drilling some bullet holes on it, with some strong metallic highlights added to the edges.

I have used a thinned out brown ink on flesh before as a wash, and gotten nice results. I did have to dry brush a little afterwards, but nothing severe, and once i had done 3 of the figures I had no problems.