A few years back I published a painting book featuring how to paint wargames tanks and edited by AMMO. I had the intention to write a second volume about painting infantry for wargames, but it was postponed because I was very busy doing my PhD. Now, eight years later, the second volume has been finally released again thanks to the support of the AMMO team: How to paint miniatures for Wargames.
I was not alone in this project. I had the great opportunity to collaborate with some of the wargames painters I admire the most, including the amazing historical painters George Hatzopoulos and David Imrie, the former Forge World painter Giuseppe Giafele and two good Spanish friends Omar Olabi and Iván Sanz.
I think that we have created something unique: a painting book purely meant for wargamers. That is, a book describing simple, quick and effective painting techniques to paint an army for our favorite wargame in a short time. The market is full of books explaining very complex (and amazing) painting techniques for scale models. However, these are out of the scope of most wargamers, who have a very limited free time that is split between painting and gaming. This limited free time should be exploited, and the complex painting techniques -although impressive- are not useful when painting an army with dozens of miniatures for a wargames. That is why the painting techniques for miniatures for wargames have evolved differently compared with other branches of this hobby.
This book is for those who wants to have their army fully painted but do not have or do not want to spend much time to do it. But, at the same time, the book offers the possibility to further develop your skills if you have the time to do it. For this reason we have included very simple painting techniques, but also more advance ones. To make this accessible to everyone, we have organized the book so that the complexity of the painting techniques increases as you turn the pages. I dreamed about a book like this for many years, and finally, thanks to AMMO and the help of the aforementioned artists I managed to bring it to life.
The book is 168 pages long and it is divided in two main sections of similar length: the first part is an exhaustive collection of painting techniques, and the second includes several master classes. The book is not focused on a single scale or topic. We included different scales (15 and 28/32 mm mainly) and very different themes, including historical, sci-fi and fantasy miniatures. We tried to include as much variation as we could to cover the bast universe of wargames. The idea of the book is to explain painting techniques, and this can be applied in any miniature regardless of the scale and theme.
The first part serves as an introduction to the hobby -perfect for rookies- and includes a series of painting techniques to paint miniatures for wargames -perfect for both rookies and veterans-. This part describes in detail all the materials we need to start this hobby, followed by a detail description of basic techniques such as how to assemble the miniatures, a simple -but constructive- explanation about how to apply the color theory on our miniatures and finally a collection of painting techniques arranged by difficulty, including the drybrush technique, washes (acrylic and enamel), triad systems and the layering method among others. Furthermore, this section explains in detail how to create different “weathering effects” such as rust, scratches, mud and dust. Last, it includes two ways to create the bases for our miniatures, a topic that is further developed in the second part of the book.
The second part is probably the favorite for many of you. Across seven master classes, each written by one artist (except the two 15mm master classes that are mine), you can see how an experienced and professional painter faces a painting project for a wargame. The master classes are also arranged by difficulty from the easiest to the most complex one. Two of them feature historical 15mm miniatures: a Deutche Afrika Korps artillery platoon for Flames of War painted using very simple techniques and a Spanish Tercio for the Thirty Years War period painting at a high standard (including almost 50 miniatures!). There are another two historical master classes with 28mm miniatures: David describes his method to paint a full battalion of the American Civil War soldiers in a very short time, whereas George explains how to paint very complex heraldic garments (free-hands!) in two knights of the 100 Years War. The remaining master classes cover Sci-Fi and Fantasy topics. Omar explains a very simple but effective method to paint droids for Star Wars Legion and Iván describes his secret combining very simple and more complex painting techniques to obtain amazing results when painting a bunch of Rohan knights (The lord of the Rings). He also explain how to paint different horse breeds. Finally, the last master classes belongs to Giuseppe, who shows the skills he developed during his work at the Forge World Studio o paint a Chaos Space Marine (Warhammer 40k).
We hope that you enjoy reading it as much as we did when writing it!
The book is available in Spanish, English and French, and you can purchase it directly from the AMMO website or in any shop that sells AMMO products.
These are the topics of the master classes:
