Hey there.
Right, a disclaimer that is also the reason to keep reading.
We do not sell paint, brushes, primer, glue, clippers or anything else on this list. Not a single item. So this article makes us nothing, and you can read the recommendations without wondering which of them exist because they had margin on them.
That is unusual enough in this hobby to be worth stating plainly.
The Actual List, Which Is Six Things
Most starter guides run to about thirty items. You need six.
1. Clippers. Not scissors, not a craft knife, not your teeth. A small pair of flush sprue cutters. This is the tool that stops you snapping the thing you are trying to remove, and it is the most common false economy in the hobby.
2. A hobby knife. For cleaning mould lines, which are the thin raised seams left where the mould halves met. Ninety percent of the difference between "painted by a beginner" and "painted well" is whether the mould lines were removed before painting, not what happened afterwards. Nobody tells beginners this and it is the single most useful sentence in this article.
3. Plastic glue if your models are plastic, superglue if they are resin or metal. These are not interchangeable. Plastic glue melts and welds plastic together and does nothing at all on resin. Superglue sticks anything and is brittle.
4. Primer. Spray or brush-on, black, white or grey. Paint does not stick to bare plastic or resin properly. Skipping primer is the reason a model chips the first time it goes in a case, and it is the most-skipped step by people who then conclude they are bad at painting.
5. Six paints. Not sixty. A dark tone, a mid tone, a metal, a skin, a white and a black. You can mix nearly everything else, and you will learn more in three months from mixing six colours than from owning ninety.
6. Two brushes. A size 1 or 2 for almost everything, and a cheap larger one for basecoating and drybrushing which you are allowed to destroy. That is genuinely it.
What to Skip Entirely at the Start
An airbrush. It is a fantastic tool and it is not a beginner tool. It adds compressor, cleaning, thinning and troubleshooting to a hobby you have not started yet.
A wet palette, until you have painted about five models and noticed your paint drying on the palette. Then it becomes the best twenty dollars in the hobby. Not before.
Ninety paints. The starter ranges are seductive and most of those pots will dry out unopened. Buy colours when a model needs them.
Expensive brushes. A beginner destroys brushes, because brush care is a learned skill. Learn it on cheap ones.
Anything described as "essential" by somebody selling it. Including, in fairness, us, if we ever start stocking it.
The One Thing Worth Real Money
Light.
Not a product, a condition. Most people paint in a badly lit corner in the evening and then wonder why the model looks wrong in daylight. A decent daylight-temperature lamp will improve your painting more than any paint range, any brush, and certainly any airbrush.
If you take one thing from this article, take that one. It costs less than a squad and it is the only recommendation here that has no downside.
The Order to Actually Do It In
- Clip the pieces off the sprue. Leave a little plastic, do not cut flush against the model.
- Trim the leftover nub and the mould lines with the knife. Take your time here. This is the step that pays off.
- Assemble, or do not. Some models are far easier to paint in pieces, especially anything with a cloak or a separate arm across the chest. There is no rule saying you must build first.
- Prime, thinly. Two light coats beat one thick one, and a thick coat fills the detail you just spent time cleaning up.
- Basecoat, then shade, then highlight. That is the whole method. Everything else is a refinement of those three steps.
- Base the model. Even sand and a wash makes a model look finished. An unbased model always looks unfinished no matter how well painted.
The Advice Nobody Gives
Paint the model you are going to play with, not the one you are afraid of.
Everybody's first instinct is to start on the cheapest, least interesting model so as not to "waste" the good one. Then they paint six boring models, get bored, and stop.
Paint the one you bought the game for. You will care more, you will take longer, and it will look better because of it. The rank and file will still be there afterwards and you will be better at painting when you get to them.
And finish one model. One. Completely, including the base. A finished single model teaches you more than nine half-finished ones and it is the thing that makes people carry on.
Where to Get This Stuff
Not from us. We do not stock any of it, and we would rather say so than pretend the question does not come up.
Any local hobby or game store will have all six items, and if you are buying in person you can ask somebody to point at the right glue, which is worth more than reading about it. Online, all of the major paint ranges have a starter set that covers most of the list.
If we do start stocking hobby supplies, this article will be the first place we say so, and it will be an update to this page rather than a new one, so it is worth bookmarking if you are in the market.
Or Do Not Do It At All
One more honest option, because this article has spent a thousand words on a hobby not everybody wants.
You do not have to paint. Malabor Paints are a husband and wife commission team we work with and use ourselves, based in Central Florida and happy to ship out of state. They will take on any model type. If you would rather spend your evenings playing than priming, that is a completely reasonable choice, and this is how you make it. Tell them Extra Turn Games sent you.
And Then Come Back
Once you have the six things, we have written a proper walkthrough of painting a resin model, using a Moonstone miniature, which goes step by step through a real model rather than a general method.
So what is the model you have been not-painting because you were waiting until you had the right kit? You need six things and one of them is a lamp. Go and get it done.
Happy painting.