Hey look here’s my paint station wow so cool. Note my brush case, it used to hold some fancy German coloured pencils but got repurposed.

Whose idea was this whole consistent content thing, I’ve got a bone to pick with them.

Hey everyone, here’s a new thing that’s gonna be my regular kind of post on this blog. I really don’t have the time to do full in-depth reviews or painting tutorials with step by step pictures for everything I paint (don’t worry, I will still do those, just not as frequently). So, enter my new series: Hobby Blogs. I’ll gab a bit about what I’ve been up to with hobbying lately, do a quick review of anything I’ve bought, throw in a couple pics of the most recent miniatures I’ve painted with the recipes I used to paint them at the end and boom. Easy content that’s hopefully useful to people.

To start off this series, here’s a look at my painting station (he’s already resorted to showing off his paint station for content in the first month, we’re doomed). It’s in my library (yes I have my own personal library, I have a very large house and read a lot), and it doubles as my writing desk. For that reason, it can’t be a paint station full time so I have an old chest of drawers from Ikea that I keep all my paints (well, at least all the paints I use. I have a lot more in my attic) and other equipment such as palettes, brushes, knives, etc in. Anyway, consider this something of a tutorial on how you can keep everything you need to paint in some drawers that fit under your desk.

I know the shot is tilted its totally supposed to be a Dutch angle ok.

I need another chest of drawers to keep all my unpainted minis in, right now most of them are in the attic along with all my non-D&D games and such while the few I’m working on are just piled around my desk. No point to that sentence beyond me talking to myself. Enjoying the quality content so far?

Top drawer.

In the top drawer, I keep all of my Formula P3 paints as they’re my new favourite brand, as well as a bunch of my Citadel paints, including their two best colour ranges (reds and browns). Citadel is probably gonna keep getting pushed further down as I get more P3, as their aforementioned reds are their only paints I prefer over P3’s. And they have a bunch of unique brown tones that P3 don’t have that I will probably keep up there as well.

Second drawer. Yes I took this photo at night so I had to aim my desk light at it and now half of its in shadow wheee.

My second drawer is entirely Citadel. Most of this was in my top drawer before I got P3 paints. It’s all the rest of the standard acrylics, along with the (old formula) washes and metallics, plus some Dry paints. Yeah, I’ve got a full collection of the universally beloved old formula Shades: These are just the ones in use, I have at least one to three unopened pots of all of them. I’ve got a full 6 pots of Agrax Earthshade, in fact.

Third drawer.

The third drawer contains some 40-odd Vallejo paints and the 10 or so Army Painter paints I actually use. I do have more paints from both brands, but those are relegated to the attic box of shame due to their habit of being absolute shit. I’ve also got a small box with my hobby tools and glues in here, as well as various containers of basing materials. Plus a few extra unopened pots of P3 paint I’ve stocked up on are lurking in the back there.

Bottom drawer man this is one boring post.

Lastly here’s the big bottom drawer. You can’t see all the stuff I’ve got in here cause its stacked, but this is where I keep my palettes, brushes, water pots, paper towel, and also this nice Christmas cookie box where I store all my WIP minis.

So yeah, I keep my entire paint station in one average sized chest of drawers. So if your excuse for not painting is “I don’t have enough room for a paint station”, think again. Yeah ok most of my minis are kept elsewhere but still.

Finally, here’s the the paint recipes I used to paint a Skaven clanrat using only P3 paints and Agrax Earthshade. It’s a fairly simple, rather unimaginative speed paint that relies exclusively on the classic layering and edge highlighting techniques. The paint recipes are below, along with some tips for speed painting that I didn’t do here.

Photo is a bit shit, whatever.

Brown Fur – Basecoat Battlefield Brown, wash Agrax Earthshade, layer Battlefield Brown, highlight (on tufts of fur only) Beast Hide.
Skin – Basecoat Midlund Flesh, wash Agrax Earthshade, layer Midlund Flesh, highlight 60/40 Midlund Flesh and Menoth White Base.
Grey Cloth – Basecoat Ironhull Grey, wash Agrax Earthshade, layer Ironhull Grey, highlight (sparingly) Trollblood Highlight.
Red Cloth – Basecoat Skorne Red, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight Khador Red Base.
Wooden Weapon Hafts/Handles – Basecoat Bootstrap Brown, wash Agrax Earthshade.
Bindings – Basecoat Hammerfall Khaki, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight Hammerfall Khaki.
Silver Blades – Basecoat Pig Iron, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight Army Painter Shining Silver.

I picked out the teeth with Menoth White Base and the eyes with Khador Red Base, and also painted those little bits of cloth on his legs with Bog Moss. As evident, I washed the whole mini with Agrax Earthshade so if you want to copy this colour scheme I recommend doing all the basecoats first, washing the whole miniature with Agrax Earthshade, then applying all the highlights.

This isn’t a particularly imaginative colour scheme, and the techniques for every colour are the exact same boring old classic GW steps (basecoat, wash, layer, highlight). This is still one of my favourite methods of speed painting though, as it’s easy to tidy up and quick to do, even if it’s boring. When speed painting, I tend to do drybrushing and glazing where I can instead of just layering + edge highlighting everything like I did here, but with a mini comprised of so many medium to small sized areas drybrushing just wouldn’t work and the subtlety of glazing would be lost.

Citadel Colour conversions (if you want to follow the paint recipes for some reason):
Battlefield Brown = Dryad Bark
Beast Hide = Baneblade Brown
Midlund Flesh = Cadian Fleshtone
Menoth White Base: Ushabti Bone
Ironhull Grey = Mechanicus Standard Grey
Trollblood Highlight = Administratum Grey (kind of. Not really. But it’s the closest match I can find from Citadel)
Skorne Red = Mephiston Red (kind of)
Khador Red Base = Evil Sunz Scarlet
Bootstrap Brown = Gorthor Brown
Hammerfall Khaki = Karak Stone
Pig Iron = Leadbelcher
Army Painter Shining Silver = Stormhost Silver/Runefang Steel