How I Got Good FAST! The Secret of Painting! 

The Mantis is from the 'Ignis Quadrant' by EC3D Design. It was a Kickstarter a few years back, lots of good models for Starfinder :)

I felt exactly the same just getting back into the hobby after a decade plus hiatus. I painted 10 Admech Rangers, really enjoyed the process, patted myself on the back, and straight away wanted to do something different, which lead me to painting The Hedonites of Slaanesh and trying out oil paints for the very first time.

I love Reaper's metal miniature line. I have a reserve of primed Reaper minis, so whenever I hit a painting slump I'll take one of those Reaper characters and just do something different. It's very refreshing. I encourage everyone to occasionally try painting some random character that is not attached to any game or project.

0:50 lol... I stayed away from "groups" of units as much as possible, only doing mass painting when it came to board-game minis. I usually paint individuals, which helped me stay away from paint-schemes until much later. It's cool to hear about the journey in the opposite way.

Well said guys! I've been putting this into practice painting up a retro Heroquest box recently, just in fun weird ways! Its been a huge help getting back into the hobby and not burning out!

Love the evolution on your painting journey

Good advice. As with everything, one has to remember better is the eternal enemy of good. Doesn't mean one should not try to improve, but there are tiers. Just like not everyone is as fast as Bolt, not everyone can be a Giraldes. Making YOUR models/army is way more important then trying to achieve levels you will never achieve. Specially when you paint twice a month for 2 hours and try to achieve levels of people whose job is to paint.

Very good advice Jay ! In my case some of the greatest skill building "experience" and skills came from painting models that had no "consequences" in my on going long term projects because it freed me up to try and work on new techniques and skills and make some mistakes. It allowed me to paint bravely. In fact one of the best uses for my 3D printer was the ability to make "test" models that removed even more fear of failure because I could "just print another" if I really screwed one up. Yeah, I could have painted over it or stripped it, too. I just anted to keep some examples of bad outcomes to keep things real. When one prints a model it becomes a lot more reasonable to do this price wise because the model costs only the cost of the plastic/resin and time printing. Rock on with your bad self bro !!!

That Fallout figure is excellent, nice

I agree. When I bought some extra minis outside of my 40k army, I started taking a lot more risks and expanding my technique. My favorites come from Raging Heroes and Puppetswar

I've been taking a solid break from GW and painting random malifeaux or whatever has caught my eye, and the random models I've been doing has been a blast

I just put together a Primaris Lieutenant for practice - not my army, but I had him lying around by chance. I'll start painting him tomorrow once the wood glue dries.

Literally just had the same revelation that I had to stop batch painting so many models in a short period of time. Thanks for the vid.

Genuinely one of my favourite people's in the hobby. Just a joy.

Your enthusiasm and dedication to the craft is inspiring :)

Recently finished my first ever kitbash. The fafnir rann model into a berserker champion. And I had so much fun making him chaosy that I want to do more kitbashing. An idea thats been rattling around in my head is dioramas for some of my favourite characters from book and series. Like b*tch and her dogs, the fairy queen and her ghosts. Grue in his darkness cloud

Coming into the game I started with DG council of the death lord box, plague marine box, blightlord terminator box, deathshroud terminator, 2 blighthaulers and a plague burst crawler. I was seen DG green in my dreams half way through the project. I needed a break so I went to the local game store and instead if going to the 40k section I sifted into the D&D minis and found a Beholder that just made me actually wanna paint. I got the little guy staring me down whenever I paint right in my face to remind me to take a break for the core of the project and divert to somewhere that is more interesting at the time.

I recently began painting models that catch my eye, so much fun!!

Great video. I recently started painting random D&D models just to paint something different than my Bloody Rose sisters. This is great advice.

Almost all of my favourite paint jobs are minis I picked up and thought "I don't care about this one, I'll just have some fun relaxing paint time"

That feeling of putting in a lot of time for a model is one I just experienced, yeah it's probably the best one I've ever done and I did some new things. But it wasn't all that enjoyable due to the pressure I put myself under

Those are some seriously gorgeous miniatures!

Great advice man. I recently bought a 3d printer and i got distracted by all the possibilities and started downloading free stl files but never printing them. One group of sculpts all ways came back. So now I decided to print them. Skaven guard is my new project. On a FDM printer just to prove you don’t need a resin printer

I agree. I get bored painting the same type of minis and the same colors. That's why my main army are chaos demons, they are colorful and have different sculpts all of the army. I even went a step further and painted each model in a unit differently (at least different shades of the same color). And most importantly I wrote down how I achieved all the color combinations so I can replicate the ones I like later. Now I am switching from demons to Drukhari to paint some edge highlights on all those that spiky armor. And every one is a different color combination (I have a lore reason for that). It is taking me ages to paint them, but I enjoy it very much!

Fixer's cloak is wonderful. I do like to paint some different minis from time to time too, it's a breath of fresh air and helps keep the creative juice flowing.

I found the marvel crisis protocol game as a nice way of being forced to paint different colours. Everyone has their own unique coloured costumes that are meant to be different materials, and theres both human skin tones and alien skin tones. One day it was painting wood with Groot, the next was black leather with Black widow. It was expensive having to get new paint with each model but it really made me grow in skill.

Your channel is amazing; thanks for your great videos - I love your intro music too!

Other people forcing me out of my comfort zone is what makes me better. Last month I did a commission for someone who wanted a tiger person. I would have never done anything like tiger stripes for myself, but I accepted the challenge and it turned out great!

Bought the Darkest Dungeon Boardgame for this exact reason, simply as a fan of the art and everything else is a bonus. Cant wait to get it. Especially the Plague Doctor, speaking of which, the Reaper models are some of the best looking ones around and yours is stunning.

This is a big deal. Great concept. I tend to work on several different concepts/models simultaneously.

Heck yeah, dude! The first minis I ever bought were the Enclave Tesla troopers from the Fallout game. I still love them and the fallout games, especially New Vegas

Your right dude, gotten much better by painting random Blood Bowl models for a friend

I think that makes a lot of sense; so far I’ve only used terrain as an “enthusiasm recharger”, but little rando cuties would work great!

Hi Jay just picked up the new Maugan Ra just to paint him...I no play Eldar. Keep up the great work.

Amazing tips, Im going to try painting some random cool indie models. The little robot dude looks like Lord Helmet from Space Balls!

this video was a really good reminder that the hobby, can be about fun, experimenting and growth! it's too easy to let painting become a slog

You should paint the screen of the robot with a TV show, ( I personally like an Ork puppet show) then do the neon signs.

How to be good by Jay: take a risk and find out you are an amazing painter.

2:13 Everyone just Audibly gasped when they realized it's free hand

that mantis man is a starfinder model i think? looks like one

Glad to see some Fallout New Vegas love. It's absolutely my favorite game of all time. Glad to hear about your inspirations and how your painting changed over the years. I just got into the hobby and I think my work is looking a lot better than I ever thought. Love your vids! You got a sub.

unplanned experimentation is actually how i started my tyranid army. I wanted to paint something that wasn't space marines and admech, and bought a tyranid lictor. and now tyranids are my favourite army in warhammer

In a similar vein, try painting stuff in a different scale! Painting some airplanes or spaceships or other epic scale (aka 6mm) or try painting something larger scale, a bust or 74mm scale mini. Cars Wars/Gaslands can also be an interesting departure from regular painting. Gunpla can also be an interesting breath of fresh air.

I play forces of Nature for Kings of War. Few of my units share the same publisher. My first army painting is painting all different stuff x)

Is that plague doctor just called plague doctor? She would be a pretty sweet model for one of my Pathfinder characters.

100%! I started seriously cutting into my pile of shame at the beginning of the pandemic. Bounced around a lot of projects at once to stay motivated rather than get bogged down on one long project.

If you are having fun, then you are hobbying correctly.

The neon and OSL etc you could have on that fixer would be wicked!

i remember all of these, the good ol days :)

great vid, couldn't agree more

I'm in a funk where I'm too tired and hurting when I come home from my crap soul sucking job to be creative. Because of that I've been more "collecting" than building and painting.

Paint that which sparks joy 😊

Immediately thought about FTL when I saw the mantis, yay!

do you have a video on the thatching technique, you used on the purple cloak ?

I am doing this with army painting. I am subscribed to one page rules and decided to do 1500 points of every army they come out with (roughly 750 warhammer) and for each army I am picking two different styles to mix together. Alien hive, zenithal and lots of washes that blend together, tau heavy black lining comic book style, Eternal Dynasty airbrush and pastel soft core pencil, robot legion airbrush and dry brushing. Keeps if fun I really should just build a random app that throws together a handful of techniques and maybe even matching color schemes.

Annnd now switching to your perfect bullet casings video

Holy cow is that RISK PVZ? I need it now.

Fire, your encouraging me to paint more minis

i'd love to see you cover more wasteland warfare, the new vegas NCR faction is available and look great

Think you'll do a video of how you do the "thatching"? It looks amazing on your model. When i try it always comes out too thick and just not right. lol

This channel uploads while I’m at school so I can come home to 3 uploads per week! It’s great! But, if you two feel burned out from painting or RU-vid I think the community would be fine if you took a break. Especially if you kept streaming.

I painted my first HQ like 8 months

Been holding out on infinity models. Im gonna buy them now :)

I have a whole bunch of cool reaper and other misc minis I should paint. First on my list is Edna the crazy cat lady from reaper

I miss the part the part where you got the awesome gunner in green from? Looks brilliant

Great topic but would be interested in the detail of how you achieved the results such as techniques and practices

Every last one of my space marines has a different paint scheme. In my head, they are just encouraged to customize their armor, like spartans from halo

Just paint in the lines and dunk it in earthshade. BOOM.

Where did you obtain that sweatshirt? I need it!

I would've painted up the EOD Gunner like the Dozer from Payday 2, would've been dope

Lots about painting is "blue collar" attitude necessary (show up and do the work) which builds the discipline, but spreading your wings and experimenting with things that have minimal consequences is important.

Where can I get that Fixer mini? It reminds my of Saga comic book and I need it.

Variety is the spice of life!!

Why in the intro are your black templars in a yellow disguise? Also how did you get good at RU-vid in terms of branding and editing?

One of my biggest hobby frustrations is how my skills seem to be going backwards. I've been painting miniatures on-and-off for about twenty years, and I'm finding that even the basics make me struggle in ways they never used to: undercoats have lousy coverage, basecoats are patchy, highlights are all over the place. There was a time I was even making some progress into blending, but now that just doesn't work at all. I've got cases full of half-finished projects because I just can't stand working on them anymore.

I'm calling it now

I thank you for your videos,and for not captioning it "git gud"

How did you do the curb? It amps the road base up to another level

variety is the spice of life

I still don’t understand highlights tbh I get what How to paint highlights but I still can’t do it.

Nuka Girl just the right level of T H I C C

See title, watch ork intro. Done. All hail Earthshade!!!!!

You need to do something with your hair, I don't know, perm it into small curls and trim it into ball shape. Those happy little accidents won't happen by themselves, you know?

5:25 it's Dr. Mantis Toboggan

What’s your favorite faction In new vegas

darkest dungeon mini! wow

NukaCola Girl always Jimmies My JANGLES!!

He's going to say practice isn't he

The secret of how i got decent fast, was to just getting to know all the techniques and tools from youtube videos, wetpallette, thinning paints, more than one layer, drybrushing, wet blending, edge highlighting, moldscraping, drilling barrels and so on. so it's really strange to me when i see paint jobs not getting the basics right, when we have so much knowledge so easily accessible on the internet. i'd say 65% of getting a model to look decent/good, is just knowing ''how to'' the rest is training and how artistic you are.

Fallout new Vegas is life. The only game I play anymore.

The teenage mutant salamander

But where is the claw dude from the thumbnail ☹️

Step 1: Paint 700 minis in one year.

it's kind of funny how he calles the plague doctor he while the mini have breast.

Yea, he looks deceased now

Yeah fallout

How do you pant ork Nobz because I want to paint them but the videos are very clear on how to do it they are like two hours each

Didn't you also go to art school or something though?

You gotta get a resin printer

I thought the plague doctor was a girl?