MATERIALS

Materials.

    Probably the best place to start here is with a quick look at the materials I use.

Paints

          "Certain companies" will try to tell you that only their particular brand of paints are any good. That's a load of rubbish. Most good brands of acrylic paints are absolutely fine.

The most common are those of the "certain company" -Games Workshop, which though undeniably excellent quality, are very expensive . There are also Vallejo -excellent, Humbrol/Revell, Coat d'Arms, Ral Partha's "Miniature Paints". I've not used the Reaper Miniatures paints yet but they are supposed to be really good. I use all of the above with a preference for Ral Partha because of the price -there's a chap on Ebay selling 30ml bottles (TWICE the size of most others) for £1.75 each.

         In addition to these, there are various ranges of artists acrylics, oils, inks and alkyds, modelling enamels and craft paints, all of which have their place in a figure painters armoury. Even decorators emulsion has its uses.    

         It is possible to buy colours in sets specially designed  for shading with a "shadow", "base" and "highlight" colour to each set and whilst these will do the job, your army will come out looking exactly the same as everyone else's. Perhaps that's the way players like to be now though. I much prefer to mix the colours for each regiment as it gives them individuality.

        In addition to the paints themselves, I've found it important to have good quality varnishes - matt, as glossy as you can get, matting agent and something like a good clear nail polish which is ideal for coating printed/water based flags.

Brushes

    These are as important as the paints you use. You will need a selection of sizes down to 4/0 and in a variety of materials -good quality sable (take care of them) for most work, stiff, fine acrylic for spots of colour, cheap soft brushes for colour washes and cheap stiff brushes for stippling, basing etc.

I like the JP Perkins sable brushes as they are a good quality brush at a reasonable price. They hold their points well and don't seem to swell like some modellers brushes do. 

Pens.

      These are something that most people don't think about using on figures. Have a selection of waterproof drawing pens from 0.5 down to 0.05 in black, and 0.1 and 0.05 in red blue, green, sepia, "sanguine" and others. Perhaps one of the most useful sizes is a "brush" pen as you can vary the width of line by the angle at which you use it.

Staedler, Sakura "Micron" and Rotring Tikkygraph will all do. The best one is the Rotring Isograph but these are very expensive -particularly when you drop them point down! A black permanent marker (the chisel nibbed type) is also very useful for things like wheel rims and the iron-work on cannon. White "gel pens" in various sizes are useful for edging and lacing if, like me, your hands are no longer as steady as they once were and your eyesight has lost some of it's depth perception. All these pens are great because, unlike brushes, they don't spread if you apply a little too much pressure

Other Materials.

There are a few other things you will need..

Material for basing. I use mounting board for 15mm figures but something like 2mm MDF is fine for larger figures or larger bases.

Files, craft knives and side cutters for preparing figures.

A "dremel" type drill is very handy.

A selection of adhesives -PVA, Contact, "Superglue" and epoxy

A selection of railway modellers scenic materials -hardcore, scatter, static grass etc. plus tetrion for basing.

A number of corks (for larger or single figures)

Thin card -the backing card from figure packs is ideal. This is for temporarily basing figures during painting 

I think that's about it. I'll add more later if need be.

Austrian Staff

Bonaparte, Staff and Bodyguard

         One thing you really WILL need is a good book on the period. Start building up a library of books on the uniforms, battles, personalities and general history of your chosen period. These will help not just with painting your army, but in deciding it's composition, the tactics you will use on the games table and perhaps even in writing rules that suit YOU, not the ideas of some commercial rules/games company.