20 minute how-to for painting check patterns. I've picked an old goblin from the Avatar of War range to demonstrate it works reasonably well on a very small area. Plus I really need to start painting this guy ...
Prime the figure white.
I want to do a black and white effect on the sword and hat, so I'm going to start with a nearly black basecoat - mine's black with a little brown and purple added. It may seem wrong, but it's easier to tidy up my messy painting at the end using black instead of lots of white over black.
Stripes next. Using an off-white, I've painted these a little thicker for visibility than I would if pushing for a higher quality model. But hopefully you can see I've taken time to draw reasonably neat lines.
This is also the point where you can check your paint consistency. You want less water in the mix than you may think. It needs to be controllable, without running away from you - but not so thick you see marks in the paint. Practice your control.
I don't paint a full checkerboard pattern, because then you're left filling in tiny, unequal spaces. Bear with me again here!
Think of the stripes as creating rows. Let's create our first square. Top left corner of row one. To do this you should paint downward strokes from the top of the first row to the bottom of the first row. Don't try painting sideways, just turn your miniature round!
Now repeat the process across the whole row. Move to the second row and paint in the spaces you left behind. This gives you a clean edge on each square as you move down the rows.
Final touch of pure white along what will be the upper edge, just to add an edge highlight. It won't be very noticable, but it'll help.
It's a little scruffy and I need to tidy up. So now this is where the almost-black mix from the beginning comes back in. Same process again, but on black squares this time. As the final touch, add a line of pure black along the upper edge of each black square.
And that's it. You're done. Now I just need to complete the rest of the model ...