Whether you paint miniature military figurines or fantasy figurines or you use your miniatures for Dungeon and Dragon table top playing painting them very much enhances the enjoyment you get out of them.

Painting Miniatures is something that I have been doing for years and it brings me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. It is a rewarding hobby in itself, but I don't paint the miniatures just to have them look good as stand alone creations. I paint my miniatures so they can be added to a diorama or scene that I have created.

There is something about a well painted miniature that just brings it to life! This warhorse is the miniature we paint in this tutorial.

This tutorial Will take you through the steps in painting miniatures and will show you some nifty little tricks and tips that will help you to do some really nice work.

If you came to this webpage directly from a search engine and you are also interested in Dioramas I do have some great tutorials on how to make them. What better way to show off your miniatures than to build a great diorama. The How to Make a Diorama tutorial Home page There you will find lots of great diorama stuff including how to make a real professional looking diorama or how to make simple dioramas like a shoebox diorama.

I also have a tutorial on how to sculpt your own Miniatures
This is an in- depth series of tutorial including videos that shows you how to sculpt fantasy miniatures and gives you the practice, techniques, skills, and tips needed to do a good job of it. How to Sculpt Fantasy Miniatures

New Tutorial on Painting Miniatures : The Spartan Warrior; This miniature is a series of spartans for the 300 Diorama. - This tutorial for miniature painting starts here

So you have some miniuatures and maybe they are something like these. This picture shows a miniautre Bowman, a Miniature Horse and a Miniature Polearm soldier. The penny is in the picture so you can get an idea of the scale. Miniatures come in many different scales and that doesn't matter too much for our tutorial on how to paint them.

What do You need to Paint Miniatures? Here is a list of suggested Materials and Tools

Before we actually start painting our miniatures we need to talk a bit about the tools and how to manage, hold and manipulate your miniatures. The tools you use have a big impact on how your miniatures come out and also have a big impact on your comfort level while you are painting them. Painting miniatures can be very tedious and you should have a selection of tools that makes it easier for you to do. I can't stress this enough! I recommend you put together a small toolbox of tools specifically for you miniature work.

Here are some of the tools I use to paint miniatures. This is a suggested basic set. Let me describe them and what they do.

The Tools from left to right

• Two small files, fingernail files work good for this - this is necessary to trim and polish any excess metal on your miniatures
• Tweezers - Just come in handy
• X-acto knife or small razor knife - Helps in cutting excess metal from your miniature
• Grabber Tool - I don't know what this tool is called but it is great! It has little grabber hooks and in the picture it is holding a miniature. This makes it so much easier to paint (My thanks to Tony for tracking down one of these grabber tools and finding out the right name! It is called a "Claw pickup tool" You can get them any number of places including amazon.com: OEM 25291 Four Claw Pick Up Tool
• A small vise - if you don't have a grabber tool a vise works pretty good to hold your miniature while you paint it
• Awl - this is a pointed little tool like a nail with a handle - it really helps to manipulate small parts of the miniature and to move paint around and even define the metal parts a bit
• Needle nose pliers - really handy
• Magnifying glass - must have and if you have one of those big desk sized ones with the light its even better

Note: If you don't have a grabber tool or a small vise you still need to devise some sort of way to hold your model firmly while you paint it. It is very difficult to hold it with one hand and paint with the other. You will just smudge the paint with your fingers no matter how careful you are.

Here's a nice little trick you can use if you dont have a clamp or vise - Wrap tape backwards around a piece of wood. By backwards I mean wrap it so the sticky side is out. Then you can stick your miniatures right to it.

This is a pretty handly little trick because then you can sit in a comfortable chair and you don't have to lean over a table or a vise. You can use any type of tape like electrical, masking, double sided or even cellophane.

Continue on to the tutorial on how to Paint Miniatures - The Paints and Supplies

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