Painting Battletech Miniatures, 1

I haven't done a series of posts about painting lately. The most recent was quite a while back when describing how to paint the Clan Wolf/Clan Wolf in Exile miniatures back in October 2014. Those posts showed basically how to paint the same scheme for those units, as opposed to looking at different approaches to painting for different types of schemes. Thus was born the idea for this post.

In this case, I have four different light 'mechs that will each be in a different scheme.

• Firefly: For the Wolf's Dragoons, which is a basic black with red accents.
• Firestarter (Dark Age): For the Lyran Guard, which is white on one side and a rich, royal blue on the other.
• Thorn: For Comstar (naturally), which is simply white. White, by the by, is never simple.
• Raven: For Marik Militia, which is a purple, with red and blue accents.

For all the miniatures, they are assembled and based pretty much like they would be out of the box. No reposing or anything. These sculpts tend to show motion anyway, so not much need to repose. Also, they have a black primer coat.

Firefly
Being basically black, the black primer can act as the basis for this paint scheme. By the by, using a colored primer that is close to the base color you want for the miniature can help speed things along, as it does in this case. Looking closely at the picture (above), you'll notice that it was dry brushed with a dark blue. In fact, it's the same dark blue used for the Firestarter. However, for the Firefly, the dry brushing was fairly light, leaving the black mostly visible.

Now the problem with a black miniature is that you want to highlight it, but at the same time not allow the highlights to overwhelm the black. This can happen regardless of using a dark grey or a dark blue as the highlights, which can make the miniature look like, well, like the picture here! At this stage, the Firefly looks more blue than black. This is okay, since the following steps will mute the blue.

Black, and white for that matter, both pose problems with highlighting and keeping the miniature appearing black or white. Some forgo the problem, especially for white, by not bothering with highlights at all. If you can, though, highlighting this can give a much better finished look.

Firestarter
The Firestarter was also dry brushed, but as opposed to the Firefly, this was put on heavily. There is no doubt that the left is to be white and the right in blue. The blue dry brushing uses the same dark blue as the Firefly, also put on pretty heavy, but also a light dry brushing of a medium blue, layered right on top. When dry brushing and changing colors, be sure the first layer dries completely, otherwise the colors will blend. This Firestarter also doesn't have a distinct line where the white ends and the blue begins. This is okay, and will be made more pronounced in later steps. Also, if the dry brushing covers a detail slightly, that's okay too, as it can be corrected later.

Thorn
White is always a challenge to paint. So, what might appear to be an easy paint scheme, like the simple white of Comstar, really isn't. This is like the white side of the Firestarter: heavy dry brush of white, being careful to not go overboard and obscure too many details and panel lines. We'll see how white becomes more difficult in later posts, but at this step, it's pretty easy.

As an aside, one might think that using a white primer for what will ultimately be a white 'mech miniature would be easier than starting with black. Well, no. You see, if you want to highlight the white properly, you'll need to start where there are many shades of white. Even if you didn't intend to highlight anything, painting in the panel lines would be a serious challenge, particularly for some 'mechs, like the Viking. You can see the Viking post here. Try painting that thing's panel lines one by one! Yikes!

Raven
The Raven is to be purple when finished, so a heavy dry brush of light purple is used. Why light purple? Well, this has to do with the next step. Kind of like the blue on the Firestarter, we want the purple to be lighter than we would expect for the finished product. Even the Firefly uses this approach, though with a much darker color, the dark blue. But in all three cases, the color on the miniature at this point is lighter than the finished product. Dark blue for the expected black Firefly, Lighter blue for the expected dark blue on the Firestarter. And light purple for the expected medium purple for the Raven.

In the picture below, I zoomed in on the Firefly and Firestarter. They both do use the same dark blue. You can tell by the brightest parts on the Firefly compared to the darkest parts on the Firestarter.

In Step 2, we'll be toning down those colors a bit using inks and washes. Well, except for those miniatures that will be white, i.e.: the Thorn and right side of the Firestarter.