#5: Paint
Here's where you can go wild...
Do you want to use aerosol, brush-on or airbrush?
Do you want oil-based enamels? water-based acrylics? solvent based lacquer?
What color Romulans do you want? SFU canon light grey? TNG canon green?
Once these questions have been answered, the rest is easy...
Apply your base coat (remember... sevral thin coats are superior to one thick coat!). The paint should have the consistency of milk... not as thick as straight from the pot, but not as thin as water either.
Once the base coat is dry, you can begin the finer details. Paint these slowly and carefully and then go back and touch up any oops with your base color.
#6: Brushes
This is another biggie. Always go for the best brushes you can find. A good, high-quality brush will last far longer than a cheap, stiff-bristled plastic brush. Andit'll give you a better finish as well.
Always clean the brush thoroughly, store it with the bristles up, and avoid getting paint / thinner / cleaner inside the ferrell [Ferrell - the small metal cap enclosing the upper end of the bristles] as this will loosen the bristles and cause the brush to shed. Usually right in the middle of the biggest, most visible flat surface on your miniature!!!
#6: Clear coat
Once you've completed the painting... the mini must be protected. Nothing is as upsetting as having the paint peel off a miniature while it's in play. There are two main types of clear coat available... gloss and matte, and both have there uses and both are usually used on every miniature.
The gloss coat provides a thick, smooth finish that's perfect for the application of decals, but many people (although not all) think the gloss finish gives the starships and "unrealistic" finish.
The clear coat dulls the colors to make them look more "natural", but it leaves a coarser finish (at a microscopic scale) that can lead to silvering of decals.
If you plan to decal your mini. most people will gloss coat the finished product, apply declas, and then matte coat it.
Again - the final choice is yours.
#7: Decals:
Some swear by them, some refuse to use them.
I paint 95% of my ministures by hand, but somethings just can't be done correctly with paint. Such as; The war circles on the Fed W era ships... the name / hull numbers of the Fed ships - Imperial insignias of the Gorn / Klingon / Hydran / Lyran empires, etc. In these instances, I resort to decals.
Romulan "heraldric" birds on the bellies of their ships, I paint by hand. Hydran fleet stripes - paint; Lyran cat camoflage - painted; Orion flames - painted; and so on.
If you decide to use decals, there are several good suppliers, although Mark Tutton has arguably the largest selection. Links to his site (and the others) can be found on this forum.
#8: Most importantly - Photos!
And after everythign is done - we want to see photos.
This went a bit longer than I had intended, butI hope it helps...
