By Keith Pogue

Holy Cow! I have a game tonight and I forgot to paint those two monsters. Time for some speed painting! Speed painting is a great tool for the beleaguered game master or the would be miniature army commander. Even in the era of pre-painted plastic miniatures speed painting has its place. There are many models not available pre-painted, and nearly anyone can speed paint to a higher quality than the plastics.

To better understand how to speed up the painting process, it is beneficial to examine the factors that make miniature painting a slow process. The main culprits in slowing painting are highlighting, shading, admiring, and selecting colors. The key to speed is to work continually and to cut out steps. The method I am sharing with you has the added benefit as serving as a base for later painting if you so choose. So you will not have to strip it to paint it later.
The first step for this speed painting method is to prime your figures white. I suggest spray priming them as paint will bite onto most spray primers a bit better. The primer must be opaque and completely cover the figure.

Pick your color scheme completely. If you are in a hurry use a reference from a Monster Manual or perhaps a picture from the figure creator's website. The example Grimlocks I am painting are old Wizards of the Coast Chainmail figures that are out of production. However, they have reference cards with paint jobs right on them. I will be lazy and use those as my base. Select the paints you will need and set them aside. Assuming you have a decent selection of paint, do not mix any colors at all. You are choosing the base colors, the hues that lie between your shades and highlights.
Set-up a clock and keep track of time. Force yourself to continue painting and avoid the stop and admire pauses. Now block in your base colors with thinned down paint. Avoid highlighting or shading. The thinned down base colors are a bit transparent and the raised areas will have naturally highlights on the white primer with no extra work. Your paint job will not be perfect, it will be uneven, and that is perfectly fine - resist touching it up and just leave it.
These two Grimlocks took 18 minutes to block in their base colors. The skin is a darker color than I intended, but oh well I push on!

Apply thinned Vallejo Smoke with at least 50% water/Future Floorwax Acrylic and apply it to the entire model with a large brush. Do not be shy, slop it on your entire model. The thinned Smoke settles in the cracks and created natural shaded areas. This process took me about a minute, including thinning paint, for the Grimlocks. I noticed I had filled in two tears on one of the loincloths, but as I was painting quickly the skin color had not dried on my palette and I just dabbed a bit in.

Next, I picked out some details like the tongues, the teeth, and the nails. This little detail work only took 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Yes, I used a stop watch; high school track coaches, like me, always have them laying around. The little details do not take much time and add a lot to the figures' appearances. These are simple figures, so I did most of the details. However, on more complicated figures just choose two or three prominent details and pick them out.

I paint the bases with thinned black, which takes me 90 seconds or so. If I were painting these figures again soon I would be done at this point after a coat of flat varnish.

The reality is I will not touch these figures again. They will see limited time on the table and I am satisfied with their appearance. I finish them with a quick basing job, and here you see the final product.

My total painting and basing time on these Grimlocks was less than 30 minutes. They are not going to win any contests, but they are perfect for the table and they are better than anything I could purchase pre-painted. Speed painting works even better for larger groups of figure where drying takes place as you are painting other figures down the line. I purposefully speed paint from time to time to re-charge my painting batteries. When the intricate work and thin layering is becoming frustrating, I set the miniature aside and grab a fistfull of mooks for some instant gratification speed painting! Even figures you plan on spending time on later can be re-painted with a really nice base coat already in place. Try it soon and let me know how it goes!

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Keith Pogue (pogre) has been painting miniatures since 1981. Although a fine painter he is no where close to world class, however, he has taught two other painters who have gone on to achieve fame as figure painters. A teacher and a coach, Pogue is a recovering attorney who really enjoys his summers off. Pogue's goal for his series of painting articles is "to provide tips anyone can use at the painting table tomorrow."