The 90 Minute Minute Man (Speed painting challenge)

Travel tools!

Well, I went away to Napier for the Highlander Tournament. Being a fool I decided to

A.) Change my list the night before the tournament

and B.) Buy and paint a new warjack the evening before the tournament started.

This was met with a chorus of "YOU MAD CRAZY FOOL" by many of those who travelled to the tournament. I was also determined not to miss out on dinner/drinking or socialising.

I left the dinner early and went back to our accommodation to glue the model together. I had brought all the supplies I needed from home and arranged them on a handy table in the room. I had really bad light to work by.






















I rapidly assembled the Minuteman with glue purchased the night before, took roughly 30 minutes to do and was probably the most annoying part of the model. The base is an old 40k land speeder base that I chopped up with clippers and then surrounded with a clump of Milliput.

The base is drilled into the model using a small drill and wire and fixed in place with green stuff. I also grabbed some green stuff and rolled in "jet exhausts" which i fixed to the model. I then went and had some beers with everyone after they got back from dinner.























After 4 or 5 beers I went upstairs and under-coated the model with a brush, which is not the best technique ever, but I didn't feel comfortable using a spray at rented accommodation. The key to the undercoat with a brush was to get it covered without obscuring everything. It took a little retouching (And being able to paint it on the base was helpful). After this I went to bed.

Getting up in the morning I had to at least base coat the model for the first rounds (I didn't take any photos of this though, so all i have are "in game" shots from the day).

Three colours, Tin Bitz, Macgragge blue, and Leadbelcher. The key to painting fast is this stage and it is this.

Don't care about going over the lines.

Just go for it, get the basic areas covered in paint, if you slip up you can always retouch it later. To base coat the model I used a citadel basecoat brush and lathered on the paint (watered down of course.... having a sink in my room was very hand).























After day one was over I really didn't care about finishing off the paint job and spent the evening hanging out with the other tournament go'ers (And having AWESOME BBQ...... yeah.... awesome..... pfffft). Late in the evening I headed off to bed but the local nightclub was still playing music so decided to pain some more.

The pic on the left was from when I finished up, the base and inks are still wet. The key to doing detail quick is wet blending.

Those blue areas have three or four sets of highlights, all done within a short space while the paint is still wet. I simply get a big blob of blue on my palette and do each layer of highlighting one after the other with thin watered down paint. It all blends in and looks very smooth even though its basically cheating.

The metal area are even simpler, one highlight, one layer of ink and one layer of fine dry brushing the morning after (see photo on right).

Having the Minuteman at least basically painted on day one, and almost finished on day two was a good feeling for me. I hate playing with unpainted models, but I also wanted to spend time with the other guys playing the tourney. Painting quickly allowed me to do both, which was great fun.

Oh, there will be a battle report coming soon, Forbidden temple - A tale of two days.