My Painting Table: Where All the Fun Begins!

Part of the hobby aspect of miniature gaming is assembling and painting up your models for the battlefield. This requires all manner of hobby supplies. From clippers and files to glue and paint pots, having a dedicated area to work on your miniatures goes a long way to enjoying the process and makes organizing your supplies easier.

Now, this area can be as simple as a desktop or portion of the kitchen table. Even a shoe box and box top can make a great painting area. The point is to have a space where you can work on your models from start to finish that makes this a fun and rewarding project for you. For me, it is a corner table in my soon-to-be game room. Now, wherever your place is, the most important advice I can give on its location is make sure it is well lit. To me, lighting is one of the more crucial aspects of assembling and, more importantly, painting miniatures. Proper lighting allows you to see the miniatures better, see the colors sufficiently, and to overall see what you doing. It can be disheartening to have worked on a model to completion and bring it outside and then you notice a paint blemish, piece of flash, or mold line that you thought you got got rid of. My light set up consists of the room light, a desk lamp, and a third light the extends over my back shoulder. As you can see from the photos, I prefer the desk lamp to be higher than most, as I like that lamp to provide the most light. The shoulder lamp helps fill in any shadow areas as I move the model around. Combined the lights really define how accurate my color hues are. This is why I use white bowls as my paint palettes. I can see what the paint color truly is.

I also find having ample area to work handy. I know I am not the norm, but having space to put boxes, trays, primer boxes, etc. is very helpful when trying to manage several models at once. I often have many projects going at once (which explains why I have some many incomplete armies!) and the space help me keep them, organized. (Where are Lassider's Lizardmen, I wonder? :-)

With our upcoming Warmachine/Hordes campaign soon approaching, I will be assembling and painting a small Blindwater Congregation army to plunder the land of Firecanium and slaughter my opponents. More on that campaign later, but I will document my progress with this army here on the Dojo. So here are the beginning models ready for assembly. Check back to see how it turns out!

Strength and Honor,

-Wicked