althai Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 Ghool, when you say 20 hours for tabletop, that's like a large warjack or monster, right? Otherwise that's not tabletop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimreaper71 Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 It all depends on the kids 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evilhalfling Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 I think 3-6 hours is a good estimate for me, usually no more than 1-2 hours a day, but at least 2 days a week. Usually I am painting 2 at a time. I have been hitting the 5 minis a month goal pretty well this year. Dragons usually take a month. I did DDS2 in a week, but that was 4+ hours a day. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkmeer Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 (edited) I am relatively slow. My Abyzarran from a couple years ago took forever to paint, recently, I've converted to mostly tabletop to tabletop+ work, which cuts time down significantly. Here's a rough guesstimate: 25-50mm base (grunt, tabletop+): around 3-6 hours each group (3-6) 25 mm "boss" (high tabletop, very low display quality): about 10-12 hours. EACH 25mm display: About 18-25 hours. EACH 40/50mm takes about 1.5 times as long, with exceptions to that rule (I have a fire giant clocking at 35 hours right now). Over this has too few in the category. I have the Bones pathfinder Red Dragon and the Dragon of Fire from Bones 1, both of which took about 9 hours each to mid-high tabletop. Nethyrmaul has... countless hours. As does C'Thulu. And they're not done. at all. Edited May 27, 2016 by Darkmeer 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knarthex Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 (edited) It varies tremendously for me... Especially now with the days getting longer, and lots of time is being spent on the Yard, lawn, pool, etc.... I was averaging 5 to 10 or more when I joined up last July, but since taking the first steps on the path of learning to paint 'properly', as opposed to putting pigment on lead, this has slowed to about 5 28mm a month on average. It also depends on the mini, and not just size! I started messing around with my Ral Partha Takhisis on August 6th of 2015, and really fiddled here and there with her until just after Xmas, and then she got finished in about 30 days.... The show off went up on February 3, 2016.... Granted that she is a big mini with lots of issues, but there were days / nights that I just felt like doing something else... When it came to her Human Avatar, I started on 4 Feb 2016, and finished on 29 Feb 2016, and I worked on almost nothing else because I was pushing myself to do the absolute best paint job I could do... Agood way to see how fast folks are is to look in the Resolution paint Challenge to see how many minis people post a month, and to what level they are painting, as there are links to show offs and Wips as well... As you said, no right or wrong, just will, discipline, desire to paint, desire to finish THIS mini, starting THAT mini.... I also tend to have 4 or 5 projects going at once as well, and paint more on different minis depending on which one fits my mood best... Also I paint all my minis now to the best standard I can, unless I don't feel like working on that figure anymore, and decide that it is done, or close enough that I just finish quickly... I paint because I like to, and for the games, not for competition... I enter minis I have painted into competitions, I don't paint minis for competitions, as that would be, for me, a way to lose the fun aspect of painting... Sorry for rambling! George oh yeah, I have to learn to shut down the laptop, as I keep getting on the forums..... Edited May 27, 2016 by knarthex 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NomadZeke Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 My painting speed is glacial.... That's why I did the painting challenge month to month. To help people like me 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klarg1 Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 Empires rise and fall before I complete a project. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pragma Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 I usually finish a mini in 2-3 sessions of 2-3 hours each - depending on the size, and whether I sculpt a base, and the degree of quality I'm going for. Lately I have been trying to improve my speed while keeping the quality roughly the same. I aspire to one day join house tabletop. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Jack Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 Empires rise and fall before I complete a project. Mountains rise and fall before I get things done... However, that's often motivation rather than painting speed. Painting a relatively simple figure I can do decent tabletop in about four or five hours, assuming I can keep focused. If it's something more complex, with lots of details, I generally go about ten or twelve. Any serious project, it takes however long it takes, and usually a lot longer than planned. I'm a hack, so getting anything better than basic tabletop quality requires massive amounts of time from me. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marineal Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 I'm generally a fast painter if I have an idea and a goal. I can paint a mini to tabletop in usually about 2-4 hours. Now, I have to sit down and FIND 2-4 hours, which is the rub. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LittleBluberry Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 Generally I can paint a half-decent PC in about a week of 1-2 hour sessions. The real challenge is finding the energy, partly because I have to get everything out of the cupboard and set up my work space each time. It took only slightly longer to do the kobold set from Bones 1, mainly because they got less love and required less thought about colors. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
althai Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 I do most of my painting for competitions these days, so it varies a lot depending on whether we're talking competition or tabletop. Tabletop is usually 1-4 hours for a small-based figure. 1 means I'm doing speed-painting practice, 4 means I want a nice result but without going for competition quality. For competition, it's anywhere from 8-40 hours for a small-based figure, with the low end being figures which are for a unit or a less important part of a diorama, and the high end for figures in more competitive categories / conventions. Larger figures, vignettes, and dioramas will take proportionally more time. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grumpy Cave Bear Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 Normally I can paint 1 human-sized mini a week, given 1-2 hours per night. When I tried painting an army once, I was surprised to find that I could run through about 4-6 figures per week, mostly because I was painting the same details on identical figures, assembly-line fashion. I had the color scheme picked out at the start, and could get into a rhythm of dropping the same paint in the same place on mini after mini. The only thing that could stop my flow was running out of paint. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cranky Dog Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 This always feels like a trick question considering that I haven't painted anything in months. But when I do paint, I'd say I average 8-12 hours per mini. I think? My speed has gone both up and down with all the different techniques that I've learned and better tools that I've bought. Things like a nice Kolinsky sable brush and wet palette make things easier and faster. But discovering how to do layering and glazing, or realizing I can push the contrast even more, slowed me down greatly in exchange for nicer results. And sometimes, with my habit of painting several minis at once, I switch minis so that one can dry a bit while I work on the other one. Most often if when I paint identical models or groups that will share similar colour schemes. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattnuke Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 I guess I don't look at the total time very well. I would have said, 1-5 hours for a table top figure. Of course, that doesn't include priming, or basing, or initially reposing the figure (which I do a lot to prevent loads of identical clones). Unfortunately, I don't think we are all talking apples and apples here to compare. Differences in painting styles play a big part in the speed one can achieve (but keep practicing, you will get faster with practice). There's also the term 'table top'. It's a bit vague. I've seen table top jobs that are as simple as a base coat and a wash. What I consider 'table top' is a number (4-7) of wet blended layers. I find I can get more variation by blending right on the mini as I go. Lately I prime white, lay down my deepest base and go lighter from there. I pick out eyes and fiddly bits, and make sure they are all painted. I go back and paint some shadowing if needed. For me, that's about 2-4 hours of work on a medium sized mini. Larger figures take me less time (the canvase is BIG!) and multiple similar figures take less time. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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