How fast do you paint?

[Sirithiliel]

For me, my table top, is a brown liner base coat, block in colors, dry brush in white VERY lightly to bring out details, and then small touch ups like eyes, and maybe some quick lining

 

Doing assembly line painting and putting down one color on every mini that uses that color helps

 

But that is my table top, and it is how I have been doing my mass paints.

 

It isn't super pretty, especially up close, but it is functional for a game

Edited May 27, 2016 by Sirithiliel

[pinkymadigan]

Over the past 832 days; in usually 1-2 hour blocks, sometimes 3-4 on weekends, I have finished 781 miniatures. Some for armies, some for dungeon crawlers, but all intended for some type of game. I consider my product on the higher end of tabletop quality. 

 

For fun, 331 of the finished pieces tracked during that time were Reaper, 61 were from Myth, 41 were from Sentinel Tactics, 58 related to Warhammer Quest (the original) in some way, 122 fell into a various bucket, 166 were from Mantic related to their Kings of War range, and 2 were related to Dungeon Saga.

 

This puts my average speed at .939 minis per day. Of the purchases I've logged (woefully incomplete), I've painted 34.24%. If I bought no more minis, and sold all of my unlogged purchases, it would take me 4.38 years to finish painting my current shelf of shame at my current rate. 

 

My cumulative fastest rate logged at the end of the month was 1.014 minis per day at the end of April, 2015; and my slowest speed was 0.919 minis per day, logged at the end of October 2015.

 

PS: I like numbers.

Edited May 27, 2016 by pinkymadigan

[Arydis]

My problem isn't the amount of time to paint a figure (really proud of that 45 minute lizard man; have spent a lot longer on lesser end-quality paint jobs), but finding the time to paint. It can take me three months to squeeze in ten hours of painting.

This.  I hear you Pegazus.  I would estimate my progress so far on Koba to have taken 5 hours of painting with probably another 5 hours of fiddling remaining and that is with flat black basing.  Ten hours total for the figure, but it has taken me two months to get 5 of those hours and will probably be another month before I find another 5.  

 

Painting is a wonderful hobby and I love to give the miniatures I paint that kind of detail, but I have honestly given it a lower priority than other things in my life.   

[Arydis]

Over the past 832 days; in usually 1-2 hour blocks, sometimes 3-4 on weekends, I have finished 781 miniatures. Some for armies, some for dungeon crawlers, but all intended for some type of game. I consider my product on the higher end of tabletop quality. 

 

For fun, 331 of the finished pieces tracked during that time were Reaper, 61 were from Myth, 41 were from Sentinel Tactics, 58 related to Warhammer Quest (the original) in some way, 122 fell into a various bucket, 166 were from Mantic related to their Kings of War range, and 2 were related to Dungeon Saga.

 

This puts my average speed at .939 minis per day. Of the purchases I've logged (woefully incomplete), I've painted 34.24%. If I bought no more minis, and sold all of my unlogged purchases, it would take me 4.38 years to finish painting my current shelf of shame at my current rate. 

 

My cumulative fastest rate logged at the end of the month was 1.014 minis per day at the end of April, 2015; and my slowest speed was 0.919 minis per day, logged at the end of October 2015.

 

PS: I like numbers.

Now those are some stats!!  What are you using to log your work and time? 

Edited May 27, 2016 by Arydis

[Ghool]

Ghool, when you say 20 hours for tabletop, that's like a large warjack or monster, right? Otherwise that's not tabletop.

 

The bigger ones for sure.

Sometimes I'll start thinking tabletop, then end up spending 20 hours painting, and it's no longer tabletop.

 

I've been finding ways to get faster though, and my latest 'deal' is using VMC coloured primers for my base coat. So far I've only worked with this green and starting on work with gray. But I do have a match for Menoth White Base, a burgundy, and a couple more. Once I get the technique a little more perfected I'll be sharing a video.

 

[pinkymadigan]

Now those are some stats!!  What are you using to log your work and time? 

 

 

Just a spreadsheet. Or 9. I don't actually log time, I just keep a sheet for each batch of minis (Reaper, KoW, Misc, WHQ, etc), and each sheet has the number of unpainted/painted of each mini that I remember to put in there. It is maybe missing a couple hundred things, for the most part I remember to log purchases.

 

After that, when I paint a mini I check it off, and the first sheet is aggregate info, and at the end of every month I save a historical snapshot of my current numbers, like this:

 

 

 

Then of course, I make charts and graphs from this info, which I don't really pay any attention to.

 

But my normal work habits are 1-2 hours a day 2-3 days a week, and I usually get one good 3-4 block on a weekend, for a rough total of 7.25 hours a week, during which I manage the above rate of painting (including both the occasional not-mini thing like Netherymaul, DDS2, etc, and the very mini things like hordes of giant rats).

 

So really, you could say I'm a little over an hour a mini, but that is deceptive, because I definitely do more army work that single character/hero/big piece stuff. But I am pretty fast for the quality level (certainly not display pieces, but better than average tabletop jobs, IMO).

Edited May 27, 2016 by pinkymadigan

[Foxden Racing]

It honestly depends.  I've speed-painted Battletech minis (4 complete figures in as many hours, parade scheme), and while they're not the ugliest things in the world they're anime flat-shaded [which has more or less become my style, since I can't actually shade to save my life] with a few little details like soot on gun barrels.

 

A figure where I'm not rushing but also not taking my time, I can get a humanoid figure done in 2-4 sessions of as many hours each.  If I start to weirdly obsess over detail [such as when I did up an old fire elemental], it could be 5-10 sessions or more.

 

Heaven help me when I try to do something big, like the not-tarrasque, not-tiamat, or Kaladrax.

[Glitterwolf]

I spend some 5 to 8 hours a week on painting...and I am sort of a perfectionist... so some minis take months...especially the bigger ones.

 

Although I happened to paint a 25mm Female Vampire in one go lately. NOT - VAMPIRELLA

Edited May 27, 2016 by Xherman1964

[Doug's Workshop]

I've been painting for almost 27 years.  I still have no idea how long it takes me to do a miniature.

 

Sometimes I'll get a great combination of inspiration and lack of distraction and pound out a good looking mini in a few days.  But I also have I have a couple half-painted figures that have sat on my shelf for 13 years.

 

I've got lucky and had great results so that I didn't have to spend hours doing layers.  Or I can't use that technique and so spend hours doing layers.

 

Skeletons take the shortest amount of time.  I've got ten armored skeletons on my desk right now, and tonight they'll get an armor highlight and a wash.  Tomorrow they'll get a bit of rust added.  Sunday might be finishing up the bones, and Monday-Tuesday will be bases.  Or my kids might decide they really want to go to the park, and I either go to the park or I put painting on hold and go mow the lawn (using sharp spinny power tools is much easier without their help). 

 

My bet is that this weekend will be the latter, although I do have some Warlord time on Sunday.  Gotta let Captain Razig and the boyz have some shore leave!

[Egg of Coot]

It's hard for me to keep track of the time I invest per miniature.  This is mostly because I'm painting six to twelve miniatures at a time and my painting schedule is erratic.  I might put in an hour one week, then be too busy to do anything for two or three weeks because with my "day job," then end up putting in 30 hours of solid paint the week after.  I'm currently repainting some random recycled 1980s pieces to a mid level tabletop quality (shadow, mid, highlight for each colour, plus washes, etc.) and I figure it took me about 15 hours to knock out the first dozen.  Sometimes it'll take me a lot longer, sometimes it takes me less time - it all depends on what I'm painting and the standard I'm painting to.

 

The Egg

[Bruunwald]

Over the past 832 days; in usually 1-2 hour blocks, sometimes 3-4 on weekends, I have finished 781 miniatures...  on the higher end of tabletop quality...

 

This puts my average speed at .939 minis per day...

 

My cumulative fastest rate logged at the end of the month was 1.014 minis per day at the end of April, 2015; and my slowest speed was 0.919 minis per day...

 

You win the "I Hate You - But In A Good Way" Award for the thread.

 

Congratulations!

[ShadowRaven]

I have but one answer to the question. Not fast enough.....

[Rob Dean]

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/66275-january-2016-goals/?p=1289293

 

So that group of a dozen took me about twelve hours including breaks.

 

I usually figure about an hour total for a tabletop man-sized individual. I don't really do display painting.

[Scarecrowe]

The term "glacial" has been used to describe my painting speed. Quite accurately, too, I confess.

[Lt. Coldfire]

This is a great question and I am always curious how fast other people paint as well.  I vary a lot, but generally, here are some examples of quality based on the time:

 

This took me 1.5 hours:

 

This took me 5 hours:

 

This nurse took me about 2 weeks working on and off (Malifaux minis are a bit tiny so I had some issues):