A Song of Ice & Fire: Neutral army speed painting tutorial

Difficulty: 1/5
Time: 30 minutes per unit of 12 pieces

So when A Song of Ice & Fire came in we got so excited to see all that plastic, quickly followed by the question: How are we going to get all of that painted without taking a decade. We decided working in phases would be best since we don’t like putting a half painted army on the table. So do some basic painting techniques to all of the models, then put some real time in the leaders/heroes later so it will give great table presence right away without too much work. In this tutorial, we cover the steps we will repeat for all armies, in this case, we will show the brown neutral units.

Priming the models and trays
Starting off we need to get that base coat down so our paints will stick to the surface. We used Color Primer: Leather Brown since the color comes close to the original color of the plastic. Spray from about 20cm distance and make sure you cover all angles so no spots are left uncovered.

Washing/shading the models
Get your soap out and… Uuuhm nope, not that kind of washing. Washing is a basic painting technique that involves applying a thinned mixture of paints or a wash. When applied to the model the wash will get into the nooks and crannies because of the thin consistency of it. As a wash is usually darker than the base color you’ll get a nice shaded miniature, this step makes such a big difference for such small investment. For our neutral army, we used The Army Painter Dark Tone. As you’re applying the wash it might run to places you don’t want any shading done, this is easily fixed by cleaning your brush and go over the bits you don’t want to shade. You’ll see the brush works as a sponge sucking up all the excess paint.

Dry brushing
Another great and easy to learn technique that makes a painters life so much easier is dry brushing. It’s often used to highlight the raised areas of the model and works as follows. You start off using a color that’s lighter than the color you’re applying it on. In the case of our neutral army, we thought Barbarian Flesh would be suiting. Take a larger bush (Wargamer: Small Drybrush or Wargamer: Large Drybrush both work excellent) and dip it into the paint, then take out some paper cloth and start wiping the brush until hardly any paint comes off. Now start brushing the model lightly and you will notice that all the raised areas get a nice feathered highlight.

And we are done! The details and contrast of your miniature army have increased a lot without too much effort in a very short amount of time. Until you decide to paint the rest in more detail this already looks so much better on the table than a standard color. Assuming you are like me and prefer the factions to wear color codes, example all neutral forces will have some brown cloths and starks blue and all Lannisters red. 

With other armies, we use the same basic steps but use different colors. For the Starks we used Color Primer Wolf Grey to get the base coat on, then washed it with Dark Tone and highlighted with Matt White. For the Lannisters, we used Color Primer Dragon Red to prime, Dark Tone to wash, and Barbarian Flesh to highlight.