Here at Battle Honours 3D, we want to help you get the most out of our models. The best way to do that is to paint them and get all the most intricate details out of the models. Our models are printed in high quality resin at 8K quality.
The team at Battle Honours 3D have been painting models for decades. Along the way, we have picked up some tips and tricks to get the most out of your models.
Brushes, paints & ink – The tools you’ll need
- Large brush (for putting on primary colours for roofs and walls)
- Smaller brush (for details)
- Large soft brush (for dry brushing, an old make up brush from your other half would be perfect!)
- Plastic car primer – ideally white (for priming the model)
- Windsor & Newton brown ink (for the wash)
- Acrylic paint
- “Pledge”/floor polish
- Uhu glue
- (Optional) PVA Glue
- (Optional) Sharpe builders’ sand
- (Optional) Matt varnish spray
Preparation and undercoating the model
One of the joys of Battle Honours 3D models is the fact they are printed in resin giving a clean detailed surface for painting. It doesn’t take a lot of preparation to get the models ready for painting, no need for any sanding or filling.
We do recommend priming our models prior to printing, this helps give the models an undercoat and helps bring that intricate detail from our models, that our designers have spent so much time designing.
Prior to priming our models, we recommend giving the models a wash in warm soapy water and leaving to dry prior to undercoating.
With our models at the larger sizes, some of them will come in separate parts. Those parts will require some assemble to put the building together. We recommend doing this prior to painting or priming the models. To do this simply use the Uhu glue. We recommend the Uhu glue to give you enough time to adjust the parts to make sure you have an accurate fitting as it doesn’t stick as quickly as some super glues out there.
If you are going to render the model, you will need to first cover the area you are going to render in PVA glue. You can do this with a brush, there is no need to dilute the glue just brush it onto the exposed sides of the building. Once you have applied the PVA glue sprinkle the builders’ sand over the parts you have added glue to. You should do each side individually & wait for it to dry so that you don’t undo your previous work.
Once it is dried completely, apply the primer to the model (ideally white). Spray the primer lightly over the model, we recommend doing this outside in a ventilated area.
Painting & Ink Wash
Once the primer is dry you can apply the primary colours to the roof & walls with the large brush, and the windows and doors with the smaller brush. Use the smaller brush to cut into the detailed areas to keep that detail and ensure no smudging. Then please wait for them to dry before moving on.
While waiting for the model to dry you can prep an ink wash. The ink wash is a way of getting shading into the flat primary colours. It helps enhance and brings the detail out once you’ve painted the primary colours.
Add a couple of drops of ink into a jar of water, until you have a nice colour, add more as required depending on how dark you would like the wash. Prep the water by having a ratio of approximately 1 to 4 pledge floor polish to water, it will help change the consistency, and aid in the flow of the wash.
Once the building is dry then you can apply the ink wash over the whole building, covering everything. Once the ink wash is completely dry then you can move onto the next part, dry brushing.
Dry Brushing
You take a make up brush, put a small amount of white acrylic paint onto some kitchen towel, and dip the dry make up brush (must be dry!) lightly into the white paint, just a hint of paint, wipe any excess off onto the kitchen towel, lightly dust the building with the make up brush to bring out the highlights of the designed buildings. Again, you then need to let the building dry completely. Then use a matt varnish spray to seal the building with a light coating of varnish from about 1ft away. This seals the colours so that the colours don’t fade, and any small knocks won’t affect the model.
How have your models come out?
Do you have some examples of following this guide? We would love to hear from you, please get in touch!
