Miniature Painting Advice

This modest page on miniature painting advice, or painting minis the Muskie McKay way, has grown to include a large collection of links to advice and more and more products miniature painting enthusiasists can buy to make their life easier, especially if they are a wargammer in 28mm. I also have an even older collection of links about miniature painting, which includes homepages of some of the best painters. I also started an entire blog dedicated to miniature painting. As this page continues to remain popular in Google and with websurfers, I've tried to keep it up to date and even added a random picture from Flickr, but this is a personal collection reflecting my interests and preferences in miniature painting, but most anyone in the hobby should find something new and cool if they explore diligently.

Painting Advice from Muskie

Advice from Others

Conversion Bitz, Display Bases, and Terrain

In the olden days a lot of stuff in 40K was scratch build out of all manner of household items. Terrain is often still done like that, but with the advent of the internet and the rise of specialty hobby shops you can buy a lot of pre-made bitz, display bases, and terrain pieces. GW makes all of the above and I have a lot of their plastic bitz often buying entire kits to get one or two peices. GW's metal bitz order service is largely gone, but places like the Warstore and various people on eBay have filled the gap. A lot of small companies have sprung up making stuff for GW and other games. Woodland Scenics and a variety of companies from the model train hobby get a lot of business from miniature wargamers as do architectual model supply companies. Sheet styrene now comes in many different sizes and textures and this is used extensively by kitbashers and scrathbuilders. I'm been taking a look at all the stuff available now.

This collection of links just kept getting larger, a lot of it is terrain particularly sci-fi and modern terrain but some of the companies make miniatures from other periods primarily and/or I just think they are cool and hope to support them someday. Those that I've purchased from online with no problems will have this symbol: check Icon. Others I purchased in person will have this symbol: Home Icon. Where I've taken to buying most of my gaming stuff is Darren's store. He is stocking more and more non-GW miniature stuff as well as tonnes of board games, he says he can special order in from lots of companies so drop in if you're on Main Street in Vancouver BC. I also buy paint, plasticard, and Zap-a-gap at Grand Prix Hobbies on Broadway. Imperial Hobbies had a huge selection of paint, and other stuff for miniature wargamers, but Richmond is a bit out of the way for me.

Since this page keeps remaining popular in order to make it more useful, I've put the manufactures I've purchased from at the top of the sub-lists in the approximate order in which I've bought the most stuff from. I still recommend supporting your local retailers and I buy most of my GW stuff and other gaming stuff from Darren at Strategies and he keeps adding companies from which he can specialty order from including most recently tempting Ziterdes. As I paint stuff up it will appear on my hobby blog so you can see my take on various manufactures wares.

Retail Stores

Online Multi-Line Miniature Stores

Miniature Manufactures

Terrain Manufactures

Scenic Resin Bases

Custom Terrain Builders

I think you should build and paint your own armies and I think you should make unique terrain, but some people are lazy and some people have more money than time so custom terrain builders exist. They also work directly for gaming companies, movies, TV, toy manufactures, clubs, conventions. They serve a purpose and I guess I'll give them some link love and business, if for no other reason than I like to look at cool stuff. Some of the sites above will build terrain to suit, but for some it is their specialty and primary focus.

Words and Images © Muskie McKay.
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