I thought it would be useful to put a quick article together to show how I paint my Highlanders’ quickly to table-top gaming standard. I am definitely more of a gamer than a painter, so when I paint I am interested in the effect from three to four foot away, as this is how I will be viewing them in a game.

It is of course possible to take your time and paint these miniatures so each one is an individual work of art, like the professional artists who have painted the set to be photographed for the Rob Roy Kickstarter campaign, but don’t be put off if you feel that you do not have the time or the skills to paint like this. I don’t and I have a great looking ‘gaming standard’ set that I am enjoying using on the table-top.

After cleaning up any mould lines, as required with a needle file, I glued the figures onto temporary MDF bases for painting them and undercoated them using Halfords Hycote Auto Primer.

Once the undercoat had dried I painted a brown ink-wash over all the figures.

When the ink was really, really dry I gave the figures a quick dry-brush all over using White Acrylic paint applied with a medium sized make up brush. Make up brushes are ideal for dry-brushing, they work every bit as well as expensive ‘hobby’ alternatives and cost pennies. The wash and drybrush stage is optional, but it is something that I like to do these days for two reasons. Firstly, after four plus decades of painting miniatures, my eyes are maybe not as sharp as at the start. I find this approach helps me to understand the miniature and clearly see where individual pieces of clothing and equipment finish to aid colouring in. Secondly it gives a great surface for Speed-paint to adhere to and increases the shading and highlighting effect of the speed-paints.

I’ve started by painting all of the tartan areas in Army Painter Slaughter Red which is a good, deep red tone that shades well.

The next job was to paint thick lines of dark grey using ‘Occultist Cloak’ both vertically and horizontally, looking for about 50/50 coverage of the red base. I find it best to start with the large area hanging down over the figures left shoulder and work out from there.

The paint needs to be left to properly dry before giving the tartan areas a light drybrush with an off white ‘Skeleton Bone’ acrylic, again applied with a medium sized make up brush. This just gives some extra highlights to the tartan areas that could be lost where grey has been painted over red.

The final stage in my quick tartan cheat is to use a fine pigment pen to draw the fine lines in adding in effect a small cross to each large square. It is far easier to get a straight, fine line with a pigment pen than a brush and they are available in many colours.

Now for the easy pit, colouring in the non-tartan areas. I’ve started with flesh, using Crusader Skin which is the best skin tone I have ever used!

Army Painter speed-paints now include 10 metallic tones. Before these I would have painted black and dry-brushed, however these speed paints give a great finish over a white undercoat.

A couple of the figures have bonnets, these were painted using Royal Robes, a nice deep blue tone.

Leather shoes, belts and pouches were all painted with ‘Hardened Leather’

…. and the wooden parts of muskets and pistols together with some figures hair was painted using ‘Dark Wood’.

Pallid Bone, Gravelord Grey, Nuclear Sunrise and Golden Armour were used in very small quantities to paint socks, hair and belt buckles.

After spraying with matt varnish, I took the figures off there temporary painting bases and superglued them onto thin clear bases that I make from ‘Top-Loader’ cards using a 1″ round punch.

These miniatures took 15-20 minutes each to paint. They are not going to win any rewards, but they are going to give me a lot of fun for many years on the gaming table.

All of these figures are from the Rob Roy Highlanders campaign which is running on Kickstarter until 29th September, click here to take a look!