Batch painting means completing one stage across several miniatures before moving to the next stage, rather than finishing each model individually. Done well it removes an enormous amount of wasted time: you load the brush once for eight models instead of eight times for one, and you stop re-learning the recipe every session.
Done badly it turns painting into factory work and kills the project entirely. The difference is almost always batch size and stage order.
Why batching saves time
The savings are not really in the painting. They are in everything around it: opening and closing pots, thinning paint, rinsing and reloading brushes, remembering which colour goes where, and the mental cost of switching between tasks.
Paint one model start to finish and you might change colour thirty times. Paint eight models one stage at a time and you change colour the same thirty times, but you have painted eight models. That is the whole idea.
Choose a batch size you can actually finish
Batches of roughly five to ten similar models are manageable for most people. That is enough to get real efficiency gains, and few enough that a single stage can be completed in one sitting.
The ideal number depends on you, though. If you paint in twenty-minute sessions, five is plenty. If you get a clear evening, ten or twelve is comfortable. The test is whether you can finish a stage before you stop for the night. Leaving a stage half done across a batch is where projects stall, because picking it back up means working out where you got to.
Attempting an entire army at once is the classic mistake. Thirty models mean every stage takes hours, progress becomes invisible, and the whole thing starts to feel like an obligation.
The workflow
- Define your target quality. Decide before you start whether these are tabletop models or display pieces. Changing your mind halfway through means either repainting the early models or accepting an obvious quality split.
- Build manageable batches. Group models that share a colour recipe. Mixed batches with different schemes destroy the efficiency you are trying to gain.
- Prime consistently. Prime the whole batch in one session, in the same conditions. Priming on different days in different humidity produces noticeably different surfaces.
- Establish the dominant colour. Get the largest area blocked in across every model in the batch. This is the stage where the army starts to look like an army.
- Paint largest areas first. Work from big to small. Any overspill from a large area gets covered by the smaller areas painted over it later.
- Apply secondary colours. Cloth, leather, weapon casings. Still large enough to move quickly.
- Shade or recess shade. Either an all-over wash or targeted shading into recesses. This is the stage that gives the biggest visual return for the least effort.
- Restore highlights. Bring the raised surfaces back up after shading has knocked everything down.
- Paint focal details. Lenses, eyes, gems, insignia. Small, slow, high impact.
- Bases. Do the whole batch together. Texture, colour, drybrush, tufts.
- Final corrections. Tidy the base rim, fix anything obvious, varnish if you are varnishing.
The order is not sacred, but big-to-small and shade-before-highlight are worth keeping. Both save rework.
Tabletop standard versus display standard
These are informal hobby terms, not official classifications, but they are useful shorthand.
Tabletop standard means the model looks good at arm's length in normal light. Base colours, a shade, a highlight, a finished base. Perhaps two hours a model, often much less in a batch.
Display standard means it holds up under close inspection: blended transitions, sharp edge highlights, freehand, careful base composition. Ten hours a model is not unusual.
Almost nobody has the time to paint an entire army to display standard, and almost nobody needs to. Deciding honestly which you are aiming for is the single most useful thing you can do at the start of an army project. Mixing them by accident is how people end up with three exquisite models and twenty-seven grey ones.
The assembly-line trap
Batching has a failure mode: batches so large that each stage becomes tedious, repetitive and joyless.
The warning signs are recognisable. You start rushing to get the stage over with. Quality drops on models twelve through twenty. You stop looking forward to sitting down. When that happens, the batch is too big, not you.
Cut it. Two batches of eight will genuinely finish faster than one batch of sixteen, because you will actually do them.
Use characters as palette cleansers
Between batches, paint something single and interesting. A character, a vehicle, a model with a different scheme. Something where you can be indulgent, try a technique, and enjoy it.
This is not lost time. It resets your enthusiasm, and it usually improves the next batch because you have just practised something new. It also gives you a visible reward that is not just another rank of identical infantry.
When to paint sub-assemblies
Sub-assembly means painting parts separately before gluing them together. It is worth doing when a component blocks access to something behind it: backpacks over back detail, riders over mounts, heads deep inside hoods, weapons obscuring a torso.
It is not worth doing routinely. Sub-assemblies mean more pieces to keep track of, more handling, and a risk of glue marks on finished paint. Use it where access genuinely demands it and assemble fully everywhere else.
A middle option that works well for batches: assemble everything except the one part that causes the problem, and leave that single part loose.
Keep a paint recipe
Write it down. Not in your head, not in the vague hope you will remember. Army projects run for months, and you will come back to add a squad long after you have forgotten which brown that was.
A simple table is enough:
| Area | Base | Shade | Highlight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Armour | Colour A, two coats | Dark wash, recesses only | Colour A plus a little bone | Second coat is essential over primer |
| Cloth | Colour B | Brown wash, all over | Colour B plus grey | Thin heavily, it goes chalky |
| Metal | Steel | Dark wash | Bright silver, edges | Shake pot thoroughly |
| Base | Texture, then earth tone | — | Pale drybrush | Rim in dark brown |
Photograph a finished model alongside the recipe. Colour names on a screen never quite match what came out of the pot.
How to make an army look cohesive
Cohesion comes from repetition, and it does more for an army's appearance than raw painting skill does.
- Repeat the accent colour. The same small pop of colour appearing on every model ties the force together even when the models differ.
- Keep basing identical across the army. This is the strongest cohesion tool available, and it costs almost nothing. Consistent bases can rescue an army painted over two years with drifting technique. Our basing guide covers making thirty bases match.
- Use one consistent base rim colour. A shared rim is the frame around every model.
- Maintain the same value structure. If armour is the darkest element on one model, keep it the darkest everywhere.
If you have not settled your scheme yet, our guide to choosing an army colour scheme covers the design decisions worth making before the first model.
How to stop perfectionism killing progress
Some practical positions that help:
- Finished beats perfect. A fully painted army is more satisfying to own and to play with than eight immaculate models and a box of grey plastic.
- Nobody inspects your models at 10cm. Judge your work at the distance it will actually be seen.
- The mistake you can see took you an hour to find. If you had to hunt for it, nobody else will notice it.
- Your later models will be better. That is improvement, not inconsistency. Do not go back and repaint the first squad; you will do it again in six months.
- Set a time budget per model and stick to it. Twenty minutes on a rank-and-file model is a decision, not a compromise.
- Stop mid-stage if you are getting sloppy. Tired painting creates rework, and rework is what makes projects drag.
If you are new to painting entirely, start with a single model rather than a batch. Our guide to painting your first miniature covers the fundamentals before you scale up.
Independent guide published by Blubbercove Ltd/WarSplay. This article is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, authorised by or licensed by Games Workshop Limited. Warhammer 40,000 is a trade mark of Games Workshop Limited.