My Painting Background:

I like to stick this bit in first to lay the ground work for the rest of the article and give you some info on me. Nope it's not because I'm a raging egomaniac, in fact it's quite the opposite. I know my paint jobs aren't great and I've never claimed that they are. I enjoy painting, but not more than gaming, so for me getting it on the table takes a higher priority than winning the Golden Daemon Awards.

I know a lot of other gamers out there take this approach too, so I just figured it wouldn't hurt to share some of my experiences with the rest of you. If you've got any of your own hints and tips or painting articles you'd like to see on KMANT, please send them in.

Step 1: The Undercoat

I pretty much always undercoat everything with Chaos Black, usually from a spray can.

I like the speed that spray paint gives you and for buildings in particular it's worth its weight in gold (the precious metal, not the paint).

I stuck mine together and then sprayed it. I've never really been sure whether I prefer spraying stuff on the sprue or when it's complete so I just tend to go with whichever method takes my fancy at the time. For the Manufactorum I just started snipping bits off the sprues and sticking them together before painting it really crossed my mind, which kind of made the choice for me.

Step 2: The First Dry Brush

I started with a heavy dry brush of Calthan Brown Foundation Paint.

By 'heavy dry brush' I simply mean I don't wipe as much paint off the brush as you would in a normal dry brush. This isn't really a tactic for miniatures, but I find it works okay on buildings where you've got more to cover.

Step 3: Adding Some Colour

Next up I added a heavy dry brush of Mechrite Red Foundation Paint. I followed this up with a lighter dry brush of Scab Red.

I wanted my Manufactorum to look different from my other buildings. I'm hoping to eventually build an entire 'industrial zone' in my city and I want it to look noticeably different to the other Basilica Administratum and Sanctum Imperialis buildings. To achieve this I went with the generic Mechanicus colour, dark red.

Step 4: The Final Step

To finish the model off I gave it a light dry brush of Astronomican Grey Foundation Paint.

This is as far as I’m taking all my buildings for now. It meets the 2 foot rule (it looks okay from 2 feet away) and it’s good enough not to spoil the look of my battlefield. When I've painted all of my other buildings I'll be coming back to each of them in turn to pick out a few of the details and do a bit more work on them.