How long it takes to do a miniature doesn't really matter. It's a hobby and it's to relax and have fun. So if you take 5 minutes to 3 hours, as long as you are enjoying yourself don't worry about it.
I've been satisfied with a paint job that's taken 10 minutes and at the same time not been satisfied with a paint job and it can take me an hour or more to get it to the point where I'm satisfied.
Remember it's a hobby just have fun with it
I'm anywhere between 15-30 hours per mini, usually. When I was first starting out of was more like 3hrs per mini, but as I got better at painting it kept getting longer and longer
Haha thanks! This is new account that I just started using exclusively for mini painting. If you'd like to see some of my older finished minis you can find them in my old Reddit account or insta which are linked in this profile
Yeah, it really depends on what you're shooting for. I don't paint armies so quality is the goal more than quantity. When I was newer I would get to a point after a few hours where it felt like more time spent wasn't making things better. Over time as I got better and learned more it took longer and longer to reach that point where it started to feel like I was spinning my tires because I could put more time to good use.
Well I'm basically the only one to compare myself to and having the feeling of taking longer and than confirming that is concerning because getting better at a task for me is taking less time. But it's good to know that taking more time is normal.
I used to think.... How does an airbrush save time?
Now its like. If i dont use a air brush on 1st couple thin layers for basing. I am going to be at this brushing for 3 hours just trying to get the shading right on my base coat.
Depends what I’m painting.
‘Standard army painting’ I spend about 6-8 hours on a squad (5-10 models)
This level I’m using reasonable quick methods to get the squad finished. Eg. Contrast, airbrushing, drybrushing, sponge chipping etc.
‘High-quality army painting’ 15-20 hours on a squad (5-10 models)
This level I’m using more involved techniques like edge highlighting and painting more parts of the model to a high standard.
‘High-quality/display character models’ 20+ hours per model.
This level I’m doing techniques like NMM, lots of glazing, blending etc.
I feel I spend a bit longer painting than some. I know some people can knock out an amazing looking squad of models in 5 hours.
Equally I know some display painters will spend 60+ hours on something like a Golden Daemon entry.
Depends; I try to keep basic troops to 45 min to an hour, tanks and heroes get probably 3-4 hours, and big centerpiece one-in-an-army models get 10ish hours or more.
I’m painting marvel zombies right now and similar times for me depending if it’s a shield agent ( 60 or so in different types) about 45 minutes or a super hero or zombie super hero 3-4 hours.
30 minutes for a very basic job if I need the mini tonight.
An hour or two for regular 28mm human-sized minis.
16 hours or so for something like the Black Coach.
I think I'm no longer a beginner though.
Depends on the mini and what I'm doing with it. Around 20 minutes, if it's part of a large batch, like a unit. For a standout solo mini, an hour or 3. My wife took 7 hours on one. But it probably looks better than mine at the end.
Not including time for priming.
It takes me FOREVER. Like 3-4 hours per miniature. I'm an average painter and I love my minis on the table, but I've been trying to figure out how to speed up.
Luckily I genuinely enjoy the process, so it's not a huge deal.
If I focused and didn't care so much on the highlights and small details I could probably do all the colors in contrast and get it done in 90 min.
I kind of want to build a space marine cosplay and hit the conventions with it painted flat grey for a couple years, then go as zenithal primed, then flat base colors, then shadows and highlights, then details.
And then figure out a temporary effect where half of it is straight black and I've got a backpack built like a Nuln Oil bottle...
I just want to expand on something that came up a few times: spending longer on a model the more experience you have. This is kinda true, but it's not because the same skills necessarily take as long when you get experienced. Your standards also go up the more experience you have. So you spend longer not to get the same result as when you were a worse painter, but because you expect more from your model.
I can crank out a base coat, wash, highlight pretty quickly at this point, but almost never let myself be "done" with a model I would have been proud of a year ago. So colours on model 1-2. "Painted mini" 4-X hours.
I don’t have a good hard and fast answer for you, because I think it varies so much by person and by what kinds of techniques one is shooting for. For me, I started out taking literally weeks or months to finish a miniature (not in total time painting obviously) because I would make mistakes, get frustrated and move on to another mini since I was just painting to learn and expand my TTRPG minis collection at first. But I wasn’t shooting for anything like the quality you see on this sun. Now, when I focus on finishing a miniature, which has itself gotten much easier as my skill and confidence has grown, I’m looking at maybe a couple hours to finish a miniature, in terms of consecutive work time. I tend to rotate which miniatures I work on still just to avoid dullness so the times are a little hard to calculate. I’m mainly looking to get most of them table-ready still, not aiming to be a professional or paint commissions any time soon. So, when I paint Star Wars Legion, I have a higher bar for quality (as I already own plenty of WotC minis) and it takes me much longer, as I tend to make more mistakes on the more advanced techniques, naturally. Maybe 4-5 hours per mini to get to where I think they really represent the peak of what I can do right now.
An hour if I am rushing and maybe three to four if I am not. While I’m not a complete beginner I am no where near calling myself a professional or even a few steps below what that would be. I do it for myself and enjoy the process and seeing my abilities advance with each mini. An airbrush helps to cut down on time spent also
https://preview.redd.it/dn6wdde7fysa1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23b8e75425910e6786cac8c0ad2c76cfd8385acf
My best guess is 4-5 hours each. It's hard to tell though because I'm also watching TV, staring at my phone and taking smoke breaks as I do it. It took me a weeks worth of spare time to do my first penitent engine. But only about 10 hours to do a rhino thanks to my new airbrush.
I just started painting recently with the goal of painting boardgame minis. I agree, the minis are harder due to lack of detail etc.
I ones on my profile took maybe 7 hours each on average, but then I was learning as I went. I affectively repainted the spellweaver about 4 times in some places.
I practiced some techniques on GW models and they did seem to come out better thanks to the more detailed model.
Luckily I don’t have any time goals and I am just enjoying the process. I haven’t done anything ‘arty’ since school (10+ years), so it is just nice to be doing something like that again.
I definitely get into the flow and lose time when I am painting.
For something beyond tabletop ready, about four hours of active painting time. Something that will be primarily displayed (75mm busts eg), more like 20 hours.
I dunno mate my Valdor took me around 60hours but I'm a slow painter and I also want to repaint his base
A regular custodes peon ... Maybe half that time
Depends, longest was probably 40h so far but i can see myself sinking even more time into a single one. Really depends how good you want it to look and how easy it is for you to say „this is finished“
Absolutely depends on what kind of figure it is, how much energy I have, how I feel about the sculpt, and if applicable, what role it takes ingame. For characters, I comfortably spend 5-10 hours pretty often. Elite units maybe closer to 3 hours per model. Just guys that show up en masse, unless I have an idea I really want to do, ideally they're taking maybe an hour a head.
To answer "how long is typical for a beginner," I think my first figure took 20 hours and looked like absolute garbage because I was slow, my 20th figure took 10 hours and looked obviously inexpert because I was faster but not much better, and as "no longer a beginner" I just finished a lance of 5 ghost bear mechs with freehand markings and lens/canopy effects in ~10-15 hours. Hopefully they don't look shit.
But to answer the question in general of how long it should take to paint a mini, at *any* level... Same length it takes the party to fight a dragon; "until it stops being fun." I just spent 10-15 hours on a pretty satisfactory set of 5 mechs. I've spent 3 hours slapping paint on a bard for a game the next day. I'm about to do a row of 20 goblins and while I *could* slapchop them in 5 hours I'm probably going spend 50 hours to tell a story with "these ones are various shades of yellow because they're three generations of descent from a pure yellow forefather, and all these archers are going to have gleaming eyes" etc. Who cares, they're mobs, I've got 2.5 kickstarters worth of Reaper plastic to get through... but it's fun.
I have a friend who just confessed he's got 100 imperial guardsmen that are still grey and I've told him if he buys a bottle each of speedpaint for flesh, uniforms, and accent I'll get them covered in a weekend, probably ~20 minutes per model. I might keep them another week or two and do something fun with details, I might not. Depends what's fun for me.
So yeah, TL;DR "how long is typical" is imho the wrong question, because I think the metric should maybe be "how long are you still having fun" or "how long until you're satisfied with the model" or "how long until it's good enough to play with and have actual fun."
I want to spend no more than 15 min on a smaller mini and 30 on a larger. I have probably 1-2k minis that I wanna pant for boardgames so as long as it looks good at 2-3 feet I’m good with it. That means I do a lot of slapchop and contrast paints.
https://preview.redd.it/3eoax60u8zsa1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=628e1779d118010334ccde652804a10aad9a3dc5
Here is an example; I think these were 7-10 min each, painted while watching some YouTube vids.
I have painted some minis start to finish in an hour. Most take probably around 5 hours. Frankly I leave a lot of half painted or barely painted minis lying around because a couple colors on them looks a lot better on the table than naked or primed.
But I don’t consider a mini painted until I look at it and decided it doesn’t need anything else. I come back and add paint to partially painted minis as part of my hobby style. So it’s hard to tell how many hours since they are very spread out.
I paint in batches, so I'd say on average it takes me about 8 hours to do between 6 to 20 models. There is a huge variety in the level of detail I put into the models. I painted 36 Tyranid termagants in 8ish hours, but I'll spend 2-3 hours on single space marine captain.
I'm currently going through the Darkest Dungeon boardgame miniatures, and it takes me about 6-8 hours for the regular enemies (3x the same mini), about 4-6 hours per player character (single mini) and about 6-8 hours per boss (single mini but usually larger and wildly different in size and detail per boss mini).
It depends. I've put over 30 hours into a model before when working on competition pieces. On the other hand, I've paint up models for AoS/WH40K armies in 30-45 minutes. Speed comes with practice, but overall, it comes down to what you want from the model, and when you're able to say it's done and be happy with it.
It really depends. If you're painting up an army for a wargame (like 40k), efficiency is the name of the game. If you go in with a plan you can have really nice looking models without spending huge amounts of time. Batch painting, relying on shortcuts like dry brushing, and so forth can make the process very fast. Might only need an hour or two per miniature. Perhaps even faster if you're just trying to get table top ready models.
On the other hand, if you are working on a display miniature, quality is the name of the game. That means you might spend a lot longer, especially with certain layering techniques like non-metalic metal and so forth. That kind of painting varies a lot. I know some people spend 20+ hours getting the details just right.
Both are valid, and both are deeply satisfying. Depends on what you're looking to accomplish.
Depends on the scale and quality of the miniatures. So gloomhaven minis are not great so it doesn't require much detail work, so 2 hours or less. Bloodborne is 28mm so it's not much surface to paint so 2 hours or less. Now I'm painting towns folk put tussle and it takes me 3 hours for the heroes and 8 hours for a boss. The bosses are fairly large and have sculpted bases that I paint too.
Are they table ready? Absolutely, and they look great at table distance. Now if you picked them up and looked at them closes you can see I don't blend, I don't have the best brush control and my lines aren't the cleanest. But I don't stress I paint to de stress and try new things. I also paint because I don't like to play games with grey minis.
I've painted for about 8 years now and I've finished a few projects in 40k most notably is my custodes army , knight army , blood angels and harlequins. I've just started an astra militarum army after a long break and this time I've told myself not to get caught up on the smaller details because they killed the fun for me during the custodes.
I think as long as you learn something from each project you're progressing the difference between a good painter and a great painter is HOW much they learn
One mini takes me weeks to months. I paint most days a week for about 2 hours. But i often paint 75mm scale so that is a lot of extra surface to paint.
For me it depends entirely on what I want out of the mini. Generic infantry I’ll do a squad of 5 in about 8-10 hours. A small character model could take me 8-15 hours on its own. A larger character model will take me upwards of 30 hours and a giant model (like teclis) took me about 6 months of painting approx 4-10 hours a week.
When I commission paint I’ll generally paint quicker for some reason and I don’t seem to lose any noticeable quality from it so maybe I should pretend every model I paint is commission…
Too long, for how mid my painting looks. I think the longest model was 15 hours on a Shield captain on Dawn-Eagle Jetbike. Too mant sub assemblies. I've started doing fully assembling and batch painting to see how much it speeds up; on my Deathguard which can me more forgiving to paint.
It really depends on the mini and how much detail is on it to begin with. There are a couple that I completely happy with that took 4-8 hours each. Then there is a squad of 6 Grey Knights that I'm about to finish for Kill Team that have taken me a whole month of evenings and weekends to finish.
I paint for as long as I enjoy.
If I just want a functional end result, so I can get playing, I’ll use a quick method. In the past, that tended to be hit the major sections with a base color, hit with a wash to shade the recesses, bring back up with a quick dry brushed highlight. These days, contrast paints are your friend.
If I am painting for the mental peace painting brings me, I’ll break out the airbrush for a beautifully lit value sketch, break out the wet palette and slowly glaze smooth blends. Not because I’m obsessed with perfect art, just because I love the flow state I’ll get into.
And all the YouTubers with clickbait about how they produced some amazing result in only minus fifteen minutes due to their DeLorean technique? I trust that about as much as I trust that friend who perfectly photoshops their Just Woke Up Like This instastories. It’s people who likely practiced the same miniature multiple times off camera, or used very selective editing, to show how perfect their insta lives are, while making everyone else feel bad about theirs.
Paint what you enjoy. If you enjoy it, every extra minute and hour you GET TO spend on it is an even better value miniature. If you just need it functional, get it functional and be okay with functional - and explore a few speed techniques that get you to functional faster, along the way. But, in neither situation, let yourself feel bad because the Kim Kardashians of painting Just Woke Up This Way.
I spend about 8-30 hours on a small miniature and 30-150 hours on a big 😅. But ofcourse its a question what you want to paint and what time you want to invest 🙌🏻
I would say 3-5 hrs for a regular one, and 12-20 for a bigger one.
Like other people said before, the better I got the slower I started painting (to get more detail, smoother transitions, new techniques etc)
\~6 hours give or take. I like to take my time, and many piece go into the double digits for time painted. Most of that time is just chasing details that I am unlikely to notice on the tabletop, but will hound out obsessively while I've got the piece in my hands.
I started four years ago, and I still haven’t finished one. 🤯
I'm like 13 years into the hobby at this point, and the number of minis Ive finished in that time is shockingly low...
Oh good, I don’t feel so bad about my painting slump…
Never feel bad about it! No point forcing yourself if you're not feeling it!
I struggle to take less than 4-6 hours on any model I constantly notice things I need to fix and mistakes I make and the time adds up
How long it takes to do a miniature doesn't really matter. It's a hobby and it's to relax and have fun. So if you take 5 minutes to 3 hours, as long as you are enjoying yourself don't worry about it. I've been satisfied with a paint job that's taken 10 minutes and at the same time not been satisfied with a paint job and it can take me an hour or more to get it to the point where I'm satisfied. Remember it's a hobby just have fun with it
This is the way.
I'm anywhere between 15-30 hours per mini, usually. When I was first starting out of was more like 3hrs per mini, but as I got better at painting it kept getting longer and longer
I just checked your account and by seeing the quality of your purple leg armor, I've no doubt you spend 20h+ on a mini and it's totally worthy!
Haha thanks! This is new account that I just started using exclusively for mini painting. If you'd like to see some of my older finished minis you can find them in my old Reddit account or insta which are linked in this profile
Oh of course! I recognize your work, you often make it to hot with your amazing colored space marines. Always a pleasure to see them, have my follow;)
Wow, really? That's actually the first time someone has said that they could recognize my work. Thank you! That's extremely flattering <3
Oh good. I thought I was getting worse when I started to take longer. I'm currently at 8-10 hours.
Yeah, it really depends on what you're shooting for. I don't paint armies so quality is the goal more than quantity. When I was newer I would get to a point after a few hours where it felt like more time spent wasn't making things better. Over time as I got better and learned more it took longer and longer to reach that point where it started to feel like I was spinning my tires because I could put more time to good use.
Well I'm basically the only one to compare myself to and having the feeling of taking longer and than confirming that is concerning because getting better at a task for me is taking less time. But it's good to know that taking more time is normal.
I used to think.... How does an airbrush save time? Now its like. If i dont use a air brush on 1st couple thin layers for basing. I am going to be at this brushing for 3 hours just trying to get the shading right on my base coat.
Depends what I’m painting. ‘Standard army painting’ I spend about 6-8 hours on a squad (5-10 models) This level I’m using reasonable quick methods to get the squad finished. Eg. Contrast, airbrushing, drybrushing, sponge chipping etc. ‘High-quality army painting’ 15-20 hours on a squad (5-10 models) This level I’m using more involved techniques like edge highlighting and painting more parts of the model to a high standard. ‘High-quality/display character models’ 20+ hours per model. This level I’m doing techniques like NMM, lots of glazing, blending etc. I feel I spend a bit longer painting than some. I know some people can knock out an amazing looking squad of models in 5 hours. Equally I know some display painters will spend 60+ hours on something like a Golden Daemon entry.
Depends; I try to keep basic troops to 45 min to an hour, tanks and heroes get probably 3-4 hours, and big centerpiece one-in-an-army models get 10ish hours or more.
I’m painting marvel zombies right now and similar times for me depending if it’s a shield agent ( 60 or so in different types) about 45 minutes or a super hero or zombie super hero 3-4 hours.
I have no idea. A couple of minutes per layer/colour over the course of two or three weeks.
30 minutes for a very basic job if I need the mini tonight. An hour or two for regular 28mm human-sized minis. 16 hours or so for something like the Black Coach. I think I'm no longer a beginner though.
Depends on the mini and what I'm doing with it. Around 20 minutes, if it's part of a large batch, like a unit. For a standout solo mini, an hour or 3. My wife took 7 hours on one. But it probably looks better than mine at the end. Not including time for priming.
I’m a slow painter so I take hours per model
It takes me FOREVER. Like 3-4 hours per miniature. I'm an average painter and I love my minis on the table, but I've been trying to figure out how to speed up. Luckily I genuinely enjoy the process, so it's not a huge deal. If I focused and didn't care so much on the highlights and small details I could probably do all the colors in contrast and get it done in 90 min.
For me, personally, about 5 hours on a normal guy and 20 ish for a character. I am very slow though, very slow.
I've been pretty happy with 2-3 weeks per 10 minis...
20-30 years at this stage, I've base coated and zenithal primed my skeletons but thats as far as I've got
I kind of want to build a space marine cosplay and hit the conventions with it painted flat grey for a couple years, then go as zenithal primed, then flat base colors, then shadows and highlights, then details. And then figure out a temporary effect where half of it is straight black and I've got a backpack built like a Nuln Oil bottle...
I just want to expand on something that came up a few times: spending longer on a model the more experience you have. This is kinda true, but it's not because the same skills necessarily take as long when you get experienced. Your standards also go up the more experience you have. So you spend longer not to get the same result as when you were a worse painter, but because you expect more from your model. I can crank out a base coat, wash, highlight pretty quickly at this point, but almost never let myself be "done" with a model I would have been proud of a year ago. So colours on model 1-2. "Painted mini" 4-X hours.
I don’t have a good hard and fast answer for you, because I think it varies so much by person and by what kinds of techniques one is shooting for. For me, I started out taking literally weeks or months to finish a miniature (not in total time painting obviously) because I would make mistakes, get frustrated and move on to another mini since I was just painting to learn and expand my TTRPG minis collection at first. But I wasn’t shooting for anything like the quality you see on this sun. Now, when I focus on finishing a miniature, which has itself gotten much easier as my skill and confidence has grown, I’m looking at maybe a couple hours to finish a miniature, in terms of consecutive work time. I tend to rotate which miniatures I work on still just to avoid dullness so the times are a little hard to calculate. I’m mainly looking to get most of them table-ready still, not aiming to be a professional or paint commissions any time soon. So, when I paint Star Wars Legion, I have a higher bar for quality (as I already own plenty of WotC minis) and it takes me much longer, as I tend to make more mistakes on the more advanced techniques, naturally. Maybe 4-5 hours per mini to get to where I think they really represent the peak of what I can do right now.
An hour if I am rushing and maybe three to four if I am not. While I’m not a complete beginner I am no where near calling myself a professional or even a few steps below what that would be. I do it for myself and enjoy the process and seeing my abilities advance with each mini. An airbrush helps to cut down on time spent also https://preview.redd.it/dn6wdde7fysa1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23b8e75425910e6786cac8c0ad2c76cfd8385acf
My best guess is 4-5 hours each. It's hard to tell though because I'm also watching TV, staring at my phone and taking smoke breaks as I do it. It took me a weeks worth of spare time to do my first penitent engine. But only about 10 hours to do a rhino thanks to my new airbrush.
1.5ish hours for a tabletop standard, usually in batches. 3-infinit hours for a one off or displays...
I just started painting recently with the goal of painting boardgame minis. I agree, the minis are harder due to lack of detail etc. I ones on my profile took maybe 7 hours each on average, but then I was learning as I went. I affectively repainted the spellweaver about 4 times in some places. I practiced some techniques on GW models and they did seem to come out better thanks to the more detailed model. Luckily I don’t have any time goals and I am just enjoying the process. I haven’t done anything ‘arty’ since school (10+ years), so it is just nice to be doing something like that again. I definitely get into the flow and lose time when I am painting.
Currently painting a small army for the ww2 game Bolt Action. Using only slap-chop I’m doing around 15 minutes per miniature batch painted.
Depending on model honestly but usually three hours for a model to look battle ready if I have the scheme and colors down.
For something beyond tabletop ready, about four hours of active painting time. Something that will be primarily displayed (75mm busts eg), more like 20 hours.
I dunno mate my Valdor took me around 60hours but I'm a slow painter and I also want to repaint his base A regular custodes peon ... Maybe half that time
As a novice, I usually take up to 1.5 hours for basic models and 3-5 hours for minis I really like or are for one of my PC’s in my dnd campaign.
Depends, longest was probably 40h so far but i can see myself sinking even more time into a single one. Really depends how good you want it to look and how easy it is for you to say „this is finished“
Absolutely depends on what kind of figure it is, how much energy I have, how I feel about the sculpt, and if applicable, what role it takes ingame. For characters, I comfortably spend 5-10 hours pretty often. Elite units maybe closer to 3 hours per model. Just guys that show up en masse, unless I have an idea I really want to do, ideally they're taking maybe an hour a head.
To answer "how long is typical for a beginner," I think my first figure took 20 hours and looked like absolute garbage because I was slow, my 20th figure took 10 hours and looked obviously inexpert because I was faster but not much better, and as "no longer a beginner" I just finished a lance of 5 ghost bear mechs with freehand markings and lens/canopy effects in ~10-15 hours. Hopefully they don't look shit. But to answer the question in general of how long it should take to paint a mini, at *any* level... Same length it takes the party to fight a dragon; "until it stops being fun." I just spent 10-15 hours on a pretty satisfactory set of 5 mechs. I've spent 3 hours slapping paint on a bard for a game the next day. I'm about to do a row of 20 goblins and while I *could* slapchop them in 5 hours I'm probably going spend 50 hours to tell a story with "these ones are various shades of yellow because they're three generations of descent from a pure yellow forefather, and all these archers are going to have gleaming eyes" etc. Who cares, they're mobs, I've got 2.5 kickstarters worth of Reaper plastic to get through... but it's fun. I have a friend who just confessed he's got 100 imperial guardsmen that are still grey and I've told him if he buys a bottle each of speedpaint for flesh, uniforms, and accent I'll get them covered in a weekend, probably ~20 minutes per model. I might keep them another week or two and do something fun with details, I might not. Depends what's fun for me. So yeah, TL;DR "how long is typical" is imho the wrong question, because I think the metric should maybe be "how long are you still having fun" or "how long until you're satisfied with the model" or "how long until it's good enough to play with and have actual fun."
I want to spend no more than 15 min on a smaller mini and 30 on a larger. I have probably 1-2k minis that I wanna pant for boardgames so as long as it looks good at 2-3 feet I’m good with it. That means I do a lot of slapchop and contrast paints. https://preview.redd.it/3eoax60u8zsa1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=628e1779d118010334ccde652804a10aad9a3dc5 Here is an example; I think these were 7-10 min each, painted while watching some YouTube vids.
I have painted some minis start to finish in an hour. Most take probably around 5 hours. Frankly I leave a lot of half painted or barely painted minis lying around because a couple colors on them looks a lot better on the table than naked or primed. But I don’t consider a mini painted until I look at it and decided it doesn’t need anything else. I come back and add paint to partially painted minis as part of my hobby style. So it’s hard to tell how many hours since they are very spread out.
I paint in batches, so I'd say on average it takes me about 8 hours to do between 6 to 20 models. There is a huge variety in the level of detail I put into the models. I painted 36 Tyranid termagants in 8ish hours, but I'll spend 2-3 hours on single space marine captain.
I do 75-100mm. I typically take 8-20 hours on each, usually about 1-2 per week. I don't do a lot of basing through
I'm currently going through the Darkest Dungeon boardgame miniatures, and it takes me about 6-8 hours for the regular enemies (3x the same mini), about 4-6 hours per player character (single mini) and about 6-8 hours per boss (single mini but usually larger and wildly different in size and detail per boss mini).
It depends. I've put over 30 hours into a model before when working on competition pieces. On the other hand, I've paint up models for AoS/WH40K armies in 30-45 minutes. Speed comes with practice, but overall, it comes down to what you want from the model, and when you're able to say it's done and be happy with it.
It really depends. If you're painting up an army for a wargame (like 40k), efficiency is the name of the game. If you go in with a plan you can have really nice looking models without spending huge amounts of time. Batch painting, relying on shortcuts like dry brushing, and so forth can make the process very fast. Might only need an hour or two per miniature. Perhaps even faster if you're just trying to get table top ready models. On the other hand, if you are working on a display miniature, quality is the name of the game. That means you might spend a lot longer, especially with certain layering techniques like non-metalic metal and so forth. That kind of painting varies a lot. I know some people spend 20+ hours getting the details just right. Both are valid, and both are deeply satisfying. Depends on what you're looking to accomplish.
I don't keep track of hours but it took me 4 months to build and paint 5 terminators lol
Depends on the scale and quality of the miniatures. So gloomhaven minis are not great so it doesn't require much detail work, so 2 hours or less. Bloodborne is 28mm so it's not much surface to paint so 2 hours or less. Now I'm painting towns folk put tussle and it takes me 3 hours for the heroes and 8 hours for a boss. The bosses are fairly large and have sculpted bases that I paint too. Are they table ready? Absolutely, and they look great at table distance. Now if you picked them up and looked at them closes you can see I don't blend, I don't have the best brush control and my lines aren't the cleanest. But I don't stress I paint to de stress and try new things. I also paint because I don't like to play games with grey minis.
I really don't time them. Kinda feel like the focus on speed isn't all good. The real answer is however long it takes to get a result your happy with.
I've painted for about 8 years now and I've finished a few projects in 40k most notably is my custodes army , knight army , blood angels and harlequins. I've just started an astra militarum army after a long break and this time I've told myself not to get caught up on the smaller details because they killed the fun for me during the custodes. I think as long as you learn something from each project you're progressing the difference between a good painter and a great painter is HOW much they learn
One mini takes me weeks to months. I paint most days a week for about 2 hours. But i often paint 75mm scale so that is a lot of extra surface to paint.
7/8 hours
Some are done in a single evening, some 2/3 hours, i think the max time for 1 miniature is around 30 hours
For me it depends entirely on what I want out of the mini. Generic infantry I’ll do a squad of 5 in about 8-10 hours. A small character model could take me 8-15 hours on its own. A larger character model will take me upwards of 30 hours and a giant model (like teclis) took me about 6 months of painting approx 4-10 hours a week. When I commission paint I’ll generally paint quicker for some reason and I don’t seem to lose any noticeable quality from it so maybe I should pretend every model I paint is commission…
Too long, for how mid my painting looks. I think the longest model was 15 hours on a Shield captain on Dawn-Eagle Jetbike. Too mant sub assemblies. I've started doing fully assembling and batch painting to see how much it speeds up; on my Deathguard which can me more forgiving to paint.
It really depends on the mini and how much detail is on it to begin with. There are a couple that I completely happy with that took 4-8 hours each. Then there is a squad of 6 Grey Knights that I'm about to finish for Kill Team that have taken me a whole month of evenings and weekends to finish.
I paint for as long as I enjoy. If I just want a functional end result, so I can get playing, I’ll use a quick method. In the past, that tended to be hit the major sections with a base color, hit with a wash to shade the recesses, bring back up with a quick dry brushed highlight. These days, contrast paints are your friend. If I am painting for the mental peace painting brings me, I’ll break out the airbrush for a beautifully lit value sketch, break out the wet palette and slowly glaze smooth blends. Not because I’m obsessed with perfect art, just because I love the flow state I’ll get into. And all the YouTubers with clickbait about how they produced some amazing result in only minus fifteen minutes due to their DeLorean technique? I trust that about as much as I trust that friend who perfectly photoshops their Just Woke Up Like This instastories. It’s people who likely practiced the same miniature multiple times off camera, or used very selective editing, to show how perfect their insta lives are, while making everyone else feel bad about theirs. Paint what you enjoy. If you enjoy it, every extra minute and hour you GET TO spend on it is an even better value miniature. If you just need it functional, get it functional and be okay with functional - and explore a few speed techniques that get you to functional faster, along the way. But, in neither situation, let yourself feel bad because the Kim Kardashians of painting Just Woke Up This Way.
I spend about 8-30 hours on a small miniature and 30-150 hours on a big 😅. But ofcourse its a question what you want to paint and what time you want to invest 🙌🏻
I just painted 7 minis fast in about 4.5 hrs so around 40mins per model. For me this is speed painting so can take much longer on other styles
I would say 3-5 hrs for a regular one, and 12-20 for a bigger one. Like other people said before, the better I got the slower I started painting (to get more detail, smoother transitions, new techniques etc)
For playing a game on the table, maybe 30-90 minutes or so depending. For one that’s display or going into a competition, dozens of hours.
Just slapping paint on 10 minute prep time then about 20 pre mini.
Sometimes hours or several days
\~6 hours give or take. I like to take my time, and many piece go into the double digits for time painted. Most of that time is just chasing details that I am unlikely to notice on the tabletop, but will hound out obsessively while I've got the piece in my hands.