Joe’s Beginner’s Guide to painting X-Wing Miniatures

I always wanted to try and repaint some of my X-Wing miniatures and the other day I finially got around to it.

My first repaint ever. In any game, not just X-Wing. So I’m about as far from pro as you can get. But if you’ve never painted anything before either and are feeling a little daunted, maybe my experinces can help you get started.

Step 1: Figure out what ship to paint and what colors to paint it.

You can’t start painting until you know what ship you’re going to paint. Makes sense.

Figure out what ship you’d like to start with, maybe it’s your favorite. I chose the YT-1300 because I had an extra that I had bought cheap for the sole purpose of painting, and I figured it was big and therefore would require slightly less finess to paint.

Once you’ve picked your ship figure out what color you want.

Figured all that out? Good.

Step 2: Buy your supplies.

This step can be the inital speed bump as paints and supplies don’t often come cheap.

Get a nice little desk lamp and one of those green grid things that every YouTube painter seems to have. It’ll make you feel more experienced than you are.

I bought four pots of Citadel paints from my local game store when they were having a sale. So I got them slightly cheaper than the regular $4 a pot they run for at the store.

But you don’t even need four pots. I could have gotten by with two.

1. The color you want (in my case Evil Sunz Scarlet).

2. Nuln Oil, a shader.

I also bought a metallic silver color and white. Both of which added a few tiny details but are almost unnoticeable.

Two pots is all you need.

Also you’ll probably need some brushes. I stopped in the model aisle of Hobby Lobby and picked up a pack of Hobby Brushes. They were pretty cheap and probably pretty low quality but they suited my needs.

Step 3. Start Painting

Get a little cup of water nearby to rinse out your brushes, get your ship on it’s stand, crack open your paint and get brushing. 

Two tips I’ve picked up online about painting. These are really the only two tips I put into to practice.

1. Thin thin layers of paint all the time! Don’t you that much paint!

2. Don’t let your brush sit in the water after you rinse it.

That’s all the wisom I garnered online before starting and I made it through relatively unscathed.

After I got all of the red painted on, I added a few details here and there with my silver.

Step 4: Apply the dark wash

So after I had the top side all painted I opened up the Nuln Oil and applied it generously over the whole model.

Make sure you add extra in the pits and ridges.

This shading gives it depth and adds a little bit of darkness to it.

If anything, I might have overdone it a bit. So use it very sparingly. My ship looks like it’s pretty weathered and dirty. Not the look I was originally going for, but it looks fine nonetheless.

So keep that in mind when applying your wash. 

Step 5: Repeat on the bottom

After everything has dried now you can start on the bottom.

On second thought, maybe you should have started with the bottom and learned from experience painting that before painting the top, which is obviously going to be seen more.

Yeah. Go back to step 3 and start on the bottom of your ship first.

Step 6: Mess up the Engines

So I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the engines. Since I only had Red and White paint to work with, I figured I’d mix the red and white, to have sort of a pinkish red engine glow. And then run a thin line of white across the center to add some contrast.

This is how that progressed:

In hindsight, leaving them like this might not have been so bad.

And now for the super professional white line across the engines. Looks great….

Better cover that up… 

I decided to leave a little white peaking through. And then I added some dark wash to the bits above and below the engine. Looks…. ok. I’ll probably end up changing it in the future. Maybe bright green. Or a brighter red than the one I bought. 

Step 7: You did it! Show off to the internet

You can see how the Nuln Oil made the gray of the ship much darker than the original.

I chose not to strip the paint off of my ship before starting, something some X-Wing repainters do. I didn’t see the need to do that as the paint already on the model served as a fine basecoat, and meant i only had to add the few details I wanted rather than doing 100% of the model.

Let us know if this was helpful at all! Good luck painting your own ships and be sure to show us them if you do!