How to Basecoat Miniatures: Thinning Paint and Getting Clean Coverage

Basecoating is laying down the solid block of colour every later technique builds on. It is the least glamorous stage and the one that most decides whether a model looks clean or clumsy, because a lumpy basecoat cannot be rescued by shading or highlighting.

This guide covers how thin your paint should be, how to get opaque coverage without drowning detail, which colours are difficult and what to do about them, and the order to lay colours down in.

How thin should paint be for a basecoat?

The standard advice is "thin your paints", which is true and useless without a target. The target is the consistency of milk. Not water, not cream. Paint at that consistency flows off the brush evenly, self-levels as it dries, and takes two coats to become opaque.

How to judge it:

• Straight from a fresh pot, most paints are slightly too thick.
• Mix a little water, or better a thinning medium, into the paint on a palette, never in the pot.
• Drag the loaded brush across the palette. It should leave a smooth even stripe that does not bead up or dry with visible ridges.
• If you can see the brush marks as it dries, it is too thick. If the colour goes on translucent and runs into recesses, it is too thin.

Two thin coats always beat one thick one. A thick coat fills panel lines, softens rivets, and dries with visible texture. Two thin coats cover just as well and preserve everything.

What is a wet palette and do you need one?

A wet palette is a shallow tray with a damp sponge and a sheet of semi-permeable membrane on top. Paint on the membrane stays workable for hours instead of skinning over in two minutes.

You do not need one to basecoat. You will want one the moment you start layering, because that involves keeping a mix alive across a whole session. For basecoating it mostly saves paint and stops your thinned mix drying to a crust while you work round the model.

How do you basecoat cleanly, step by step?

1. Put a small amount of paint on the palette and thin it to milk consistency.
2. Load the brush and then unload it. Dip about a third of the bristle length, then wipe one side on the palette edge. A brush carrying a bulging bead of paint will dump it into the first recess it touches.
3. Paint the largest areas first, working from the middle of a panel outward towards the edges rather than starting at an edge.
4. Stop short of the recesses. Let the paint flow to the edge of a panel line; do not push the brush into it. Recesses want to stay dark.
5. Let the first coat dry completely. Dry to the touch, which takes a couple of minutes.
6. Apply the second coat the same way. This is the one that makes it opaque and even.
7. Work outward through the colours, largest area to smallest.

Keep the brush tip clean and reshape it regularly. A splayed brush cannot make a clean edge no matter how steady your hand is.

Which colours are hard to cover, and what do you do?

Coverage varies enormously by pigment, and that is chemistry rather than a quality problem. Yellows, reds, oranges and pure whites are transparent by nature.

The fixes, in order of preference:

• Choose the right primer. Yellow over bone primer covers in two coats. Yellow over black takes six and still looks dull. Match the primer's value to the target colour.
• Undercoat with a covering colour of the same family. A brown-red or an ochre under a bright red, a warm off-white under yellow.
• Use a purpose-made high-coverage base paint rather than a layer or artist colour, which are formulated to be more transparent.
• Accept more coats, thinly. Four thin coats of yellow look far better than two thick ones.

Metallics behave differently again; see painting metals.

What order should you paint the colours in?

Work from the inside out and the biggest to the smallest:

1. Areas you can barely reach: inside cloaks, behind backpacks, deep between armour plates.
2. The dominant colour that covers most of the model.
3. Secondary large areas such as cloth, robes and carapace.
4. Metals.
5. Small details: lenses, pouches, purity seals, cabling.
6. Skin and faces, usually last, because they need the most concentration.

This order means that when your brush slips (and it will) you are slipping onto a surface you have not painted yet.

Basecoating a Warhammer squad

Basecoating is where batch painting earns its keep. Rather than finishing one model, do one colour across the entire unit: all ten shoulder pads, then all ten weapons, then all ten faces. You mix each colour once, you get into a rhythm, and the unit progresses together.

A concrete example for a ten-model Space Marine squad: blue armour over the whole squad in two thin coats, then the black weapon casings, then the metallics, then a bone for the shoulder trim. Two evenings and the unit is ready to shade.

Speed is only half the case for working this way. Colours mixed once are identical across the unit, which is what makes ten models look like a squad instead of ten individuals.

Paints to use

Base-range paints are formulated for coverage, which is what this stage needs. Lahmian Medium is the thinner to reach for once water alone starts to weaken the paint.

Macragge Blue · Citadel Colour Base

Mephiston Red · Citadel Colour Base

Abaddon Black · Citadel Colour Base

Lahmian Medium · Citadel Colour Technical

What are the most common basecoating mistakes?

• Painting straight from the pot. Unthinned paint dries with visible ridges and fills detail.
• Thinning with too much water. Paint thinned past milk consistency loses its binder, goes patchy and chalky, and runs into recesses. Use a medium if you want it thinner without weakening it.
• Overloading the brush. The bead of paint at the tip goes exactly where you did not want it.
• Chasing opacity in one coat. Stop, let it dry, do it again.
• Pushing paint into panel lines. Those shadows are free; do not fill them in and then try to re-create them with a wash.
• Thinning in the pot. It ruins the whole pot's consistency for good.

Frequently asked questions

How thin is "thin your paints" exactly?

Milk. A quick test: a drop of properly thinned paint on the palette spreads slightly on its own instead of standing up as a bead, and the second coat over it goes opaque.

Should I thin with water or a medium?

Water is fine for modest thinning. Beyond about one part water to two parts paint you are diluting the acrylic binder, which makes the finish fragile and chalky, so switch to a thinning or glaze medium.

How many coats does a basecoat need?

Two, for most colours over a sensibly chosen primer. Yellows, reds and pure whites may need three or four thin coats, which is a reason to pick a lighter primer.

Can I basecoat with an airbrush?

Yes, and it excels at large single-colour areas: vehicles, big battlesuits, whole squads of the same armour colour. You still need a brush for everything smaller.

Why does my paint look chalky and streaky?

Usually over-thinning with water, or paint that has dried slightly on the palette and been re-wet. Mix a fresh batch and thin with medium rather than water.

Do I need to varnish between stages?

No. Varnish belongs at the end. The exception is if you are about to do something aggressive like heavy weathering and want an undo layer.

What comes next

A clean, even basecoat is the platform. The quickest way to make it look three-dimensional is a wash, which pushes shadow into every recess in a single pass.