Instagram painting isn't real: what really is the state of Warhammer painting?

We're back with a sequel: just how is Warhammer actually painted

Having previously written about the real state of competitive Warhammer, I wanted to examine how Warhammer is actually painted - out there in the real world, away from the perfectly presented paintjobs that propagate online...

I decided to write this article when I saw a poll on a prominent Warhammer YouTube channel asking their subscribers whether they tended to play with fully painted armies some of the time, or all of the time.

In fact, the vast majority of the responses (i.e., over 50%) were in the bracket of "I haven't ever played a game with fully painted armies and terrain".

That's right: the majority of responses in a fairly major poll by a large scale YouTuber suggested that folks had never played a game with two fully painted forces, on a fully painted set of terrain. NEVER. That really got me thinking about the real state of painting in the Warhammer hobby.

"Most folks had never played a game with two fully painted forces, on a fully painted set of terrain. NEVER."

Instagram - and TikTok and Facebook too, I'm sure - are wonderful tools for inspiration. They're full of lovely, lovely people who are super encouraging and friendly.

But - as with everything social media in the mid 2020s - they can also be incredibly intimidating. It can be very easy to feel as if your efforts are not good enough, and that everyone else in the hobby space is turning out work of an incredibly high standard, consistently, to which your own lovingly painted miniatures can't compete.

So this article is a plea to anyone feeling like they're not good enough, that their painting doesn't belong, maybe even who are put off from painting at all because of that constant comparison with the best of the very best. Here's why.

First and foremost - finished is always better than perfect.

First up: the enemy of finished is perfect. Don't let comparison to incredible (professional) paint jobs online stop you from finishing your own miniatures. Yeh, you're probably not going to have a golden demon finish on every model you paint, but that's not the point. The most popular GW games are massed-miniatures ones, and quality can absolutely be found in quantity. You're likely painting around 30-100 models for a typical 40k or Age of Sigmar army, so don't let the quality of a single paintjob distract you from the impact of seeing all of that arrayed on the field, fully painted.

I love painting tutorials which actually show multiple models being painted at once. Painting a single model to an award winning standard is and always will be an incredible artistic achievement, but achieving this results for full armies is, for the most part, simply not realistic.

"You're likely painting around 30-100 models for a typical army, so don't let the quality of a single paintjob distract you from the impact of seeing all of that arrayed on the field, fully painted."

In the real world, if you walk into your local store with a fully painted army, even if you know it isn't perfect, and it's just contrast and based, and wouldn't hold up to the kind of inspection expected on Instagram close ups, people aren't going to care. They won't even notice. In fact, just by the merit of having that most holy of hobby achievements - A fully. Painted. Army. - you'll get plenty of friendly chatter, I'm sure.

In my opinion and experience, a fully painted, tabletop-quality army is leagues better than an army which is predominately undercoated, but with a unit or two that is nicely finished.

My own Drukhari army. It ain't much, but I love them.

Don't be disheartened when comparing your own work to the incredible paint jobs on Instagram: just put paint on it. Don't worry about nailing perfect highlights, all the time; don't fret if your faces are a little less than runway-quality. And remember: you can always come back to an army to improve it, should you wish. Spending a few hours pushing the contrast of your highlights or neatening up your basing is a really rewarding way to take an army to the next level, and one that you don't have to start from scratch.

Second - the game is designed to be viewed from six feet away. Not six inches.

One thing that I think the importance of Instagram to the hobby has skewed in recent times is the level of attention given to individual models. Seeing beautiful, basic infantry models blown up to a ludicrous size against a matte background diverges brutally from the fact that, at its heart, Warhammer is principally designed to be viewed from the opposite side of a table, and not through a magnifying glass.

In support of this, one other tip I remember being given when getting back into Warhammer is to paint for the back row. To make an impression, go BIG. Pop colours, vivid colour schemes, striking base ideas - even if the model itself isn't that well painted, a coherent and eye catching scheme will still turn heads.

Grimdark and hyper-realistic paint jobs are wonderful online under perfect lights and with a great camera - and if you can carry them off, more power to you. But out in the real world, you're not going to notice all that luscious detail from the opposite end of an event hall. It's just likely to look... well.... dark. That said, a fully grimdark paint job with some select spots of brightness - on lenses, or on the base - can be visually very striking. It'll just be so on a macro-level, when taken as a whole army, rather than on a model-by-model basis.

To try it out, next time you're playing a game, see if you ever - ever - pay attention to the eyes or faces of your opponents minis. Trust me, in the heat of battle, you won't be thinking about those minutiae at all, but instead be enjoying the pleasing sight of two fully painted forces going ham against each other.

There's a lot I find challenging about tournaments, but getting to play into five different armies, all of them painted, whatever the aptitude level, is a huge plus to every weekend. If you go to tournaments with a tabletop ready army, someone is going to comment on it, in a nice way. Because getting to see a fully-painted army that you wouldn't normally get to see is one of the joys of playing events.

Third - time. You can achieve so, so much with time.

The secret sauce behind a lot of the stroke-perfect paintjobs on Instagram is time. It takes an incredibly long time to create the masterpieces that are taken for granted over on the 'gram: hours or even days in real time.

If you don't have the time to manage that, you aren't alone. Most of us are juggling all manner of very grown-up commitments and likely don't have the time to devote to painting an individual model for days on end. And when you do sit down to paint, you likely want to maximise your minutes. Batch painting isn't just an option when you're painting a whole army: it's a must.

But when you do have time to paint, the main thing I think is to not view it as work, or even a challenge neccessarily, but to enjoy it. Enjoy it for the sake of enjoying it. If motivation is an issue, then I find that organising a game is always a huge motivator to sit down for a few hours and crack out some reinforcements.

More Drukhari, this time with a big plane...

And fourth - the real standard of miniature painting

In the real world, most miniature painting is not even close to the standard you would expect from Instagram and elsewhere. And that's a good thing. Most of the time, your painted armies will not be blown out of the water in comparison to anyone else's. And on the rare occasion they are, I typically see that as a rare treat, rather than an indictment on your own painting ability.

It's one reaosn why I honestly prefer watching battle-report channels that make use of their team's own painted armies, rather than relying on a full suite of fully-commission painted armies. Of course, there's an argument to be made that, if you have the camera quality for it, you should want to have the best looking models you can field to make the best cinematic experience you can. I refute this. I feel that there's a lot more to be said for having armies on show that reflect the personalities of the players in the game, rather than that are objectively the "best" painted armies. There are little kitbashes and conversions and flourishes in a real army that make an army really sing, that a pristine, professionally crafted army cannot match.

As an example, it's why Beard's Iron Warriors on Tabletop Tactics will always be my favourite of the factions they have there, despite the incredible work of Fletcher and various other commission studios. Because they feel unique. When playing my own friends, or at tournaments, seeing the little kitbashes or painting choices my opponent made - and often having them excitedly explain those choices during the game - is a real highlight of the hobby.

In conclusion: comparison is the thief of joy

Where does this little conversation leave us? Maybe next time you're examining an absolutely pixel-perfect paintjob online, and you feel that sinking feeling that your own miniatures can never live up to it... Don't worry about it. If you're going to judge yourself against anything, judge against your own progress and not the work of (often semi-professional...) others.

Above all, just paint. Any paintjob will always be 100% better than grey plastic. Playing a game with two fully painted forces is a fantastic experience and a serious achievement. So grab a brush and get to work.

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Until next time,

Alex