ImpendingDuff is back to up our painting skills with a quick tutorial on how to paint stubble on miniatures!
ImpendingDuff may be somewhat new here, but he’s actually been doing this for a while now. He does great painting tutorials and is definitely worth checking out.
This week he has a solid tutorial for anyone looking to make your faces a little more realistic and fierce-looking! This is part of his new quick tips series, which focuses on one or two small things each time to up your painting game. Check it out!
How to Paint Stubble on Miniatures: ImpendingDuff Tutorial
Here is the mini we’ll be starting with today, let’s see how to make it better! He likes to paint the heads off the mini, but you can always do it on the model, it will probably just be harder. He’s actually going to show two different ways to do this, one easier and one harder.
Style 1:
The first thing he does is grab Dark Gray Blue from Monument and throws it on his wet palette along with some medium. He then mixes it with the medium to create a glaze of sorts. He wants to keep it thin as you can see above.
Next, he gets a moistened paper towel when it has paint on it and barely touches the brush to the paper towel. Once he does that, he takes a very light glaze across the face of the mini where stubble would naturally grow. You can see how it already is turning a little greyish. Once dry, he does another coat.
If you have any pooling, be sure to go back over with the brush to smooth it out. As it stands right now, you could just go with it like this.
Style 2:
To start this, he doesn’t have the mini fully painted. He mixes a tiny bit of the blue from before into his Tan Flesh. It will turn it into an almost gray color. He treats it very similar to a layer and does this just where the beard would be. Just be sure to do nice thin layers.
This is more for a tabletop standard as opposed to the top one. Then, when you do the layer of regular skin tone, you can really see the difference. Obviously, this isn’t as cool-looking as the top one, but much easier.
This is another model he did but finished it more and you can really see the difference in tone.
If you liked this feature, be sure to check out his channel for more great tutorials!
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
