A reference guide to the terms, techniques, tools, and concepts you’ll encounter in the miniature painting hobby — from absolute beginner to advanced practitioner.
Acrylic Paint
The standard paint type for miniature painting. Acrylic paints are water-based, fast-drying, and clean up with water. They’re non-toxic, come in an enormous range of colours and formulations, and are produced by virtually every major miniature paint manufacturer. Most techniques in this glossary assume acrylic paints unless otherwise specified.
Airbrush
A precision spray tool that uses compressed air to atomise and propel paint onto a surface. Airbrushing excels at smooth gradients, zenithal priming, basecoating large areas quickly, and OSL effects. Requires a compressor, an airbrush, and paints thinned to a specific consistency. Has a steeper learning curve than brush painting but opens up techniques that are extremely difficult to replicate by hand.
Analogous Colours
Colours that sit adjacent to each other on the colour wheel — for example, blue, blue-green, and green. Analogous colour schemes feel harmonious and natural because the colours share common hue components. A useful starting scheme for beginners as it’s difficult to make look truly bad.
Assembly-Line Painting
A painting approach where you work on multiple miniatures simultaneously, completing one stage across all models before moving to the next. Significantly faster than finishing one model at a time when painting a unit or warband, and produces more consistent results across the batch.
Base (scenic)
The flat surface a miniature stands on, often textured and painted to represent ground, stone, sand, snow, or other terrain. A well-finished base adds context and visual completion to a miniature. Basing materials include fine sand, modelling paste, static grass, tufts, gravel, cork, and pre-made textured products.
Base Coat
The first layer of colour applied to a primed miniature, establishing the midtone for each area. A good base coat is opaque (full coverage in one or two coats), smoothly applied, and thin enough not to obscure detail. In Games Workshop terminology, “Base” paints are specifically formulated for this purpose — high pigment density, good coverage.
Blending
The technique of creating a smooth, gradual transition between two colours or between a colour and a highlight/shadow. Various methods exist: wet blending (working wet paint into wet paint on the model), layering (building up many thin semi-transparent layers), feathering, and two-brush blending. All aim at the same result — a seamless colour gradient rather than a stepped transition.
Brush Loading
How much paint is on the brush when applied to the model. An under-loaded brush produces dry, scratchy strokes and may drag paint that’s already on the model. An over-loaded brush floods the surface with too much paint and loses detail. A correctly loaded brush leaves a consistent, controllable amount of paint with each stroke — typically with most paint in the belly, the tip barely charged.
Chipping
A weathering technique that simulates paint or surface coating being chipped away, revealing metal or bare material beneath. Achieved with a sponge (dipped in paint and dabbed on the surface), a worn brush, or specialist products. Common on vehicles and armoured miniatures.
Colour Temperature
The quality of a colour as warm (reds, oranges, yellows) or cool (blues, greens, purples). Colour temperature relationships are used to create the impression of natural lighting — highlights are typically pushed warmer, shadows cooler — and to control the mood of a colour scheme. Warm schemes feel energetic and aggressive; cool schemes feel calm or sinister.
Colour Theory
The body of knowledge governing how colours interact, combine, and affect perception. For miniature painters, the most relevant aspects are complementary colours, analogous harmony, value (lightness/darkness), saturation, and warm/cool temperature. A basic working understanding of colour theory significantly improves both colour scheme selection and mixing decisions.
Colour Wheel
A circular diagram organising colours by their relationships to each other. Primary colours (red, yellow, blue) are equally spaced; secondary colours (orange, green, purple) sit between them; tertiary colours fill the remaining gaps. The colour wheel is a quick visual reference for identifying complementary pairs, analogous groups, and triadic schemes.
Complementary Colours
Colours that sit directly opposite each other on the colour wheel — red/green, blue/orange, purple/yellow. Complementary pairs create maximum visual contrast when placed next to each other, making each colour appear more vivid. When mixed together, they produce neutral greys and browns — useful for desaturating colours but destructive if done accidentally.
Contrast Paint
A category of paint formulated to flow into recesses and leave highlights lighter in a single coat. Designed specifically for use over a white or light zenithal undercoat. Produces a shaded, highlighted result in one application — fast, effective, and particularly good for batch painting. Sold under various brand names including Games Workshop’s “Contrast” and Army Painter’s “Speedpaint”.
Decanting
Pouring paint from its original container into a dropper bottle for easier application and better volume control. Many painters decant paints sold in pots (particularly Games Workshop’s range) into dropper bottles to avoid the problems of over-application from pot lids and paint drying at the opening.
Drybrush
A technique where most paint is removed from the brush before application — leaving just a trace — which deposits colour only on the raised surfaces a lightly loaded brush can reach. Fast, effective for texture and quick highlighting, particularly on fur, hair, grass, stone, and chainmail. Produces a slightly powdery appearance that can be smoothed with a glaze or wash. Uses old brushes, as the technique destroys tip quality quickly.
Edge Highlighting
Applying a lighter colour to the very edge of a raised surface to simulate light catching it. Characteristic of the ‘Eavy Metal style — it’s graphic and high-contrast rather than realistic, but reads clearly at tabletop distance and gives models strong visual definition. Requires a steady hand and a brush with a sharp tip.
Enamel Paint
Oil-based paint requiring mineral spirits or turpentine for thinning and cleanup. Less commonly used for main painting than acrylics, but frequently used for washes, filters, and weathering effects (especially on vehicles). Requires ensuring the surface is sealed before use over acrylics to prevent the solvent from lifting the paint beneath.
Feathering
A blending technique where a single colour is applied and then worked out at its edges using a clean, damp brush, creating a gradual fade into the colour beneath. Unlike two-brush blending or wet blending, feathering uses only one colour at a time and relies on repeated thin applications to build up smooth transitions.
Ferrule
The metal collar on a paint brush that holds the bristles to the handle. Paint drying in the ferrule pushes bristles outward and causes irreversible splaying. Keeping paint out of the ferrule — by not loading above the belly of the bristle bundle — is the most important brush maintenance habit.
Filter
An extremely thin, highly diluted wash applied over a large area to subtly shift the overall colour temperature or tone. Filters don’t shade or highlight — they tint. A warm filter over a cool grey makes it feel dustier; a cool blue filter over green makes it feel underwater. Particularly popular in military and historical miniature painting.
Freehand
Painting a design, pattern, symbol, or image directly onto the surface of a miniature without a transfer or stencil. Everything from unit markings and scrollwork to full pictorial scenes on banner panels counts as freehand. Widely considered a benchmark of advanced painting skill.
Flesh Wash / Skin Wash
A diluted brown, reddish-brown, or purple-brown wash formulated specifically to shade flesh tones. Designed to pool in the recesses of a face and limbs while leaving the raised areas relatively clean, producing a quick, convincing skin shading effect.
Glaze
A very thin, transparent layer of paint applied over a surface to tint or subtly modify the colour without obscuring the layers beneath. Unlike a wash, a glaze isn’t meant to pool in recesses — it covers the whole area evenly. Used for colour correction, blending the transition between layers, adding warmth or coolness to an area, or creating subtle colour variation across a large surface.
Gesso
A thick primer used primarily by traditional artists on canvas, occasionally used by miniature painters as an alternative to spray primer. Provides excellent surface tooth for paint adhesion. Applied by brush and requires thinning. Less convenient than spray primer for miniature use but useful when spray priming isn’t possible.
Green Stuff
A two-part epoxy putty (Kneadatite) used in miniature modelling for gap filling, sculpting additional detail, modifying existing features, and converting miniatures. Mixed in equal amounts, it has a working time of roughly 90 minutes before curing hard. Widely available from hobby suppliers.
Hard Edge Blending
A blending approach where layers are built up with clear, defined edges between them rather than soft, gradual transitions. Each layer remains visible as a distinct step. More graphic and stylised than smooth blending but can be very effective for non-organic subjects like armour and machines.
Highlighting
The general process of applying lighter colours to raised surfaces to simulate light. Encompasses many techniques — layering, drybrushing, edge highlighting, wet blending — all aimed at the same result: making the three-dimensional form of the miniature readable through the simulation of light.
Humidity
Environmental moisture that affects paint behaviour and primer adhesion. High humidity can prevent spray primer from adhering correctly (resulting in a grainy or rough texture sometimes called “frosting”), slow drying times, and cause certain varnishes to cloud over (also called “blooming”). Avoid priming and varnishing in very humid conditions.
Ink
A highly fluid, deeply pigmented medium available in both water-based and alcohol-based formulations. Inks flow into recesses more readily than standard washes due to their thinner consistency, and produce deeper, richer shadows. Alcohol-based inks can also be used to tint metallics and other paints with intense colour.
Acrylic Medium
A transparent acrylic medium used to thin paint while maintaining consistency — where water alone can break down the binder in paint and cause it to separate or behave erratically. Adding medium instead of (or alongside) water produces smoother glazes and thinner layers that retain the correct paint consistency. Essential for glazing and wet blending.
Layering
Building up colour in multiple semi-transparent coats, each slightly lighter or darker than the last, leaving the previous layer partially visible at the edges. The cumulative effect creates a smooth gradient. Layering is the foundation of the Games Workshop painting style and is one of the most accessible blending techniques for beginners.
Line Highlighting
See Edge Highlighting. The terms are often used interchangeably.
Metallics (True Metallic Metal / TMM)
Standard metallic paints contain real metal particles that reflect light, creating a physical shimmer. TMM uses these paints to paint metal surfaces, relying on the inherent reflectivity of the paint itself for the metallic effect. Contrasted with NMM (Non-Metallic Metal), which uses non-metallic paints to simulate the look of metal through careful placement of light and shadow.
Mould Line
A seam left on a miniature from the casting process where the halves of the mould meet. Mould lines must be removed before priming — using a hobby knife, mould line remover tool, or file — or they’ll be visible as ridges on the finished paint job, particularly under washes and drybrushing.
Munter
A colloquial term (particularly in the UK hobby community) for a miniature that’s been painted quickly to a basic tabletop standard — functional and recognisable but not refined. Not pejorative in most contexts — tabletop quality is a perfectly valid goal for gaming pieces.
NMM (Non-Metallic Metal)
A painting technique that uses standard (non-metallic) paints to create the illusion of a metallic surface through extreme value contrast and precise highlight placement. NMM requires understanding how metal reflects its environment — typically near-white highlights alongside very dark shadows with minimal midtone transition. Considered one of the most technically demanding miniature painting techniques. Contrasted with TMM (True Metallic Metal).
Oil Paint
Slow-drying paint mixed with linseed or other oils, cleaned up with mineral spirits. Provides a much longer working time than acrylics, making wet blending and subtle colour transitions easier. Used increasingly in miniature painting for face work, skin blending, and weathering effects. Must always be applied over a sealed acrylic base layer to prevent the solvent in the oil paint from lifting the acrylic beneath.
OSL (Object Source Lighting)
A painting technique that simulates a light source on or near the miniature — a glowing weapon, a torch, a magical aura — by painting the coloured light it would cast onto the surrounding surfaces. Requires understanding how light spreads and falls off with distance, and how it interacts with different surface types. Visually dramatic and increasingly popular in display and competition miniatures.
Overbrush
Similar to drybrushing but with slightly more paint left on the brush, producing more coverage than a standard drybrush pass. Useful for textures where you want more complete coverage of raised detail without the commitment of a full base coat — chainmail is the classic use case.
Paint Consistency
The viscosity of paint as applied — how thin or thick it is. Getting consistency right is one of the most important and most underemphasised fundamentals of miniature painting. Paint that’s too thick obscures detail, dries with visible brush strokes, and is difficult to blend. Paint that’s too thin is transparent, runs into recesses uncontrollably, and requires many coats to build opacity. Correct consistency varies by technique — thin for glazing, slightly thicker for base coating, very thin for wet blending.
Palette
The surface on which paint is mixed and held during a painting session. Can be a dry surface (ceramic tile, disposable palette paper) or a wet palette. The choice of palette significantly affects how long paint stays workable during a session.
Pigment
The actual coloured particles that give paint its colour. Pigment is suspended in a binder (the acrylic polymer that makes paint stick to surfaces) and diluted with water. The quality, concentration, and particle size of pigments determine a paint’s opacity, coverage, and vibrancy.
Pin Wash
A technique where a thin wash is applied specifically to a single recess or detail rather than broadly across a surface. Applied carefully with a fine brush. Provides precise shading of specific areas — panel lines on vehicles, the crease in a lip, the recess at a belt buckle — without affecting the surrounding painted surface.
Priming / Undercoating
Applying a specialised base layer to a miniature before painting. Primer bonds to the bare plastic, resin, or metal surface and provides tooth for subsequent paint layers to adhere to. Without primer, paint may rub off, chip, or fail to stick evenly. Available in spray cans or brush-on formulations, in black, white, grey, and colour-specific options. Black primer deepens shadows; white or grey primer improves colour vibrancy and is preferred for lighter colour schemes.
Recess Shading
The technique of applying a wash, shade, or thin paint specifically into the recesses of a miniature to shade them, while leaving raised surfaces clean. Distinct from a broad wash in that it’s applied more deliberately and with more control, often using a pin wash technique and tidying up any tide marks or unwanted coverage with the base colour.
Recipe
A documented set of paints and steps used to achieve a specific result on a miniature. Sharing paint recipes is common in the hobby community. A recipe typically lists the base colour, wash colours, and highlight colours used in order of application.
Retarder
An additive that slows the drying time of acrylic paint, extending the working window for wet blending and smooth layering. Available from art suppliers. Used sparingly — too much retarder prevents paint from curing properly and can create a permanently tacky surface.
Saturation
The intensity or vividness of a colour. A fully saturated colour is the purest, brightest version of that hue. A desaturated colour is muted, greyed, or earthy. Real-world objects are rarely fully saturated — intentional desaturation makes miniatures look more natural and less like toy soldiers.
Sealer / Varnish
A protective coating applied over finished paintwork to protect it from handling, chipping, and wear. Available in gloss, satin, and matte finishes. Matte varnish is most commonly used as a final coat. Gloss varnish is often applied as an intermediate layer before washes (helps washes flow) and before decals (prevents silvering around transfer edges).
SENMM (Sky/Earth Non-Metallic Metal)
A variant of NMM where the reflection of the sky (blues, whites) in the upper portions of a metal surface and earth tones (greens, browns, ochres) in the lower portions are painted to create a convincing metallic illusion with environmental context. More complex than standard NMM but produces exceptionally realistic results.
Shading
The process of darkening areas of a miniature to create the impression of shadow and three-dimensionality. Shading can be achieved through washes (broad coverage), glazes (transparent tinting), pin washing (targeted recesses), or wet blending (direct colour manipulation). Shading is one half of the highlight/shadow duo that gives a miniature its sense of form and light.
Skin Tone
The colour of flesh on a miniature, ranging from human skin tones to fantasy variants (green for orcs, grey-blue for undead, etc.). One of the most scrutinised aspects of a finished miniature because human eyes are highly sensitive to the appearance of skin. Getting a convincing skin tone typically requires careful mixing, warm-to-cool temperature shifts, and some subtle colour variation.
Sponging
A weathering technique using a small piece of torn blister pack foam or similar open-cell sponge dipped in paint and dabbed onto the miniature. The irregular cell structure of the sponge creates random, naturalistic patterns — effective for chipping, rust effects, mud, and textured terrain.
Stippling
Applying paint in small dots rather than strokes, creating a textured or grainy effect. Used for rust, weathering, rough skin textures, and OSL falloff effects. Requires an old brush or a specific stippling brush.
Stripping
Removing paint from a miniature — either to correct mistakes or to repaint it entirely. Methods vary by miniature material: Simple Green, Dettol, or methylated spirits are commonly used for plastic and resin; isopropyl alcohol for metal. The miniature is soaked and then scrubbed with an old toothbrush to remove the softened paint.
Thinning
Reducing the viscosity of paint by adding water or a medium before application. The most fundamental technique in miniature painting. Thin paint flows more smoothly, doesn’t obscure detail, and can be built up in transparent layers. The commonly cited standard is “the consistency of skimmed milk” for most painting tasks.
Triadic Colours
A colour scheme using three colours equally spaced around the colour wheel — for example, red, yellow, and blue, or orange, green, and purple. Triadic schemes are vibrant and balanced. The key to using them effectively is allowing one colour to dominate as the primary while the other two serve as accents.
Two Thin Coats
A phrase advising painters to apply paint in two thin, transparent layers rather than one thick one. The principle is sound: thin coats preserve detail, dry faster, and produce smoother results than single thick applications. Has become something of a hobby mantra and meme.
Value
The lightness or darkness of a colour, independent of its hue or saturation. A dark red and a dark blue may have different hues but the same value. Value is arguably more important than colour choice in determining whether a miniature reads well — high value contrast between shadows, midtones, and highlights creates the sense of three-dimensional form. Desaturating an image to black and white reveals its value structure.
Varnish
See Sealer / Varnish.
Wash
A diluted paint or specifically formulated shade product applied broadly over a surface, designed to flow into recesses and pool there to create shading while leaving raised surfaces lighter. One of the most accessible techniques in miniature painting — a single wash over a base coat can dramatically improve the read of a miniature with minimal skill required.
Weathering
A broad category of techniques that add the appearance of age, damage, wear, and environmental effects to a miniature. Includes chipping, rust, mud, battle damage, fading, oxidation, oil stains, and more. Weathering adds narrative and realism to a paint job.
Wet Blending
A blending technique where two colours are applied to a surface while both are still wet, then merged at their meeting point using a brush. Requires working quickly or using a retarder to extend working time. Produces exceptionally smooth transitions when done well, but is more demanding than layering and requires practice. Particularly well-suited to large, flat surfaces.
Wet Palette
A palette that uses a moisture-permeable membrane (typically baking parchment) over a wet sponge or foam layer to keep paint workable for extended periods. Paint on a wet palette stays usable for hours in a session rather than drying within minutes as on a dry palette. Mixes can often be revived the next day. Standard equipment for any serious painter. Can be purchased commercially or built at home for minimal cost.
Zenithal Priming
A priming technique that applies paint from above — simulating overhead light — to establish a light-to-dark value gradient before any colour is applied. Typically done with black from all angles followed by white or grey from a high angle. The resulting gradient informs subsequent painting, with contrast and speed paints in particular interacting with it to produce naturally shaded results. Named for “zenith” — the point directly overhead.