Miniature Musings - Painting 2mm Miniatures

After posting about my positive reception of Strength & Honour on Twitter, I had Korhyl Miniatures (the maker of the resin armies I purchased at the convention) reach out to me and ask if I could come up with a post about how I ended up painting their 2mm minis. 

So here's the step-by-step process I took to paint a Roman Legion base. 

I started with the base which went into a quick soapy water bath before being air dried. 

Then a black primer, which I tried to make as thin as possible while still getting a good coat. 

As you can see, the individual blocks are still visible. 

Since this was my first attempt at anything this small, I decided to start with the base instead of the troops blocks. 

I used Vallejo's Flat Earth as a base color, and then dry brushed Tan Earth overtop to lighten it a little. 

Normally I'd apply a brown wass to Flat Earth to give it some depth, but with such a tiny scale, that'd probably be too dark. 

After the game of Strength & Honour, I was advised by Maurice to use extra fine point (that's 0.7mm!) acrylic markers, and he was right! The tips were just small enough to make the dots that give the impression of faces, shields, swords, etc.

Having a good set of pens with a range of colors is nice, especially when it includes pastels that can pass for various colors of skin and horse hair. 

The longest part of the process was dotting the blocks. 

Some advice: Do the shield dots first, then the face dots. I tried doing the faces first, only for the color to be covered over in places by the shields. You need the "faces" to give the blocks a sense of direction. 

I placed "shields" on the front and left sides of the blocks, and used silver dots to show swords and armor on the rear and right sides. 

I predominantly used a single shade of red, with a shade of red and white to break up the color monotony. 

I've heard plenty of hobbyists say that, when you get into the smaller scales, basing makes the unit really 'pop', so I tried that out here. I used two different flocks for grass, as well as tiny clumps of foliage in a couple colors to represent bushes or low trees. 

And with a quick varnish, that's a unit done. Accomplishable in a day, or less with some dedication, you could easily finish an entire army in a week or less and be able to play massive battles. 

I'd really like some thoughts and feedback. Anything you'd do differently? My only thought, at the moment, would be to make the entire top layer of the Legion base metallic, to show Roman armor, then adding the colored tops. Maybe I'll try that with a second base.