Step One:
Take the pieces of your desired miniature out of the Blister and inspect it. Find any imperfections (flash or mold lines) and use your hobby knife to clean these off. Then dry fit each piece on the figure to make sure they fit correctly. If they don’t, again use the knife to make the pieces fit. Lastly, take your pin vice and assortment of drill bits and drill out the missile and laser ports. This adds a bit of realism and depth to these items. Superglue the pieces together, making sure they are good and dry before moving on.

Step Two:
Taking the flat black paint, brush on the paint to the figure making sure thatyou cover the entire figure. This will come in handy as you’ll see in the next few steps.

Step Three:
Here is the first part of the painting that will help define your figure. This is what we call dry brushing. Taking the ¼ flat brush, dip it in the desired color that you would like to paint your figure. I am using white because I am going to do the DCMS’s 7^th Ghost (I use white instead of light grey, but to each their own) Dip the tip of your brush in the paint, and then wipe the paint off the best you can on the paper towel.

Step Four:
Then, run the brush over the figure evenly, trying to get paint on the panels and leaving paint out of the depressions and figure detail lines. This will be the base fort he rest of your painting. If you want to do a scheme with more than one color, you need to do a dry brushing of each color over the area you would like to paint that particular color.

Step Five:
Now we come to the tricky part. Taking the 3/0 brush, begin filling in the panel were you can see the off color paint. Take care not to get the paint in the detail lines; this will make your figure stand out with detail and make give the miniature a solid color.

Step Six:
Now, I’m not perfect and you’re not perfect. I get paint in the lines. Now, the late J.Frazier would paint in the lines with an itsy bitsy brush. Me, I’m not that talented so I cheat and use a .005 Micron Pen. Helps define the lines of the figure and helps them stand out.

Step Seven:
Now, with any other color but white, I would do a weathering dry brush with Dark Ghost Grey. This helps lighten up darker paints and gives you the warn look. It also adds highlights to the areas that would normaly receive these in scale. Also, this helps bring out line detail. I don’t do this step to white miniatures as it doesn’t show up too well.

Step Eight:
Detail painting. This is where you add symbols and other small scale things with paint. I painted the chains with a flat black to fit the scheme description in the Field Manual. I also gave it two gold links to signify two kills that the pilot has been credited with.

Step Nine:
Now the decaling. If you have access to them, great. I buy my decals from Brian "Piranha" Plunket of Fighting Piranha Graphics. They are white backed and water slide decals that are made in scale for Battle Tech. If you are going to use decals, buy a decalsetting solution as well a s it really helps. Brush on the solution were you want to apply the decal and then slide off the decal from the paper, place it were you want it, and then brush over it with the solution.

Step Ten:
Now, the flocking. Paint your hex base a earth color, hopefully a darker brown. Taking some elmers glue, apply this to the base and then drop in some of the model rail road stones. After doing that, liberally apply the flocking and let it set for about 30 minutes. Once the time has passed, take the miniature and shake off the flocking that won’t stay on the base.

Step Eleven:
Now, it’s time for the Testors DulCoat. Spray it down following the directions on the can. Apply two to three coats to keep the paint securely on the miniature. This will also keep the flocking on the base. After the coats have dried, paint in the cockpit gloss black. There, you are done! Try this a few times to get it down as practice makes you better when painting. Don’t worry if your first few times don’t look good. Keep trying!