Paint an entire model, from start to finish, in 15 minutes. Paint an entire unit, with base colours, shading and highlights, in less than two hours, to a decent tabletop quality. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, I thought so, as every now and again a ‘new’ painting method comes along that promises to revolutionise the way you paint. Back in the day, it was the Dipping Method, recently we have had GW’s Contrast paints come to the fore. And over the past few months, I have been hearing about the Slapchop method, also known as Underpainting (or en grisaille – in greyness). There is quite a bit on Youtube about this, but I first came across it with the Miniature Hobbyist.

I liked what he did with the Death Korps of Krieg Kill Team, so I picked up a set for myself and had a go this weekend. This was the result…

Ignoring the building and basing for a moment, these ten guys are the product of a little under two hours’ work. Two hours. For a full unit of ten.

Imagine the possibilities.

You could easily crank through a whole platoon over a (fairly) lazy Saturday. With a bit of preparation, you could get one unit done every evening in a week. In a dedicated month, an entire painted legion could be yours.

So, how is it done?

Well, the Miniature Hobbyist is pretty good with his demonstration, but he uses non-GW paints so I have put a quick guide together if you don’t have anything else in your collection.

Once built (and I went for the ‘standard’ Infantry Squad rather than a Kill Team – though I acknowledge that means I have left the door open for an entire Death Korps army…), spray undercoat with Chaos Black. Make it a good coverage, as you do not want to leave any gaps in the recesses.

Then pillage your wife’s/girlfriend’s make-up draw for a fluffy make-up brush – something like this. Don’t spend to much on it though, you will be ruining it. Put there merest amount of Administratum Grey on the tip and really work it into the bristles, more than you would for a normal drybrush.

You are looking for quite a heavy drybrush with this, avoiding recesses but making sure you have heavily dusted everything else. Where you have any black showing, you will have little to no colour, so you might want to go a bit heavier on the drybrush than you would normally.

That done, do the same with White Scar, but much lighter – you really do want to catch only the top edges of things. I used a make-up brush for this too but, in the future, I might use a standard GW large drybrush to make things stand out even more.

Congratulations – that white drybrush has just done all of your edge highlighting. You just do not know it yet…

All of this prep work takes a mere 5-10 minutes for all these models, and you are now ready to start the proper painting.

You can start with the ‘lowest’ levels of the model (such as the skin and work outwards) or begin with the largest areas, which is what I did with these guys. Apply two coats of Space Wolves grey to the greatcoat (one coat leaves it a bit thin and light, but by the time you have finished the last model the first will be dry enough to do the second coat, so you really do not lose much time here).

After that, the trousers, gloves, gun stocks and backpack have Snakebite Leather applied, while the boots and mask receive Gore-Grunta Fur.

And already you will find the model is really beginning to take shape, and you are barely half an hour into the squad.

Deviating from the Contrast paints a little (and there is really no reason you need to do that, but I was following Miniature Hobbyist’s paint scheme), use Ushabti Bone on the leggings, case below the backpack, and the top of the backpack itself. While waiting for that to dry, do a ‘wetbrush’ (use an M Base brush with most of the paint removed) of Stormhost silver on the armour and weapons – you are really just ‘dragging’ the brush over the raised surfaces so it is completely painted but those recesses are left with the black undercoat.

On top of both the Ushabti Bone and Stormhost Silver, do a light Fleshshade wash to make them all look old, used and battered.

And that is the unit just about done. You can run around touching up some smaller detailing to round the unit off – I used Basilicum Grey on the nose pipe, Flesh Tearers Red on the piping of the Meltagun, and dabbed a touch of Stormhost Silver on various badges, buttons and eye lenses to make the models ‘pop’ a bit more.

You’ll be all done in about two hours, give or take.

For the bases I just used Martian Ironcrust, drybrushed with Kindleflame. Nothing complicated, and the bright base sets off the Death Korps very nicely.

I cannot recommend this painting method enough, and really do suggest you check it out. A unit in two hours. How can you possibly go wrong?

And to demonstrate that, as it turned out these models got finished far faster than I had guessed they would… so I did another unit using this method over the weekend. We’ll take a look at them in the next post…