d) Washing:
Steps a and b are common to most painters, but this is where the obsession creeps in. When you get your figures, they will have some kind of  deposits on them from the casting process; usually some form of greasy coating. You can’t really see it, but it is there, and this will impair the quality of your painting if you don’t do something about it. I put my figures into an old jam jar and squirt a liberal amount of washing up liquid on them. To this is added some hot water and the whole thing gets a good swirl round. Because my painting time is limited, my troops are often left in this state for days, or even weeks at a time. Eventually, they come out of the jar and then I use an old electric toothbrush to give them a really good scrub under the hot tap. If you look carefully at your figure when you have done this, particularly at the face, you will see that all the detail in the casting is much sharper and clearer than it was before. With the detail easier to see, your figure will be much easier to paint!

e) Assembly:
I think I may be slightly unusual here, but I prefer to assemble my figure before painting. This means super gluing spears or other weapons into place, attaching riders to horses or assembling all the bits of a canon together. The only things I don’t glue into place at this point are flagpoles or shields. I assemble before painting because I find it less fiddly in the long run (where do you hold onto that horseman while you are painting him?) and because it saves painting bits that you can’t see on the finished model anyway. A third reason is that the bits you have to stick together adhere better when you have a metal-to-metal contact. Again, having reached this point, my figures are often left for a long time before the next stage, which allows the glue ample time to set and make a really solid bond.

f) Temporary Basing:
Before I begin painting, I glue or blu tac my figures, individually, to old pieces of card or coins. I use a couple of blobs of PVA glue and give it time to dry. If you make the card fairly small, this gives you something to handle while painting, without being too big to get in the way of your brush. When the figure is ready, you can slide a craft knife under it to free it from its temporary base, all set to be glued to its permanent home.

These figures are from Steve Barber Models and form part of a medieval jousting project I’ve been working on for the past three years or so! My two sons and I cobbled together a set of rules after watching the movie ‘First Knight’. The basic game is sorted out, but all the accessories are taking an absolute age to complete. Here, the king sits and snoozes in his pavilion, dreaming of  further conquests across the water in France.

A unit of Roman infantry cleaned up and ready for assembly. The troops are from A&A Miniatures superb range of 3rd century Imperial Romans. The pila will be super-glued next, before undercoating, but the shields will be painted separately.