Painting is not a challenge it's an
opportunity...
For inspiration; thread on lead-adventures;
www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=67890.0For painting there's a couple of options; you could go GW which has the advantage that you can buy them in the cambridge store, or you could go Vallejo/P3 which you can buy from Inner Sanctum. The P3 paints are actually very nice. VJ can take a bit of getting used to (you need to make sure they're mixed properly).
Personally I use a combination of Black Hat's "Coat d'Arms" colours[4] (which I mail order unless I run into him at a show) and Vallejo colours[1]. The good news is that for Ratmen, you don't need that many colours; a bunch of browns, a couple of good greys, metal, a couple of leathers. Possibly either a red or blue in an intense shade for some colour pop on clothing[2].
CDA sell sets of three for a lot of these[3] -- being the base, mid and light tones. So basically all the leather things on the FL figures are their leather brown triplet, although for variety I sometimes only use the first two colours, the red jackets are a triple of VJ colours (dark red, red and orange), the green jackets are a CDA triple and so on. Similarly GW has a chart with the triplets for theirs. With VJ/P3 you're on your own on that front.
I can loan you other colours.
Undercoat -- go to Halfords and get a can of black matt car spray. People will try and say you need special paint for miniatures, but I've always used halfords and 25 years on it's only ever fallen off vehicles from AGNM who use the most amazingly resiliant mould release. I got most of it off with a mix of various thinners and detergents but there were a couple of spots which I ended up undercoating in a mix of pva glue and black craft paint to get it to stick...
I use Windsor & Newton water-mixable oil matt varnish, which Hobbycraft stock. The bases are wood filler from B&Q (it's already brown!).
Are you noticing a trend about me ensuring I can get hold of stuff :-) The grass is the only thing I screwed up on. I use Woodland Scenics materials. Which I used to get from a model railway shop in Cov (don't live there any more), Hobbycraft (don't do it any more) or ModelZone (went bust).
More and more I'm using layers of paint, inks, more paint, more inks.. The recent orcs and elves have around 5-6 flesh shades and several ink washes to get facial details to come out. This is because I don't have much else to do in my life apart from work and throw paint on lead.
So that's the "old school" way.
There IS another approach.
You only need 1 part of each colour. You block paint the figure in those colours. So you do the skin in a skintone, the fur in brown, the clothes in leather/grey/brown. Then you dip (or brush on) a varnish which includes a shading colour. That settles into the shadows and means you don't have to paint the dark/light parts in. See;
www.thearmypainter.com/gallery_presentation.php?GalleryId=156&Gallery=Orc%20Trooper:%20Red for an example. It's used by a lot of people, can get quite nice results, needs a little bit more planning upfront but has the advantage that you don't nee the same eye for colours.
It's also apparently WAY faster for getting figures on the table.
I'm not sure but Inner Sanctum may sell the Army Painter shades.
[1] Many of which I got from Dungeons and Starships when they were in Digbeth!
[2] Everyone uses red; blue would be different.
[3] Although unlike Foundry who do a similar scheme, you can also buy them separately.
[4] Which were the original GW colours I learned to paint with years ago.
