Painting Services

[jhs]

Can anyone recommend good painting services? I am new to historical minis, have exactly none, and there don't seem to be many full armies going by way of ebay. Thanks very much for your help! I am in the US, by the way.

Jim.

PS--And I should say, I can't paint, not even a little.

[hammy]

Can anyone recommend good painting services? I am new to historical minis, have exactly none, and there don't seem to be many full armies going by way of ebay. Thanks very much for your help! I am in the US, by the way.

Jim.

PS--And I should say, I can't paint, not even a little.

A couple of painting services I have come across are Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka and Dragon in Hong Kong.

Fernado are good if you tell them EXACTLY what to do Dragon seem a little more knowledgable.

The thing with Fernando is if you tell them to paint the berets of your British paratroopers maroon then the ones with helmets that you forgot to specify get maroon helmets (one of the chaps at the club got this).

I have only seen Dragon advertise on e-Bay. Fernando have their own website, you should be able to google it.

There are some wargamer run painting services in the far East which may be better for ancients but I can't remember the name of any.

[MarkSieber]

I ordered from Dragon a couple of years ago when I was trying out Piquet ancients, before restarting my painting 'career'. I ordered several units of Mid Republican Roman hastati and principes--they did a nice job, but they were very slow. At that time they had Essex as the house brand, they now also carry Xyston, but only some models. I think it's best to send them the figures to save on turn around time and confusion. You could probably send them a boxed army.

The custom order prices are generally what they start at on E-bay, which beats buying them at auction--especially now that FoG is running hot!

I've looked at quite a few of their E-bay listings: I'd definitely send along a painting guide. The colors on the Knights don't seem particularly historic. Romans are by the book, Macedonians are pretty good but they mix up tunic colors, which are a bit bright.

They are prompt with emails & discussed options and costs, so I recommend contacting them if you're at all interested.

http://www.dragonpaintingservice.com/

[BrianC]

I bought a BG of Carthaginian Spearmen from Dragon on eBay earlier this year. I agree that they are slow. Took over 2.5 months, but when I got them I was very happy with the paint job. So I would give them a recommend if you don't mind waiting a little longer. I too would like to use a painting service and would probably go with Dragon.

Brian

[OhReally]

I have been waiting over three months for an army from Dragon, and they are very slow to respond.

In addition they seem to love the color pink, and while they give you the option of redoing anything you don't like I had to ask FOUR times for them to take the pink off the knights they were doing for me.

So my knights are done, but I've seen no other pics of my figures so if you really want something fast don't use Dragon.

Their models are very, very, very nice though. They handpainted all the heraldry for no extra charge, and do a very nice job on basing.

I think one trick may be to mail them the models, which makes it not nearly as good of a deal, but will get them working on your stuff faster.

[expendablecinc]

One thing I've done before to get mates up and running quickly with a first army is to paint battlegroups but only to do the painting. The owner then bases them all themself so that no matter who they get to do the painting the army still has a similar look and feel. As a painter doing the slow arduous stuff like basing, undercoating and cleaning up is the worst part of it and time-consuming without much intrinsic reward. Perhaps mates who paint might paint for commission if you do the rest?

I fund my figure purchases this way.

Anthony