Painting a Warhammer centrepiece model, whether it’s a towering Wraith Knight, a putrid Great Unclean One or a well-known character, can feel intimidating. Their large size, huge amounts of detail and impressive sculpts are designed to draw attention on the table. Knowing they’ll be closely admired, might be key to tying your colour scheme together and are often a hefty financial investment all adds significant pressure to your paint job. But with the right mindset and a solid plan even the biggest model becomes manageable.
In this article, we’ll break down our advice on approaching large-scale miniatures so you can enjoy the process and end up with a stunning result to lead your forces to victory.
What Makes A Model A ‘Centrepiece’?
A centrepiece model is a focal point of your army – usually the biggest, most impressive, and most detailed mini. On the tabletop this is generally your commanders, your physically largest units and your special characters. If you collect more than a few thousand points of an army they’re your biggest, most impressive units. Think of the models you immediately want to check out when your opponent lays out their army. The rule of cool is strong when it comes to identifying a centerpiece model. Classic examples would be:
- Imposing Units: Imperial Titans, Ork Gargants, Stormsurge Battlesuits or Aeldari Wraithknights.
- Powerful Leaders: Primarchs and Daemon Princes, Lord Solar Leontus, Illuminator Szeras and other named characters.
- Big Vehicles: Hekaton Land Fortress, Rogal Dorn Battle Tanks, Baneblade Tanks.
- Any model you’re particularly excited about and that you’re going to want to show off.
These models are often the face of your faction and where you can show off your hobby skills, but they also carry the most pressure. This focus means if they aren’t up to the standard you might like it feels a lot more noticeable – at least to you. They also often carry the biggest price tags, so there’s a wallet-based reason to get them completed to a high standard. You want your coolest models to represent your skills and elevate the overall quality of your army; and you achieve this with careful planning.
Start With A Clear Plan
Before assembling or painting a centrepiece Warhammer model, take time to:
Study the model:
Look at the box art, other people’s paint jobs, and the sprues. Get an idea for how it goes together, where the details and challenging areas to paint are and how it’s going to be viewed on the tabletop.
Decide on your colour scheme:
Keep it cohesive with your army, but don’t be afraid to add extra touches to make it pop. This is a model that stands out and ties your army together, so plan your scheme to reflect this.
Break the model into sub-assemblies:
Painting large models in pieces makes hard-to-reach areas easier to manage. We like to plan out how to break it down in a couple of ways. Firstly, take a good look at the box art and the different angles Games Workshop have photographed to show off the model. They want to show off the details and cool aspects of the sculpt, which can often be the challenging parts to paint. Look for areas that are visible but tucked behind other parts of the model – the assembly instructions can help with this as well. Secondly, when you start assembling the model, before you glue anything, hold it in place (either physically or with blue tack) and physically look at how it fits against the rest of the model. If it’s not making it more difficult to paint another area then you can glue it.
If you’re committing to sub-assemblies make sure you’re aware of how they’ll then fit onto the rest of the model. This will save you the headache of having glued an armour panel onto the torso that stops the arm from fitting into place.
Common sub-assemblies to think about for centrepiece models would be:
- Arms and weapons
- Wings or banners
- Base
- Armour panels separate from internal details
Focus On Big Shapes First
Large models can be visually overwhelming. The best solution is to get some colour blocking done to start providing some structure, and move from there. Once you have the model primed start with base coating. If you have an airbrush and are confident using it this can speed up the process. Otherwise tools like contrast paints can let you cover larger areas with speed that you can then shade and highlight over.
Follow your pre-planned paint scheme and get a base colour down for each of the main areas of the model. Armour, cloth, weapons, face, insignia, the base and any other components – get a colour down for each one and you’ll have a much more established idea of how it will all come together.
Once you’ve built this solid base, you can move onto the fun part – picking out the details.
Pick Key Areas To Elevate
Ultimately only you can decide just how elevated you want to go when you’re painting a centrepiece model for your Warhammer army. A lot of it will depend on your painting experience, how much of a centrepiece this will be, and how much of a challenge you want. However if you’re a beginner just remember you don’t need to paint every inch of a large model to Golden Demon standards. Instead we recommend using some strategic effort to maximise your results without making it overwhelming.
Identify the most important areas of the model and focus on elevating those to the best of your ability. Obviously what these are will depend on the model itself, but look at the box art or the model itself and figure out where your eyes are drawn first. What are the striking details and what naturally fades into the background?
For example, let’s look at a major character model – the Dark Angels Primarch Lion El’Jonson. He’s a stand out, all-eyes-on-me type of model. What details are you drawn to when looking at his model?
The face, weapons and the armour detailing of his upper body all jumped out to us, as did the two watchers in the dark with their cargo. By contrast the lower half of the model and background of the base fades to these more interesting areas.
While you definitely shouldn’t ignore these areas, focusing most of your effort into the areas that get the most attention will make everything feel more elevated, without putting more work on your plate.
Take Your Time – But Not Forever
Painting a centrepiece Warhammer model can quickly stall your momentum. It’s so easy to get caught up in the details and wanting the model to be perfect that you never actually finish. While we fully appreciate the desire to use a centrepiece to show your painting skills to the best of your abilities you can’t carry on forever. Constantly trying to tweak and perfect a model is only going to burn you out. A suggestions to avoid this trap include:
Set clear milestones: For example finish the armour this week, the base next. If you’ve broken the model down into sub assemblies they make excellent progress makers for goal setting.
Giving yourself permission to call it done: Sometimes you literally have to remind yourself it’s okay to call it done. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.
Mix it up: If you do start to burn out then take a breather. Trying to grind through a centrepiece project will only lower your quality. If you’re reaching your limits then switch to working on a side project to keep things fresh.
Don’t Neglect The Base
While bases can fade into the background compared to the model itself they do draw a finished piece together and add some serious thematic impact. A centrepiece deserves a base that matches its character. Consider:
- Custom scenic bases (rocks, ruins, battlefield debris)
- An extension of your existing forces bases – if your troopers are all moving over a muddy battlefield then turn this up to 11 with your centrepiece
- Texture paint with drybrushing and grass tufts
- Small details like skulls, spent casings, or dead enemies
The base frames your model and ties it into the world it’s meant to represent. Consider it an opportunity to display the world around your army.
Techniques That Help With Large Models
When you’re working out how your approach to painting your Warhammer centrepiece models you want to ensure you get the highest quality finish you can, and there are numerous techniques you can draw from to help with this. Obviously depending on the effect you’re going for with the finished model you may need to choose carefully, and don’t be afraid to test out something new – large models are actually quite good places to experiment with new skills (and you can always strip and restart if it goes completely wrong). A few simple techniques you might want to incorporate may include:
Zenithal Priming:
Priming with a dark base coast and an angled light spray is great for defining light and shadow before your start base coating. If you’re then using contrast paints to base coat you’ll really amp up the contrast between light and dark areas, immediately upping the quality of your work, and making it easy to know where to highlight.
Layered Drybrushing:
For textured armour, fur, or organic shapes you can build up the highlighting with progressive dry brush passes. While a standard dry bush is great for making raised areas pop, layered dry brushing elevates it to that next level. Each pass moving to a slightly lighter colour adds depth to your highlights and quality to your overall finish.
Oil Washes And Technicals:
For weathering, shading, and grime you can turn to the technical range that Citadel (and other paint brands) have developed. Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade are a god send for adding depth to your paint recipe, and products like Nihilakh Oxide and Typhus Corrosion give excellent weathering effects. Making your bases stand out with the specialist terrain paints is another quick way to up the texture on your model and make it stand out.
Edge Highlighting:
Crisp edges make big armour plates pop. Pick a shade that compliments your main colour choice, generally a shade or two lighter, and using a fine brush just add a thin line to the edge of the armour. This gives the effect of light catching on a sharp edge and adds texture. Pick an angle that light is coming in from (generally directly above) and think carefully about which edges will catch that light for the best results.
Common Pitfalls To Avoid
With a centrepiece model there are always going to be things that go wrong. Careful planning ahead of time will help minimise these, and a solid idea of where things normally go wrong will help even more. In our experience these are some of the major things to consider:
- Rushing early steps: Mistakes on large models that will get a lot of scrutiny are harder to hide. Take your time and get the basics right before you build up.
- Skipping sub-assemblies: While not for everyone, as a beginner skipping sub-assemblies can lead to awkward brush angles and messy finishes if you aren’t careful.
- Over-detailing every inch: Focus your energy on the areas that matter most, and don’t burn out trying to perfect every single piece of plastic.
- Getting stuck: Set a time cap or project deadline with clear, progressive goals to avoid getting into a never ending loop and completely burnout by the project.
Take On The Challenge
Painting a centrepiece model for a Warhammer army is a challenge, but it’s also one of the most rewarding parts of the Warhammer hobby. These models let you stretch your skills, create something dramatic, and give your army a true leader or monster to rally around. Nothing feels better than putting down an impressive, well-painted model and having your opponent admire it. Nothing takes attention away from battle-ready basic troopers than a central character drawing the attention. As you’ve expect, centrepieces do a lot of heavy lifting both in terms of paint jobs and battlefield roles.
Approach the project with a plan, work in manageable chunks, and don’t lose sight of the fun. Whether you’re painting a towering Wraithknight or a snarling Mawloc, every brushstroke gets you closer to a mini you’ll be proud to place at the heart of your collection.
Got any tips for how you take on painting Warhammer centrepiece models? Any advice for new painters taking on their first big project? Let us know in the comments below!Did you enjoy this article? You could always tip the author with a coffee (or something stronger). If you want to try out new painting techniques on some new models, then check out Element Games. They have great deals on a wide range of Warhammer and accessories. Finally, make sure you’re following us on Instagram to stay up to date and get involved in our community!
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