Comic Book Style Miniature Painting
Most miniature painting advice points you toward smooth blends, thin layers, and invisible transitions. This is the opposite of that — bold black lines, punchy highlights, flat reads from across the table. Comic book style.
It’s not better or worse than traditional painting. It’s just a completely different energy. A blended model looks like a tiny real person. A comic book model looks like it stepped out of a panel. Both are cool. This one’s more fun.
What Makes It Comic Book
Two things do most of the work:
Bold black edge lining. Every edge where two surfaces meet gets a deliberate black line. Armor panels, cloth folds, weapon edges, anywhere there’s a transition. In traditional painting you shade recesses and let the edges catch natural highlights. Here you’re drawing the outline like an inker would. It flattens the model in the best way — it reads like a drawing, not a sculpture.
Exaggerated highlights. Where traditional painting builds up subtle gradients, comic book style jumps straight to the bright spots. You’re not blending from dark blue to medium blue to light blue across a surface. You’re putting the bright highlight exactly where light would hit hardest and letting the contrast do the talking. It looks wrong up close and perfect at arm’s length.
That’s basically it. Black lines define the shapes. Hard highlights sell the lighting. Everything else is just picking colors and being decisive about where they go.
The Models
Fafnir Rann — 30K Imperial Fists
A Horus Heresy character done in full comic book treatment. The yellow Imperial Fists armor is a great fit for this style — big flat panels that let the black lining really pop. Yellow is also notoriously annoying to paint traditionally (thin coats, multiple layers, streaking). In comic book style you just commit to the color and let the bold lining do the definition work. Way less painful.
Adeptus Mechanicus Chibi — Praying to an Air Fryer
Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A chibi Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priest on their knees in devotion before an air fryer. The Omnissiah works in mysterious and delicious ways.
Chibi models are already halfway to comic book style with their exaggerated proportions, so the bold lining and hard highlights feel completely natural here. This one’s pure fun — no lore justification needed.
Mandrake Kill Team — In Progress
The Mandrakes are the first time I’m doing comic book style across a full squad. Drukhari Mandrakes have all that flowing shadow-flame detail which could go either way with this technique — the black lining on the shadow effects is either going to look incredible or fight with the organic shapes. So far it’s working. The bold outlines actually help sell the “made of shadow” look because you’re defining shapes that would otherwise blend into each other.
This one’s still in progress. I’ll update when the full kill team is done.
Why Try It
It’s fast, it’s forgiving, and it turns heads. People notice comic book minis on the table because they look different from everything around them. There’s no “is that highlight smooth enough” anxiety — the whole point is hard edges and confident marks.
If you’ve been painting for a while and everything’s starting to feel like the same process on different models, try this on something small. Pick a model you’re not precious about, grab a fine-tip brush for the lining, and just go for it. Worst case you strip it. Best case you find a style that makes painting fun in a way it hasn’t been for a minute.
The Mandrake Kill Team will get its own post when it’s finished. For something completely different, check out my Death Guard paint scheme — about as far from comic book style as you can get.