How to paint a 2k wh40k army in 2 weeks

Step 1 of my painting routine for my Blood pact commander

Through my years of hobby, I have been painting quite a lot of armies. And each time I started a new one, I was facing the same contradictory feeling: I want to play this new army as fast as possible BUT I just can’t play unpainted army. Boy, what a dilemma! (I know it sounds a lot like a first world problem…).
Anyway, in an attempt to overcome this frustrating feeling, I have developed a painting routine that I call the “two-levels painting technique”.
This routine simply consists in painting your army in two steps.
– step 1: I paint my whole army at a “tabletop -” level. This means speed painting with the bare minimum three to four colors, then a quick brown and/or black washes and basic basing. To go even faster, I’m now using my airbrush to apply the two main colors. To give you an idea, this step took me less than two weeks for my new Blood Pact army (2k pts, 150ish minis). After this step, my army looks good enough to encounter its first battle.
– step 2: In this step I upgrade each squad to a “tabletop +” level. This means working on the shades, adding unit marking, freehand, advanced basing, etc. I usually take my times with this step, painting squad by squad, whitout any pressure to get the work done, enjoying the painting as much as I can and stopping as soon as I get bored.
Here is my secret painting routine. Nothing really secret nor innovative here but I think it’s a nice balance between the pleasure of playing fully painted armies in no time and still enjoying painting your minis without any rush in mind.

Let me know what you think. I’d be very curious to know your own tricks or painting routines.

Kibo