Your first miniature will not be your best one, and that is entirely fine. The aim of this guide is to get you to a finished model you are pleased with, using a short list of equipment and a process you can repeat. You do not need dozens of paints, an airbrush, or any technique with a name.
The short version: prime it, block in the colours, shade it, add a couple of highlights, do the base. That sequence produces a good-looking model, and everything else is refinement on top of it.
What you actually need
Ignore the wall of products in the shop. This is the genuine list:
- A miniature. Preferably a fairly chunky one with clear detail. Very fine or very small models are harder to learn on.
- Primer suitable for miniatures. Spray or brush-on. Grey or black are the most forgiving to start with.
- A handful of acrylic miniature paints. Four to six is plenty: a main colour, a metal, a leather or cloth colour, something dark for shading and something pale for highlighting.
- One decent brush. A size 1 or size 2 with a good point will do almost everything on your first model. One good brush beats a set of five poor ones.
- Water, in two pots if possible: one for rinsing, one clean for thinning.
- A palette. A ceramic tile, an old plate or a scrap of baking paper all work.
- Paper towel for controlling how much paint is on the brush.
- Good lighting. Genuinely important. A cheap daylight-temperature desk lamp improves your painting more than most paints will.
Is a wet palette worth it?
Not on day one, but it is one of the better early upgrades. A wet palette keeps acrylic paint workable for hours instead of minutes, which matters enormously when you are painting slowly. You can make one from a sealed food container, a sponge and baking parchment for almost nothing. Try it once you are comfortable with the basics.
The process, step by step
- Clean up mould lines where appropriate. Run a hobby knife blade along the faint raised seams left by the mould, scraping rather than cutting. Do not obsess; missing one is not a disaster, but they show up badly once painted.
- Assemble, or plan sub-assemblies. Build the model fully unless a part clearly blocks access to something behind it. For a first model, assembling everything is usually the right call.
- Prime. Thin, even coats from about 20 to 30cm if spraying. Several light passes, not one heavy one. Let it dry fully. Primer is what gives paint something to grip; skipping it causes paint to rub off later.
- Thin your paint appropriately. Add a little water on the palette and mix. See the section below on how thin is thin enough.
- Apply base colours. Block in each area flatly. Work from the largest areas to the smallest, and from the innermost parts outwards, so later colours tidy up earlier overspill. Expect to need two coats.
- Add shade. Apply a dark wash or shade over the model, or into the recesses specifically. This creates instant depth and is where the model starts to look real.
- Re-establish midtones. If the wash has dulled the raised surfaces too much, go back over them with your base colour, leaving the shade in the recesses.
- Add simple highlights. Take your base colour, mix in a little pale colour, and apply it to the raised edges and upward-facing surfaces. Keep it to the places light would naturally hit.
- Paint focal details. Lenses, eyes, gems, any insignia. These are small and slow; take your time here because they carry a lot of the model's character.
- Base the miniature. Texture, colour, a drybrush, perhaps a tuft. A plain unpainted base undoes a lot of good work above it.
- Varnish if you wish. Optional, but worth it for models that will be handled or transported. Matt varnish in thin coats.
How thin should paint be?
The usual advice is "the consistency of milk", which is not very helpful because it depends on what you are doing.
What actually matters is that the paint flows off the brush smoothly, does not obscure detail, and does not form a visible ridge as it dries. Paint straight from the pot is generally too thick for a miniature: it fills recesses, hides detail and dries with a plasticky texture.
The right consistency changes with the task:
- Base coats want to be thin enough to flow, thick enough to cover in two coats.
- Highlights and fine detail want to be slightly thicker so they stay exactly where you put them.
- Glazes and shades want to be much thinner, closer to tinted water.
Colours also differ. Yellows, whites and reds are usually poorly opaque and need more coats. Some dark colours cover in one. Learn how your specific paints behave rather than applying a single rule to all of them.
Why two thin coats sometimes works and sometimes does not
"Two thin coats" is good advice that gets repeated without its context. The point is that two thin coats give a smoother, more even finish than one thick coat, and preserve the detail underneath.
But two coats is a rough guide, not a fact about paint. A well-pigmented colour over a matching primer may cover in one. A bright yellow over black primer may need four or five, and will still look patchy, which is why painting light colours over a light primer is standard practice.
The useful version of the rule: build coverage in layers thin enough to see the detail through the first coat, and keep going until it is even. That might be two coats. It might be five.
Your first miniature does not need every technique
You will encounter edge highlighting, blending, glazing, non-metallic metal, object source lighting, wet blending, stippling and a dozen others. You do not need any of them yet.
Base coat, shade, highlight, base. That is a complete painting method, it produces genuinely good tabletop models, and thousands of finished armies use nothing more. Add one new technique per model if you want to progress, and keep the rest of the process the same so you can see what the new thing actually changed.
Five beginner mistakes
- Skipping or rushing the primer. Everything above it depends on this layer. A thick, gloopy primer coat hides detail permanently.
- Painting straight from the pot. The most common cause of models that look thick, textured and detail-free.
- Overloading the brush. Paint should sit on the tip, not flood the ferrule. Paint that dries in the ferrule ruins the brush's point within a few sessions.
- Painting under poor light. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and you will discover the problems in daylight the next morning.
- Leaving the base unpainted. A bare plastic base makes a well-painted model look unfinished. It takes ten minutes to fix.
A simple first-miniature workflow
If you want a single concrete plan, use this:
- Scrape mould lines, assemble, wash and dry the model if it feels greasy.
- Prime grey.
- Base coat your main colour over the armour or body. Two coats.
- Base coat the secondary areas: cloth, leather, weapon.
- Base coat any metal.
- Apply a dark shade over the whole model. Let it dry completely.
- Tidy the raised areas back up with the original base colours.
- Highlight edges with the base colour mixed with a little bone or pale grey.
- Paint the lenses or eyes.
- Texture the base, paint it brown, drybrush it pale, paint the rim dark.
- Stop. Look at it at arm's length. You have painted a miniature.
Frequently asked questions
How long should my first miniature take?
Two to four hours spread over a few sessions is normal, and there is no prize for speed. Once you know the recipe, the same model in a batch might take forty minutes. Our guide to batch painting an army covers scaling up.
Do I have to wash miniatures before painting?
For plastic kits it is usually optional; a quick wash in warm soapy water does no harm and removes handling grease. For resin it is genuinely worth doing, because mould release agent left on the surface stops primer adhering properly.
What if I make a mistake?
Let it dry and paint over it. Acrylics are forgiving and almost every error is recoverable with the adjacent base colour. For something serious, most miniature paint can be stripped with an appropriate cleaner and the model started again.
Which colours should I choose?
Something mid-toned that covers well. Avoid making yellow, white or bright red your main colour on a first model; they are the hardest to get even. Our guide to choosing an army colour scheme covers the design side if you are planning a whole force.
Should I finish the model before basing it?
For a first miniature, yes. Paint the model, then do the base last. It is simpler to keep track of, and any texture or drybrushing on the base will not get onto finished model paintwork. Our basing guide covers several beginner-friendly schemes.
Independent guide published by Blubbercove Ltd/WarSplay. This article is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, authorised by or licensed by Games Workshop Limited. Warhammer 40,000 is a trade mark of Games Workshop Limited.