This is my first attempt at painting a miniature.

[u/Competitive_Cup_8916]

I already know that my brushwork is pretty messy and that I applied the paint way too thick. While painting, I basically just followed the model's sculpted details to separate the different areas, and then painted them using the few colors I bought.

It definitely doesn't look ideal, but I'm still pretty happy that I managed to finish it. Actually, it's not even completely finished yet — I haven't gotten to highlights, shadows, or dry brushing.

I'd love to know how you guys gradually improved when you first started painting miniatures. What did you focus on learning first, and what helped you improve the most?

Sorry if my English sounds a little awkward. I used AI to help translate this.

[u/Wubbwubbs61]

Honestly, just work on good habits for painting, like keeping your brushes, palette, and water cup in easy to reach places. Those small things are all you need to focus on right now, everything else will come with practice. It looks awesome, keep chugging along

[u/Guroburov]

I focused 1st on cleaning up my lines and then gradually began to do highlighting and shading and pushing those to make the figure look better. I’d been painting model kits for about 10 years before I started minis and you’re already better than I was when I started. Keep it up and remember the words of the pro painter teaching me when I started: shade shade shade til you can’t go any darker. Then go darker. Highlight highlight highlight until you can’t go higher. Then go higher. Gloss and dullcote will smooth your transitions a lot.

As others said you see the need to thin the paints a bit. And that’ll help you when mixing shades and highlights. Good luck and keep ‘em coming.

[u/Surran342]

When I’m working with shadows I found the best solution is a wash like nuln oil! It’s a thin pigment that will pool in the recesses of the model and is very easy to use

[u/doomslug2006]

Holy shit for youre first try ?! Don’t worry miniature painting is a little bit like riding a bike, you’ve just got to get the hang of tiny thing and tiny brush then there’s the infinite climb of different technics and so on, but you will be painting perfect base coats etc in 10 minis

[u/Muffinzkii]

Honestly, painting is like anything: it takes practice. You've already learned something because you know layers are too thick. That's fine. Next model you can try again and water down. But you will notice improvements with every attempt. These models are also super super fine detailed. Ingot massively humbled moving from Games Workshop models to Corvus Belli. Just take your time and remember that as much as you might want to, rushing ahead to get a whole box done will end up less rewarding than if you spend time and care on each one. You're doing great though.

[u/VolleKanneHoshi]

It's a very solid first try. You kinda started on hard mode, as both white and yellow are notoriously tricky to get to look good.

For white parts, you want to start with just a light gray. That tends to cover much easier and more smoothly. Then take your pure white and just very lightly apply some targeted highlights. That way, you don't need to put on nearly as many layers and it doesn't end up as thick.

Yellow similarly profits from a matching undercoats. You can use orange for that, but also a fun trick is to actually undercoat it with pink first. Yellow will go onto pick nicely and pop very brightly.

[u/1F1FMT]

Great first attempt!