Beginner/Intermediate Painting Process

Just a place to ramble and organize my thoughts for people that ask how to start painting.  They are not original or innovative, they’re just what I do.

Here’s a decent YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRz8DbbD04I 
It also wishes it was an interview show, so it’s longer than it needs to be to learn, but has a tiny bit of entertainment value
The host of the show goes from mini painting pre-novice to intermediate over the course of the show with direct tutoring. Here’s the playlist but it’s like in reverse order or something https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7atuZxmT955o2dShsr4403qxeE7y2d-t

Useful equipment:

Hobby knife
Brush cleaning water pot – I just use an old cool whip container.  Add a tiny drop of dish soap as a surfactant.
Stock of fresh small paint brushes, at least one medium to large-sized brush
Wet palette –  lets paint stay malleable for hours uncovered (while you work), and you can still kinda use it a week later if covered.
assortment of colors (color mixing is hard and inconsistent/wasteful. If you’re learning, be wary of adding additional hardship).  Spending more on higher quality paints will make your life easier, and reduce obstacles to you learning the basics.  I recommend a paint set from Vallejo or Reaper.
assortment of “washes” – ink-like paints that seep into the crevices.  You can make your own, but see above
Miniature holder of some kind. Either fancy, or something like museum putty tacked onto a pill bottle. It should be comfortable, and easy to access the mini from all angles, even upside down.  My “fancy” spring-grip Games Worskhop holder is actually gathering dust, as it doesn’t let me access the sides of the base, but that’s a bit petty of me and should probably not something you consider as a beginner.
Good lighting. I usually have a lamp between my face and the mini to just blast light onto it.

Prep work – clean up mini

Use the back of a hobby knife or similar to smooth over mold lines or inconsistencies, as they will stand out more when it’s painted. Only use the sharp part of the knife if strictly necessary, or if using a metal mini.  Clean with soapy water, and old toothbrush to clean up releasing agent from the manufacturing process.
Prime it, let it dry for as long as possible. the primer will have instructions for this, I usually do it a day in advance anyway.  I have struggled with spray primers and sealers in my local climate, so I use brush-on primer.

Base coat

I am usually lazy and start with the dominant color and do the whole thing, then layer on other colors on top of it. Be cautious of using light colors like yellow and white, they require multiple layers to not let colors underneath show through, making an unforgiving process.
Use thin layers of paint to not obscure the details of the mini. if you accidentally go over the wrong area with the wrong color, you can just keep going over it again and again until you’re happy. Thin layers also dry faster, so you can continue working.
Here is an example with pictures using the Brute and Tinkerer minis from Gloomhaven.
By the end of this stage, every base color should be where it’s supposed to be (leathers are brown, skin is fleshy, etc).  Pay extra attention to borders between color sections.   I usually have not done fine details like eyes or similar yet.

Wash

After you’re comfortable with the mini, apply a “wash” which is an inky paint that seeps into the cracks, darkening the shadows of the mini. It will also affect the colors you have already done, depending on the color of the wash you use, overall, making the whole mini darker. You can get fancy and use a different color wash for each base color, or just use a light to medium shade of brown.  This can lead to a “dirty” look, like an adventurer has fell in mud a few days back and hasn’t had a chance to wash their clothes yet. For a lot of applications this still looks great, you’ll have to trust me.  Take note of how skin tones in particular look improved from this “fake” color depth.
You can plan for the colors to be darker somewhat when it benefits you. Continued example with the same two minis, first two pictures.  Notice how the previously white parts turn to an old bone-like shade.   I brush it on thick with a large brush, spread it around, and then dry the brush off and wick it away where necessary.  By the end of this stage, your mini should now have a brightness gradient all across it, from the brighter peaks of a cloak into the shadow of its recesses, enhancing texture.

Basic Highlighting

But then you go back over your mini, using the same base colors you used before. You can either do it by hand with a regular wet brush, or for simplicity, try dry brushing.  You can get paint on your brush, and wipe almost all of it off onto a paper towel or the back of your hand, until most of it is gone, and the brush is dry. Then you can flurry it over the areas of that base color, and the brush will catch on the raised edges, and deposit bits of paint, lightening them.  When trying this for the first time, seriously overdo the getting rid of paint step.  It will surprise you how much paint is hiding in the brush.  Do this for all colors you used before, or at least all major colors. you can also do this by hand with a wet brush, focusing on places where it looks too dark, or just manually painting the edges or raised areas for highlights.  If you manually paint to lighten areas, remember you’re covering up the artificial color depth provided by the wash, so don’t broadly cover up areas without thought.  If you make a mistake, in this stage, you can just re-apply a little wash to darken an area that shouldn’t have been lightened.
Same example post, last images
Dry brushing adds additional wear on a brush, it may not be as good for wet brushing again.  Using separate brushes for dry brushing and precision work is a good idea.
After this point, you have 3 tiers of color shade from dark to darkened base to base color, which is more than enough for table play.

After you’ve grown comfortable with that process over several minis, you can play with color mixing progressively lighter colors to manually highlight and add more tiers of shading.
Here is an attempt at doing a “flame cloak”– contains spoilers for the Sun unlockable mini from Gloomhaven
Pure white is a bit too light of a color to highlight towards, but I did this before washing, so I knew the white would get toned down by a red wash.

Extra thoughts

For fine details: Don’t do them until after the wash stage, as it can make details muddy.
For things like eyes, I’ve found it easiest to start with the central color, and work outward. It’s easier to paint around something, than to put a miniscule drop of something directly in the middle of something else. If you mess up, you just wait for the paint to dry, and try again.
You can also just leave eyes monochrome, as a kind of “powered” look, like this Gloomhaven Sun mini (spoilers)
I would recommend avoiding metallic paints while learning, they have a different consistency than others (more gloopy?).  Your brush cleaning pot can also get glittery, so after you’re done with metallics, clean your water.

But all of this depends a lot on what kind of mini you’re painting.  Here’s one of the minis I took the most progression pictures of (spoilers for Gloomhaven Circles mini design).