Painting a decent looking miniature for fantasy war games like Warhammer or Confrontation can seem like a daunting task for someone new to the hobby. Working with a slow and steady hand and following these simple steps will make painting your miniature army fun, relaxing, and easy!
Remove excess pieces or molding lines from the miniature with a file, knife, or scissors. A file works best for this step, but if the pieces are large enough a knife or scissors can be substituted.
Assemble the miniature with modeling glue if it has multiple pieces. Make sure you have the right kind of glue for your miniature. Plastic modeling glue won't work for metal miniatures!
Dilute your paints with water if necessary. Some paints sold in hobby stores specifically for fantasy war miniatures will come pre-diluted.
Prepare the miniature for detail painting by painting a "primer" layer of one solid cover over the entire figure. Either solid white or black will work for the primer layer. White is generally used for miniatures that will be primarily lighter colors, while black works out better for a figure that is going to be mostly darker colors.
Paint the largest sections of the miniature in basic colors, using flesh tones for skin, basic colors on clothing, and metallic tones on weapons or armor. Don't paint the smaller areas or add details yet, because it is easy to accidentally paint over smaller sections when correcting mistakes or adding colors.
Move to the small parts of the miniature and carefully add basic colors with a fine tipped paintbrush.
Shade the figure by painting darker colors in the crevices and folds of the clothes and hair. You may need to mix the paint colors or dilute the paint more with water to get good shading colors.
Highlight the miniature by adding lighter colors onto the raised areas of the miniature to simulate general lighting, or just the raised areas of a specific side of the miniature to simulate light hitting the miniature from a certain direction.
Complete painting the miniature by adding any finishing details such as black dots for eyes, adding symbols onto clothing or weapons, or painting grass onto the miniature's base.
