A Beginners Guide To Warhammer Part Four: Painting Your First Miniatures

So, you’ve built your first models and assembled your toolkit. Now it’s time to face the next big milestone: painting your first Warhammer miniatures. This is where the Warhammer hobby transforms from plastic into personality. But for many newcomers it can be a little intimidating.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through every step of the painting process; from preparation to finishing touches, with an emphasis on confidence-building techniques, not perfection.

Step 1: Plan Your Scheme And Pick Your Model

If this is your first time putting paint to plastic your first lesson is that your paint scheme starts with planning. You need to develop a plan for your paint scheme before anything else. Inspiration can come from a wide variety of sources, and we’ve written before about finding it and turning it into paint schemes. Our advice for an absolute beginner? Stick to the box art. The ‘official’ ways of painting have tons of reference images and guides you can follow, which takes so much of the thinking out of this step.

Almost as importantly: don’t start with your favourite character. You aren’t going to do it the justice it deserves until you’ve got a better understanding of the basics, and you want to make sure those impressive models stand out. For your first model you want something you care about less, or that can blend into your army if needed. Pick a basic trooper, a spare model from a starter kit or run down to your local Warhammer store for a miniature of the month. Starting with a simpler model will give you something:

Forgiving

For a new painter overly detailed models can quickly give you decision paralysis. Stick to something simpler so can practice foundation techniques without things becoming overly complex or leaving you too much stuff to get bogged down in painting.

Disposable

Ultimately, you’re extremely likely to look back at your first miniatures in the years to come and be shocked by the quality of the work you have done. Regardless of how well you can paint your first pieces, the hobby has a learning curve and you’ll quickly improve your work. That said, unless you’re planning to strip and repaint everything until you’ve got the skills to paint it perfectly you’re going to want to hide some slightly less well painted models. Troops blend into the crowd, characters don’t. pick something you can learn on, without the pressure.

Representative

Do you want to learn to pain Ultramarines? Then paint Ultramarines. If you want to learn to paint Lumineth Realm Lords, then paint Lumineth Realm Lords. Or if your miniature of the month is an Orruk ‘Ardboy, but you want to learn to paint League’s of Votann, then paint your Orruk like a Space Dwarf. Regardless of whether you’re painting troopers or test models to start out, paint it like a member of your army; it’s the only way to get better at the techniques that you’ll use for the whole force.

Step 2: Prime for Success

The first step of painting your Warhammer miniatures is priming. This lays the foundation for the rest of your paint work. A good priming layer gives your paints something to grip onto, and sets the tone for your colour scheme. You can read our full guide on priming miniatures here.

Your Options:

• Spray Primer: Quick, even, but a bit of a knack, can quickly go wrong and weather dependent.
• Brush-On Base Paints: Not true primer and it’s slower and more labour intensive, but great for starting out, working indoors or touch-ups. You might need multiple passes to fully coat raw plastic.

Colour Choice:

• Black: For darker colour schemes or a forgiving base layer.
• White or Grey: For bright schemes and more vivid colours.
• Coloured primers: (like Death Guard Green or Mephiston Red) can give varied effects when mixed with base coats or contrast paints, or combine priming and base coating to quickly make progress.

Step 3: Base Coats – Blocking In The Colours

This is where the personality starts to come into the model, and the scheme starts to pull together. With modern paint formulations you have a couple of options; Contrast Paints (also known as Speed Paints) or Base Paints.

Base paints are your traditional, first layer paints. High pigmentation, higher viscosity, they apply solid, flat colours across a model that you build upon with layers, shades and highlights.

Contrast paints are a newer style of paints, which can make life a lot easier. Still high pigmentation but with a thinner formulation they’re designed to flow over the details of a model, pooling in recesses and leaving thin coat on raised areas. This provides immediate shading and highlighting that makes painting much quicker (but still benefits from further steps to improve the finish).

Tips For Success:

• Thin your paints: Especially for base paints. Use paint medium or a little water so they flow smoothly. For most paints you’ll want to apply two thin coats for the best finish.
• Use the right brush: If you’re just starting out pick up a medium brush for large surfaces and a smaller one for fiddly areas.
• Don’t worry about perfection: At this stage the focus is just get the colours in place. Keep it neat and tidy but remember your next steps are going to improve the finish.
• Seriously thin your paints: This literally our best advice at this stage. The biggest error that happens when base coating is loosing detail with paint that’s too thick. Two thin coats.

Remember this the “colouring-in” stage where you start to block out the colour scheme across the model, not the finished product. It may look rough now — that’s normal. For more advice check out our full base coating guide.

Step 4: Shading – Adding Depth With Washes

Now you’ve got to the stage of painting your Warhammer miniatures where the first colours are filled out, but even with contrast paints it’s most likely looking fairly flat. Now we need to add (or enhance) the contrast on the model by highlight its recessed areas and adding shadow. Luckily, there’s a broad range of paints formulated to make this super easy. Shade paints (also called washes or inks) and paints with a lot of medium, that flow into recesses and create the instant contrast that makes models pop. They do alter the tone of the paints their covering, but they even out paint jobs and add a cohesive tone to the whole model.

How to use:

• Pick a wash that compliments the base colours: Nuln Oil is great over metallic paints and gives darker tones, Agrax Earthshade works well for organic elements and adds warmth.
• Apply generously: Make sure you get solid coverage and then use your brush to wick away excess from raised areas.
• Let it dry completely: Trust the process; washes can look a lot different to once their dry and change how your model looks dramatically.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment: Washes and shades all have different effects on different colours. While Nuln Oil and Agrax are the most widely used you can have a play on some test models to see how different shades give you different effects – you can find some really cool uses for these types of paints.

Step 5: Highlighting – Pick Out the Details

Highlights are the trickiest step for beginners, but they add a crucial layer of depth to a model and can feel super rewarding. When you’re starting out painting your first few Warhammer miniatures try not to stress this stage too much; keep it as simple as possible with two highlighting techniques:

• Edge Highlighting: Use a fine brush to carefully line edges and raised details. Focus on the very edge of areas that will catch the light, like armour panels or sword edges.
• Dry Brushing: Great for highly textured areas like fur or ridged armour. Load a brush with your highlight shade, wipe most off, then gently brush across the area to leave a fine highlight.

Not comfortable with highlighting just yet? You can skip highlighting on your first models and come back to it later – they’d still be legally painted even for competition without this step (see battle ready vs parade ready below).

Step 6: Tidy-Up and Details

This is the polish pass. Once you’ve finished painting your first Warhammer miniatures carefully inspect your work. You’re looking for any areas that you aren’t happy with (though it’s normal not to be happy with a lot of a model on your first few goes!), that need tidying up or anything you’ve missed out. If you find anything you don’t like, this is your chance to fix it. The fix will depend on the issue you’ve found but everything is fixable. You can even go as far as re-basing an area and starting over, or even fully stripping a model in extreme cases.

This stage is also when you can choose to pick out final details and cool stuff on a model if you haven’t already. Look out for:

• Eyes or lenses: Notoriously awkward to paint, we’re big fans to using toothpicks to add eyes, and technical gemstone paints over metallics to instantly paint lenses.
• Weapons or accessories: Everyone checks out cool weapons. Even something as simple as an extra wash to add depth to the recessed grooves on a sword or a coat of Tesseract Glow on a the hot parts of a plasma weapon can add a lot of depth.
• Belts, pouches, purity seals: All the stuff your models are carrying is a chance to add interesting features.
• Gore and other effects: Paints like Blood for the Blood God are great for adding the grimdark factor. Snow effects, moss paints and other technical paints can be used for really cool effects.

Try to slow down and enjoy this step

It’s where the character of your model starts to shine. But remember none of it is essential. If painting a detail is too overwhelming just base paint in an appropriate colour and move on. No one will look at your models as critically as you will.

Step 7: Basing Your Model

Adding a base to your model is a requirement for getting it on the battlefield and this final step “grounds” the miniature and makes the whole thing feel finished. But you don’t need to create scenic dioramas. A simple base adds a lot of life to a model, and can draw a whole scheme together. It takes a model from a painted solder to a soldier fighting across a war torn landscape. When you first start painting Warhammer miniatures keep basing simple and thematic. You can always return to add more details later.

Quick options:

• Texture paint: Most brands offer some form of texture paint. These normally go on very thick to a base, and dry with specific effects. They can create asphalt streets, sandy deserts or cracked dry mud. They can take a while to get good coverage, and a long time to dry, but are nice and simple to use.
• Sand and PVA: This is a more old school method, but can be an incredibly quick way to base a large number of models. Spread PVA over the top of the base and dip the whole thing in a pot of sand. Shake off the excess and allow it to dry and you’ll have a solid base.

Finish off by painting the rim a solid, neutral colour (like black, brown, or grey) that matches the theme of the base itself, or a colour that matches the theme of the unit. While we advised keeping basing simple when you start out, you have a lot of options to add more variety or character as your confidence grows. From skulls to plants, there’s tons of basing materials you can purchase or make yourself, and you can use techniques like dry brushing to highlight bases the same as you would a model.

Battle Ready vs Parade Ready

This is a simple to achieve standard where every model has all their main areas coloured and a basic
finish applied to their bases.

Games Workshop’s Updated Model Requirements

When you’re painting your first Warhammer miniatures you may hear people refer to ‘Battle Ready’ paint jobs. This simply refers to a model that has met the basic official standard to compete in Game Workshop sanctioned competitions.

This is opposed to ‘Parade Standard’ models, which are models painted for display or even competition, when painters throw all their best techniques and skill at a model and produce insanely good work. Some people paint ‘Parade Standard’ armies, but it is a huge time commitment and easy to burn out.

If you’ve fully based coated (in as many colours as required), added a shade and given your model a textured base you’ve got a battle ready miniature. It’s ready to hit the tabletop, and you don’t have to do any extra steps. Highlighting and picking out extra details on your model after that point is just to improve the finished product. We think it’s well worth a quick edge highlight and some detailing, but you’ll be at a competition paint standard without that step.

Just Remember: Done Is Better Than Perfect

For your first Warhammer miniatures you just have to finish painting them. You don’t have to win a Golden Demon, just get a model ready for the table. That’s a massive win.

You’re expected to make mistakes, refine your skills and learn what works and what doesn’t. While everyone wants to paint top quality miniatures every is also on learning curve that improves as they practice. Every expert painter once painted a model they were embarrassed by. The only difference? They kept persevering.

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Got any tips for how you got started with painting? Any advice for new players painting their first models? Let us know in the comments below!

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