Avoid mistakes in painting miniatures

You know how they say, let us hear first the bad news: there is no path to avoid mistakes in painting miniatures. With that being said we do have many more good news, as there are dozens of ways to limit the mistakes you do. Very briefly, because I myself got so much more mistakes to do a.k.a. learning, I will write about some of them.

Probably the best thing you can do right from the start is to go and read articles and watch videos on the hobby of painting miniatures. This documentation will help you in avoiding presumably a costly and too oftentimes mistake of plunging right in the middle of a hobby without first knowing if it is a right thing for you to do.

Then there is another step: acquiring the first tools (paints, brushes, miniatures to name a few basics), but be sure not to invest to much, at least wait till the next two steps. The next one is starting to paint. Trust me, it's one of the hardest things, because one is to read about painting and watch people ensuring and proving you how easy is to paint, and a total different picture is to actually have a brush in your hand and start painting "all by yourself". You will do mistakes in all the steps, don't be hard on yourself and keep painting. The more you paint, the good you will be at it.

Once again, don't worry about the initial quality of your paint job and especially don't compare yourself with full job professional painters (at least, right now), be sure to have fun all the way. Without noticing you may have sliping into the next stage of painting adventure and this time, it's a test of... time. Is this hobby just a spontaneous curiosity or are you willing to invest more time and money in this hobby? If the answer is "yes" then you are on the right track of becoming a good painter and for sure of doing paint job that not only you will admire. 

The thing with painting miniatures is that "talent can be learned", or better said can be bypassed with time, skill advancing and techniques. You may want to invest in better tools, trying to assemble different miniatures of metal, plastic, resin/historical, sci-fi, fantasy etc./and a whole bunch of measures and scales, however you prefer. Each time you will learn to adapt known techniques to cope with the size of miniatures, no matter how detailed it is. You may also want to do a research on a miniature, especially for historical miniatures, but also on color theories and other subjects that may well suit and improve your style.

This word, "style", in fact is a keyword, as painting is a matter of taste, of course after passing some basic steps. It will help you understand right from the start the diversity of "the right way to paint".

So have fun with what you paint, and I leave you with two interesting videos from Christy and Joey: