Every painted miniature, from a first goblin to a competition piece, goes through the same seven stages. This page is the map: what each stage does, the one decision that matters in it, and where to go deeper. Nothing here needs talent — it needs the stages in the right order.
1. Prep
Clip the model from its sprue, shave mold lines with the back of a knife, wash resin models in soapy water (mold release repels paint), and glue what you can while keeping hard-to-reach areas separate. Thirty seconds of mold-line scraping saves a paint job — a painted mold line is the most amateur tell there is.
2. Prime
Paint needs primer to grip plastic, resin, or metal. One thin coat, any neutral color. The real decisions — aerosol versus brush-on, black versus white versus grey — are the subject of the primer guide. Shortcut worth knowing: a zenithal prime bakes the lighting in before you start.
3. Base coat
Every area gets its flat main color, thinned so it flows — two thin coats beat one thick one, always. Keep coverage inside the lines and do not chase perfection; the next two stages hide small sins. Any major brand's range works and they convert into each other — if a recipe names a paint you do not own, the charts on this site find your brand's match, starting from the Citadel paint chart.
4. Wash
A dark wash (a thin, translucent brown or black) flowed into the recesses shades the whole model in one pass. This is the highest-value five minutes in the hobby: a based-and-washed model already looks finished from arm's length. Wipe shiny pooling off flat surfaces before it dries.
5. Highlight
Light catches raised surfaces, so paint them lighter. Two routes: drybrushing for textured surfaces — fast and forgiving — or edge highlighting (a lighter line along hard edges) for armor and cloth. Lighten the base color rather than jumping to white.
6. Details
Eyes, gems, buckles, weapon edges, freehand if you are brave. A fine brush with a real point and paint thinned on a wet palette matter more than steady hands — brace both wrists together and touch, don't stroke.
7. Varnish
A matte varnish protects hours of work from tabletop handling. Spray or brush-on, applied in a dry room. Gloss first then matte gives the toughest finish; pure matte kills any residual shine from washes.
The fast lane
Stages 3 through 5 collapse into one when you use one-coat paints over a monochrome underlayer — that is the slapchop method, and it is the recommended first workflow for anyone staring down forty unpainted models. The full shopping list for everything above is in the supplies guide — seven items, nothing exotic.