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Hi up until about a month ago I was not really hugely interested in painting and all my miniatures were painted to an.........acceptable standard. Now however I am trying to paint as well as I can. Im going to add some pictures of my best painted marine ATM and any tips would be greatly appreciated on how to improve my standards.

Heres how I painted him:
1. Chaos black undercoat.
2. Secondary chaos black coat.
3. Medium grey wash over the whole thing.
5. Metal parts painted with boltgun metal.
6. Medium black wash in metal areas.
7. Silver parts painted.
8. Medium black/gold wash in silver areas.
9. Regal blue shoulders with medium black wash.
10. Gold parts painted.
11. Light brown wash in gold areas.
12. Extra colours added (white, light blue eyes and red)

Not too bad but a few things would improve it a lot:

First, your paints look too thick in places - especially the white. Thin them to at least 50/50 paint/water and use multiple thin coats instead of one big coat.

Next, practice brush control. This comes from painting more and more, but try using your smallest fine detail brush to paint lines and shapes on some paper to get used to the flow a bit more. Your model is pretty good, but the eyes especially would benefit from a neater line.

The eyes are the main focal point of the model, so be extra slow when doing them. You can cheat a bit here and just use washes to fill them in a slightly different shade until your skill level increases.

Use base colour, complementary shading wash, base colour (leaving the washed base colour in the shadows) for an effective simple highlighting scheme.

Also, use fewer colours. Space marines really benefit from sticking to three colours maximum (excluding tiny details here and there).

Nothing personal implied and hope I avoided being patronising - just trying to give some constructive criticism. Keep at it and you'll be amazed at how quickly you improve.

I would also agree with legoburner and suggest having 2 main colours for the armour and then metalics as SM are best with simple colour schemes. I would either go with white and black or blue and black but not both. I think black and blue wouldn't go very well together but it depends on your own tastes.

I think that you should paint the model grey, add the silver areas then give it a heavy black wash. This would give you a similar result as steps 1-8 but would be a lot easier. Next just add the other details.

The details are quite well picked out and with practice your hand will become steadier. Try to use the height of the details to help you paint them. Your white and red could use acouple more thin coats. You can mix them with water or acrylic paint flow improver. Water is cheaper (obviously) but it lowers the amount of pigment in the paint. flow improver costs a bit but it doesn't lower the pigment as much so you need less coats. I would suggest also trying to stop the ink getting onto the white.

While it's tempting to go all-out with fancy details on your new minis, I'd recommend getting in some more practice. Paint just the basic colours on at least a few squads, then one you've really settled into the rhythm of painting and developed a steady hand you can try some of the more difficult stuff.

Thanks for the comments guys, they will no doubt come in useful especially more core coats of more watered down paints. BTW this isnt my main colour sceme this is: