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Hey everyone, recently I have painted my first miniature ever. Please critique it and tell me what i did wrong and what I did right. My friend has gotten me into Warhammer 40k and I have chosen the Imperial Guard as my army of choice. Tools of the trade, White Autobody primer, sable-mix brushes from Hobby Lobby, Vallejo Paints and GW foundation Paints.

If that's your first then its a pretty damn good job. If I could offer some advice, paint the base brown rather than blue as it distracts from the mini otherwise.

Very Nice!!

Really nice! How did you do the shading?

First: Good job!

The base in neon blue is less than beautiful. In brown, black or very dark gray it should be better.

I love the blue helmet/shoulder pads, but I'm not sure about the gun. Dont get me wrong, the gun is well painted. Maybe it's me: a blue gun remind me of nerf toy...

Anothing thing you could do is a bit of weathering on the blue parts: scratches, dust... It will look very good on that bright blue.

Hope this help.

My only criticisms are that the blue rim on the base is distracting, and the camo specks just don't look right. They look kind of like spillover paint rather than camo. The model itself is actually pretty damn good, especially for a first try. If I saw an entire army painted to that standard I'd be happy to fight against it.

Incredibly good for a first model. There is almost no real advice that can be given, but one thing could potentially be improved a little bit (since you specifically asked for constructive criticism)...

The highlighting layers on the blue are visible... this can be avoided by thinning the highlight colour paints even more, making them more transparent which will give a subtler highlight but will still make the edges pop and look nicely blended. This is more a matter of preference than a real improvement though as many people prefer the more extreme edge highlighting. Coverage looks nice and smooth, so that is the only thing I can think of that might improve it further.

If I really start digging, perhaps look more into the natural highlights edges would get... for instance the shoulderpad would not have a highlight the whole way around it, just where light would be hitting the model from above/whatever angle.

Very hard to criticise though, well done you should be very proud.

Overall its a very good paint job. Though as people have said i would change the base colour. If its being used to identify squads perhaps just a blue stripe on the base would be better. As a personal preferance i would either make the camo pattern larger and more irregular or mor frequent across the uniform.

very nice for a first attempt. As everyone else said the base I agree with what they said. Try maybe doing some armour damage on the shoulder pads.

Thank you all for the quick responses, it makes me think more about him and the other guardsmen I am painting. (set of 5 las-gunners) I would say, it took me about 4 - 5 hours from start to finish to get this guy to where he is. I know that is a really long time for one mini but after all he is my first dude and I messed up a lot on detailing and learning details about cleaning and assembly, basing, priming, different styles of painting and techniques, and when I get to it after final touches, sealing.

I could of spent more time but I am playing imperial guard...I have no units to play with except him and playing IG means I have to paint a crap ton more like him. I am doing regular grunts for awhile before I will try my HQ and elites so I can have better skill and control. After all that said....who knows, maybe I wont seal him just yet and spend more time on him to make him look even better.

To answer some questions....I shaded the model with citadel washes; badab black for the cloth and bolt gun metal, ashurmen blue for the blue metal, and Ogryn Flesh for the skin. I have read that washes are not great when working with Vallejo so ill experiment and see what I like for mass army washing. Otherwise, I will simply make my own washes.

The base was painted enchanted blue....because i just love the color lol. I now realize as much as I like the color it just does not fit with the mini as a whole so I will scrap it and just paint the base brown to match the basing.

questions I have though for the gun, the more I look at it...the more it looks like a nerf gun, thanks M_stress I am thinking about keeping certain elements bolt gun besides the barrels of weapons. For example, the grenade launcher and power pack for lasguns. They were going to be blue but I am thinking of making them metal because I would think that guardsmen swapping out ammunition would wear away paint, therefore not even needing paint there in the first place (save the aquila) opinions?

armor weathering, I was thinking about battle damage and stuff on the weapons and armor of the mini ( sponge and boltgun metal with mithril highlights) any ideas people? would this add to the mini?

camo scheme plague me guys...not wanting to do standard jungle camo and wanting a more digital/urban look I went with the 3 squares that overlapped. I dont want him to look like a checkerboard but i need to fill in more detail, if making them larger while being sequenced will that fix the camo issues or make it worse? gimmie some hints...

I do see the highlighting issues but I just dont know if I can dedicate that kind of work on every unit, or i can not be lazy and just do it...lol

Realistic highlighting is my newest lesson I am trying to learn, I have a lot to learn about that...one day I will get it!

Overall, I will post another image of him sometime this weekend, I hope, and maybe some other guys I am almost done with. He will have changed discussed on this thread. Thank you again for all your comments!

Nice job