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I've had Warmachine and 40k models built and unpainted for months now, because I dont want my models to look like crap (the few that I painted do). I've seen tutorials online, but most of them don;t explain why they use the colors they do, and the order. Like, I see people apply several coats of paint, but I'm not positive on why. I can't tell if they are "building up" to a shade, or if they are trying to make previous layers show through the new one to create different shades. It's probably really obvious to everyone else, but I've never had any artistic ability whatsoever., but I also don't want to have to copy everything other people do.

No, and a lot of it is unnecessary for 90% of the gamers/painters out there.

You've picked out the general reason - black undercoat vs. white undercoat can produce a very different brightness on the model. Do you "need" 12 different shades of paint under your power armour? Not unless you're hunting for a metal.

If they're doing several coats of the same colour - that's for a smooth effect. Thick, chunky, globby paint may cover a surface well but it creats a very obvious "this was painted poorly!" surface texture. It's common to thin paints down and apply several thin coats to get a smoother finish.

Diffrent techniques do diffrent things.

the bear basic is many thin coats to get a smooth even color with no streaks.

you can use thin coats to additive build up highlights to make the base color the shade too.

thin makes it controllable as paint isnt 100% opaque so the previous layer will show through allowing you to hand paint gradients.

Cerebrate64 wrote:
most of them don;t explain why they use the colors they do, and the order. Like, I see people apply several coats of paint, but I'm not positive on why. I can't tell if they are "building up" to a shade, or if they are trying to make previous layers show through the new one to create different shades.

It depends on what effect they want and how they are working. If you start with a black primer then they are probably layering lighter and lighter colour to add depth and shade at the same time. With a white primer you can do it the other way around and slowly add colour and shade downwards. If they have a base-coat in the needed colour then you need to look where the paint is being applied to see if it's shading or highlights. If you look at your miniature from the top then the areas that can be directly touched from the top will probably be the ones that will be lighter while the areas "around the corner" will be darker and in the shadows.

Washes are usually use to hit the recessed areas (as the paint flows there naturally) but paint that's thinned a lot can be used as a glaze when applied over a certain area to tint it with whatever paint you used, that's usually used to bring back colour if you highlighted/shaded the base-coat into dullness (and it looks too white or grey for your taste) and want it more vibrant. Once you have a nice, flat base-coat and apply highlights you can use paint that's been thinned a bit more and apply multiple layers to create a transition from the base-coat to other colour by letting older layers show through. That can look like they are painting the same area multiple times but each time they hit a smaller surface to create a bit of a gradient.

 Desubot wrote:
Diffrent techniques do diffrent things.

the bear basic is many thin coats to get a smooth even color with no streaks.

Yeah I know that, but even that I have trouble with sometimes. I can thin my paint down to the point where it is almost a wash and it still streaks. I think it has to do with primer though, because sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't, no matter what paint or brushes I use.

I have an older 'Eavy metal painting book (from the 90's I think), because I like the kind of cartoony look of the miniatures, only issue is it doesn't cover color as well as i'd like, and this guy seems to achieve fantastic looking miniatures without using any real advanced procedures. What confuses me, is when I see tutorials and people start with a color that doesn't seem obvious at all to me. I watched a guy paint Death Guard stuff and he starts painting it when it's black, uses brown, then green instead of just using green over the black in the first place and I don't understand why he does it. I want to understand how everything works, because if I do end up getting good at it, I want to eventually make tutorials and help other people get into it.

Cerebrate64 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Diffrent techniques do diffrent things.

the bear basic is many thin coats to get a smooth even color with no streaks.

Yeah I know that, but even that I have trouble with sometimes. I can thin my paint down to the point where it is almost a wash and it still streaks. I think it has to do with primer though, because sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't, no matter what paint or brushes I use.

I have an older 'Eavy metal painting book (from the 90's I think), because I like the kind of cartoony look of the miniatures, only issue is it doesn't cover color as well as i'd like, and this guy seems to achieve fantastic looking miniatures without using any real advanced procedures. What confuses me, is when I see tutorials and people start with a color that doesn't seem obvious at all to me. I watched a guy paint Death Guard stuff and he starts painting it when it's black, uses brown, then green instead of just using green over the black in the first place and I don't understand why he does it. I want to understand how everything works, because if I do end up getting good at it, I want to eventually make tutorials and help other people get into it.

It's not the primer, if the paint is streaky it's down to application. Certain paints behave differently to one another, eg. reds generally cover surfaces far more poorly than blues or purples even before you start taking into account the vagaries of thinning your paint, so you just have to get used to what you're working with. Practice on some primed sprue rather than your models if you're just trying to get the hang of laying down a smooth basecoat. In general you're looking to strike that balance of liquid enough to lay it on smoothly, but thick enough for it to stick. Once you've laid down a coat, wait for it to dry enough that another go over with your brush won't lift any of it off. Trying to pain over insufficiently dry paint will lead to streaking.

People who know what they're doing can make even somewhat complex things look easy and make the average or easy things look like stuff they could do in their sleep. Practice is the only answer, very few people start off good, let alone great.

Black isn't a great basecoat to work with unless you're only going to be putting other dark colours over it, so you'll want to establish a non-black basecoat over the primer to paint what you really want. Chances are that painting the Death Guard green over black would take a lot more time and effort than painting it over the brown.

The colour of your undercoat can also influence influence what the paint over it then looks like which will probably also have informed his choice to use brown. To really understand that sort of stuff you'll have ti start looking into colour theory.

Cerebrate64 wrote:
What confuses me, is when I see tutorials and people start with a color that doesn't seem obvious at all to me. I watched a guy paint Death Guard stuff and he starts painting it when it's black, uses brown, then green instead of just using green over the black in the first place and I don't understand why he does it.

There could be multiple reasons for that:

maybe the green doesn't cover well over black and using brown underneath helps with that

maybe the painter leaves the brown in deepest recesses as "black-lining" that's less harsh than pure black, or maybe it's used to provide a bit of a transition from the black towards the green

maybe the brown is used to show in areas where the green was applied sloppily to be a bit less obvious than black spots showing

maybe it's intentionally used to represent rust in those recessed areas (and will be painted later with something a bit more orange-ish)

maybe it's to create the look of surface textures for the Deathguard so that there's some black, brown, and green on top

maybe the green just looks a bit richer on top of brown instead of painted on top of black

It depends on how thin the paint is, how many layers were used, and how much of the surface was covered. Some of the examples might be harder to see in a video than in real life. And if you see someone paint in real life and don't know why they are doing something, asking them usually works. Most people are willing (or even enthusiastic) to talk about their process.