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So dakkites...this is my very first attempt at mini painting. My brushes are cheap, my skill is non-existant, the paint came right from the pot (no thinning), my hands shake, my light was horrid, and my pace was furious.

In short, I learned a ton.

I need to thin my paints. That should be a law. I lost a lot of details due to thickness of the paints.
I need to take better care of my brushes and I need to get better brushes (Army Painters brushes are on the way along with some Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver).
The fine details kicked my rear in a lot of areas. The raised details like the skulls and the chapter emblems were...difficult to get clean lines. Some feedback on how to achieve that would be huge.

I did not highlight. I'm extremely horrid with light and color theory so the two mini's I tried highlighting had really bad color and I couldn't follow the edges very well. So...that one got re-covered in base coat.

I used a testor's uniform grey primer and a testor's flat black base coat. Caliban Green straight from the pot for the base layer. I used the black and brown washes, experimenting what looked ok and what did not. Also, I mixed and matched Uthuan Grey and Ushabti Bone for the Aquila, Skulls, and Purity Seals. All academic.

So, please look over the pictures and throw any suggestions my way on things to try out, tutorials to view. Or, if you like, just use these as an excuse to stroll down memory lane with the first mini's you've painted.

Thanks!

Looks like most of the paint ended up where it was meant to, so that's a good start!

Honestly, you've addressed most of the issues in your post already, perhaps try implementing those on some more minis and showing us those?

As for raised detail, the precision a decent brush gives you will address most of those problems, and you can always "cut in" with the surrounding colour once you're happy with the detailed area, there's no rule that says you can't go back over your errors.

As far as 1st painted minis go. These are pretty damn good.

The fact that you can identify what you did wrong (not thinning paints, crappy brushes, etc) will help you get better. As far as highlights and raised details go a fine detail brush will be your best friend.
Your actual paint job is frigging solid. Apart from some of the red eye lenses (which are notoriously hard to paint), i can only see 2 other areas where your paint's gone a bit haywire. A good light source is a must in this hobby so i'd highly recommend getting a lamp with a day light bulb. They really make the world of difference.

So in short
1. Thin your paints.
2. Fine detail brush.
3. Good light source.

Very nice first try. I would only suggest avoiding the yellow highlight on the lenses, at this point, as just having the lenses painted looks good. The yellow takes away from them a bit. You did a better job than I did first go round!

The improvements between the first and last are subtle but significant.

My first minis as well! My advice is; bone color on the places you painted yellow, leave the lenses regular for now, and try building up from a grey on the dark angels insignia. and take your time on it cuz there is a bit of paint bleed. not as much as I had, but still, a bit. also, learning about highlighting, eventually will never hurt. better than my first work for sure!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
warboss green mixed 1:1 with caliban green makes for a good, one shot highlight with dark angels.

Thanks for the solid feedback! The camera does not forgive and when I looked at the pics, the eyes drove me nuts. Good catch.

As they said.
I'm pretty new to this, a month into it, so I feel your pain.
First thing is: precision, precision, precision. If you don't paint clear lines, everything else won't save it.
Don't try to do fancy highlighting stuff yet if you don't feel comfortable.

Thin your paints, apply basecoat.
Take a step back and think about your color scheme.. Look at the official ones, they usually give a good overall result; the yellow is too bright in contrast. Ushabti Bone does a better job here.

Use just a little white dot in the outer corner of the eye lenses.

Wash the areas with the appropriate shade as you did with the metal areas. For bonecolours, Agrax Earthshade is the one to go.

After you've done your basecoat neatly and the washes all done, highlight. This is a rather tricky step that took/takes me quite some learning, so don't rush!

For Dark Angels, I use the full range for now.
That is Caliban Green, Biel-Tan Shade.
Follow up with edge highlights of Warpstone Glow, with a final highlight of Moot Green. Then glaze it with Waywatcher Green. But take these steps slowly, it can be quite frustrating, but it will come to you

So far your first marines are way better than my first ones, so keep going!
My last finished one is currently my "masterpiece", have a look:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/557109.page

Im rather confident that, if you keep doing this, you can achieve this result in half the time that I did!