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I'm extremely new to the hobby, and these are my first 3 miniatures I've ever done. I'm looking for constructive criticism on them, and perhaps where I should invest more time practicing. I will say one thing, I do find thinning the paints very difficult. I either end up adding too much water or too little, and sometimes I just decide not to thin them at all. Either way, give me your thoughts !

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Hey, welcome to the hobby and Dakka!

Firstly, these are painted really well for your first models! The paint doesn't look too thick.
One thing I tend to do, to try and make sure the paint isn't too thin/thick is to just dip the brush tip into the water for a second then mix it in. Do that for every dollop of paint you chuck on the pallet. Works well enough for me. Also, the more you paint, the more you'll start getting used to the feel: when it's watered down enough, it has a certain smoothness that you'll come to notice.
Anyhow, I think mostly you just need practice. I can tell all the stages are there, as you seem to have shaded and highlighted. I'd say the main thing would be to focus on fixing up the colour after applying the shade paint; painting the colour back over the top, but leaving the crevices. and also applying the highlights a little more clearly and neater. Again, this mostly comes from practice.

Again though, for your first models, well done! My first models looked atrocious

Those are very neat for your first models and, as Tiberius said, the paint is nice and thin.

What paints/washes did you use on these models?

Thank you both ! I didn't know to paint over the shade after applying it, I will definitely start to experiment with that. And I had used the paints that came in the box with the miniatures. I used imperial primer to prime, then macragge blue as a base coat, balthasar gold and sycronx bronze for detailing, bugmans glow for the face and helmet. The guns were done with a combo of stormhost silver and leadbelcher, and I washed in argax earthshade. The bases are a combo of Armageddon dust, and argrellion earth with a wash of argax earthshade and a dry brushing of screaming skull.

Thank you for your interest! It can be very intimidating looking at some of the professional works on here.

Don't be intimidated, the good painters on here spend years getting that good and have about as healthy a relationship with painting as I have with alcohol.

One tip though, I find argax earthshade gives a rather dirty look to models, try nuln oil instead; it shades black rather than brown.

Well done for a first time painter.

As to improving, here's some things to work on:

- thinning paints is still important. Try for the consistency of milk. It's often easier to do with larger volumes of paint, but then you end up wasting paint, so it's a bit of a trade-off.

- cleaning up the plastic (I can clearly see the sprue piece still clinging to the right marine's elbow, though it's mostly clean otherwise)

- highlights - usually, this is just a thin line on upper edges of the armor plates

- controlling the wash - this depends if you're going for a grimy, battle-worn look or something cleaner, but washes put down over everything work better on cloth than smooth armor. Try painting the wash into the crevices, and clean up any pooling on surfaces as you go. So for the shoulder pads, just paint along the edge where the gold meets the blue and let the wash settle in. It takes a bit more time but it saves a ton of clean up later, as you don't have to go back with the original color. If you do have to go back with the original color, in general, paint only the flat areas that will catch the light from above and avoid the recesses, this makes it look more naturally lit.

- details - the eyes, scrolls/seals, gun scope lenses. This is just a matter of having more paints to work with. Painting human eyes is pretty tricky, so don't sweat it if you mess up, probably the easiest way to do it is paint the eyeball black and paint 2 white dots in the corners of the eyes rather than trying to paint white eyeballs with black dots. You'll need a small brush for this! For marine helmet eyes, don't try to paint the whole lens, stay away from the crevices and use a dark wash to clean up afterwards. This takes practice!

As for general advice, watch a bunch of Warhammer TV's Youtube channel videos (Tip of the Day). They contain tons of good tips for painting and are very professionally done and easy to understand.

Edit: Also understand that the more professional paint jobs shown here and elsewhere can take many, many hours to produce by people with 10+ years painting experience. As a starting painter, concern yourself with good clean results that you can do relatively quickly (a few hours per mini, tops). Space Marines are ideal for this, as they love simple clean paint schemes.

Well done, and if I'm honest, better than 50% of the people I play with locally (some of whom have a decade or more in the hobby).

I'd gladly play against an army painted to that standard.

Nicely done! So much better than my first minis. (They were Ultramarines too... still have them to remind me.)

Very neat painting! Remember, neatness is key: just keep painting within the areas, and use two thin coats of paint to build up a nice base coat. Later you might want to look into shading and highlighting, but a model that has been neatly basecoated is more than good enough for any tabeltop

Definitely check out WarhammerTV's videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT

Finally, start looking at using a spray primer. It's the best way of priming your minis (once they have been cleaned and assembled), but REMEMBER to protect yourself and spray in a well-ventilated environment. Extreme cold, hot, wet or windy weather is not good for spraying in.

The only way is up! Welcome to the hobby and keep up the good work!

This is a solid start. Keep at it and you'll improve. There's a wealth of videos online that can help you learn techniques nowadays. Practice thinning and eventually you'll find a method that works for you.

They look good, very clean and neat!

I don't think there's a "perfect" consistency for paints; it's a bit of an art form all on it's own as some paints need to be thinned more than others, some techniques work better with thinner paint, etc. Lately I've been thinning down my paints a lot and mixing with drying retarder and medium in order to try to create smooth gradients, for example. Basically, just play around and find out what works for you.

BTW when using a really fine brush it's better to thin with medium than water, as it doesn't dry as fast; when trying to thin my paint with water and then do really fine details I often find the paint dries before it reaches the model. Using medium usually solves this problem.

Space Marines (or any models with smooth armour really) are great models to use edge-highlights on. Really makes them pop in my opinion. Edge highlights are not as hard to do as they might initially appear: the trick is to let the model do the work for you by running the side of a fine brush (rather than the actual tip) across the edge.

Space Marine shoulder are a great place for some transfers or simple freehand.

Purity Seals are a great place to draw some "script": basically just shaky parallel lines. Some people like to use fine-tipped permanent markers for this, as it's probably easier than using a paintbrush.

They're looking better than I usually get to before stopping.
Pop those photos in the Gallery, and post links from there.

welcome to the hobby and to dakka!! i must join the others and say that these are fantastic first mini's. certainly better than mine were!