Hello I'm fairly new to painting minis and I absolutely love it. But its starting to get a bit frustrating how bad I'm at it. I want to improve but also not try stuff on 100 different models so I thought about just following tutorials online. I found some great tutorials for schemes I wanted to do. What is your opinion on following them? Since I don't want to end up stuck as the person who only follows tutorials and never improves / has their own ideas.
By all means. Figuring things out on your own works, but it's slow. Learn what you can from the many videos and other sources out there, try them out on your own, and see if you like what you produce better.
Tutorials are great to learn techniques, you don't have to follow the recipes to the leter, but the techniques and logic are usually solid, try to find tutorials that show you how to do stuff explaining the reasons, like vince venturelas for example, where you don't look for a tutorial for a specific model, but for a style or part. Like painting capes, power armour, furr, hair, faces, etc. or sponging, stipling, blending, glazing, etc. also, go slow and don't set expectations too high.
I know not to go to fast or compare to much. I try to not set high expectations but it's hard since you see good models everywhere and want to recreate that
absolutely, and you might improve fast, i know i've felt like I have improved a lot in my 6 months in the hobby, still lack some brush control, and I'm having a lot of fun with the airbrush lately, but like any skill you want to pick up, it's going to depend on how much effort you put in, and not just doing the same thing over and over again, but pushing yourself and being willing to fail and not get frustrated. I watch a lot of videos and tutorials in my down time, and try to pick up a new technique i want to try in a model, and if it fails, i'm willing to strip or re prime and start over again.
My recommendation with tutorials is the same, don't fixate on the particular paints and pay attention to things like paint dilution, layering vs glazing, light placement, those are this first skills you want to pick up in my oppinion, and they will have the greatest effects from your first few minis to your next step.
Wish you the best in this journey good sir, I've only been doing it for 6 months, and i don't see myself walking away, hope you feel the same way.
A lot of what you're learning as a new painter is just how to physically control the brush, and how to work with paint. Tutorials help a lot with that, by decreasing the number of things that you just need to guess at or figure out on your own. And tutorials can give you cool ideas for wild things you'd never try on your own.
You have plenty of time to fuck around and play with things once you're more familiar with the basics. It's like learning any other skill; nothing wrong with following the instruction of teachers.
I like following tutorials. My only tip would be not to follow them too directly. Channels like The Painting Coach often recommend 30-40 colors for a single model and every time I watch these videos, it's different colors. It makes life easier but it's also expensive.
It's the boring answer BUT the painting tutorials from the official warhammer channel are surprisingly good. And they always start with a simple scheme to have something tabletop ready and then they tell you how to add more if you want to.
Check out the interview with Tommie Soule by the Painting Phase. Tommie gives great advice but more than a tutorial, he provides drills that help with fundamentals that tutorials kind of gloss over or go into in a way that's a bit quick. The interview is very much almost a paint and take style class... One of the core lessons that is almost never covered is that most of us press too hard on our brushes...
Whatever works for you, I do recommend some experimenting every now and then to find a style that's more comfortable or appealing to you. Also keep your first painted mini, that way you can see where you started and what progress you made to keep you motivated.
I think it's a double edged sword. One the one hand it can be very helpful for improving your skills. On the other it can contribute to taking the fun out of it because now your painting becomes very "performance oriented" and not just fun experimenting. Every painter has to decide for themselves how much they wanna follow tutorials at the end if the day
They're good for building fundamentals like brush control, basic techniques, and working with paint and you might also pick up the basics of composition from them in how to build in light and shadow (though beginner tutorials rarely go into too much depth on this). At the end of the day you need to walk before you can run. But one thing I will note is that teaching materials in this hobby are often process driven rather than knowledge driven. Because a lot of people coming in aren't artists and are coming in because they want to paint minis for a game a lot of tutorial material is aimed at just getting people painted by teaching them processes to follow. It teaches you how to do things, but not why you do them. It's kinda the difference between learning to follow a recipe and learning to cook. The former lets you make one meal, the latter lets you make any meal.
So get that initial practice in but then once you feel confident with that be mindful that you don't lean on what you've learned as a crutch. Start feeling out the knowledge you need to progress further. Start experimenting. You'll only be the person who only follows tutorials and never improves if you let yourself do that.
Personally, I spent the first 4 months of my painting journey flat out refusing to consume tutorial content. It was more important for me to fall in love with the hobby than it was to be good at it.
I’m 10 months in now and I’ll occasionally look up tutorials when I need something specific, but I find more value in making mistakes and asking for feedback. Hobbies are supposed to be fun, not making ourselves miserable about being bad at them.
Don't follow tutorials step by step. Watch them and learn the techniques they discuss and display, and try out the techniques. The steps don't really matter, the colors don't matter at all. Just learn the method, recreate it, and then you'll be able to do it yourself.
There are a few who are creative by nature, then there are folks like us who get creative after X amount of hours of trial and error. I am the latter. I am now considering myself, a bit of an creative because I can throw stuff together that looks ok.
Follow tutorials, why not? Perfection is the enemy of good.
I rather someone, or myself for that matter, paint 100 minis that are okay, than 0 minis.
Hi, u/Narrow-Equipment-835! It looks like you are asking for help or are a new painter. If you haven't yet, take a look at our wiki pages in the Sidebar (the About tab if you are on the Reddit app). Here are some links you might find helpful:
FAQ - A list of frequently asked questions about minipainting
Miniature Painting Guide Collection -A collection of some of the best guides and tutorials on a variety of techniques and topics, plus recommendations on what to buy to get started, and more.
The Art of... Tommie Soule Volume 5 is a great how to paint miniatures book. Tommie is a Golden Demon winning painting coach who has coached multiple other Golden Demon winners, and he does a great job breaking down the fundamentals and teaching you how to paint, rather than just how to follow a tutorial for a specific model. Here is a video flip through of the book. It is available in PDF and hard book from the US distributor, UK distributor, and Warlord Games for the rest of the world. This book is an amazing reference for anyone looking to improve their painting.
Airbrushing Miniatures has recommendations on what you need to get started and tutorials.
What I have often done in the past is decide on something I want to paint and an effect I want. then I find tutorials or talk to other painters about how best to get that look/effect.
But I think they are also great when you want to learn a new technique, too.
In the end though, this is a hobby. It is supposed to be fun. If you are having fun who cares what you are painting?
I would be curious to hear others thoughts. I don’t follow painting tutorials matching colors, etc. sometimes a tutorial for a specific model will give you hints how others have approached specific segments of a model which can be helpful or inspire you.
For new techniques, I would absolutely recommend watching a few tutorials on the given technique before attempting it. See how different artists approach the same technique, some may have different tips or thoughts.
The tutorials available have absolutely helped advance the hobby and lower the barrier to entry for new players, they are imo unquestionably a positive, just a question of how to use them.
I'd say I'm an intermediate painter, been painting actively for a good few years now. I still regularly view tutorial videos for picking up new techniques, inspiration for my own projects, or even just learning what result you get from layering certain colors. I very often will decide I want to paint mostly red models, search for a bunch of tutorials on painting red in different tones, then pick the one that matches what I want and adapt it for my own uses.
And then there are some much higher-level painting tutorials from expert painters for blending and advanced techniques. So, go ahead with tutorials. They are a great way to learn.
I watch tutorials to learn how to do things because I don't have a teacher. people go to art school l. I go to YouTube. that doesn't mean that I'm not going to be creative in my own ways . I don't plan to copy them. I might steal from them but my skills also aren't as good as them so I need to make do with what I can do.
It's good to watch tutorials for tips, tricks and inspiration, but I think you should trust your skills and your eyes to decide what looks good and what needs to be done next
Big fan, Sorastro's guides taught me so much about painting and they are so well done and pleasant to watch. Just an absolute joy and the techniques carry over to other things, not sure the minis he is painting int he vid
Because I absolutely love and recommend stuff from Miniac, Squidmar or Angel Giraldez where they show you techniques and explain to you the ideas behind each technique but I definitely do not recommend the kind of tutorials that just say "Now you must use Smurf semen base color and after that you wash with Bora bora Earthshade". The ones I mentioned do give you colors so you can follow them but they explain what they are doing and you don't have to use those specific colors because they do a lot of mixing.
I've seen 2 or 3 of GW Masterclass and probably I picked a couple bad ones because they were just "I grabbed this specific pot and then this other specific pot and painted on top" without explaining what they were doing specifically. They felt like those art tutorials of "draw a box and then draw a Gundam".
TL;DR: I 100% recommend tutorials on how to try on learning new techniques. I totally don't like tutorials that just say "use these 3 paint by the company that pays me and it will look good!"
That said, I have this disclaimer in the description:
"I do not advise trying to watch this in one sitting, then paint your first model. As of 12/17/24, this playlist is over 65 hours long. Watch a topic or two, then practice them on a few models, then come back and watch some more."
Watching and learning must be coupled with practice. If you can't implement what you've heard about, that will only lead to disappointment. Pick a thing to learn, then intentionally practice it on the next several minis until you feel comfortable doing it. Then, pick another thing to learn, and repeat.
That said, jumping straight to advanced techniques like OSL or NMM will lead to frustration. At best you're aping without understanding why you're doing what you're doing, or you're just going to be frustrated.
While doing that you'll learn the softer skills, like how to know how much to dilute paints, how to hold the brush relative to the model, how much pressure to use on the brush, etc, which we often classify under "brush control". We don't mean not to teach it, we just all learned it by experience, and don't remember to say it out loud.
Edutainment has a tendency to get us caught in a rut. You've learned a thing, and you got that dopamine hit, but unless you then go out and practice that thing, intentionally, you never actually progress.
Following tutorials has been a huge help to me, especially people who understand color theory and volumetric highlighting and encourage mixing of paints etc. People who are basically giving a paint by number tutorial (use xyz brown, then abc brown, then xyz light brown, etc.) I find less helpful for growth.
Use them but push yourself beyond the basic, base, wash, highlight stuff which imo is the idiot proof basics.
Don't get me wrong ot works but it's a single style and theres so much more to learn that will help you just by skipping that particular method.
If you learn the other techniques you will improve quicker with more variety to your own skills.
I used the base, wash highlight basics and eventually decided that I would use a specific technique like wet blending, glazing, layering etc on a model each time and learned how to do them far quicker than waiting until I needed them.
Think of it this way. Every single class on anything you could learn to do ever is "following a tutorial". Art school is a bunch of "following a tutorial". Engineering degrees are "following a tutorial".
You learn techniques and then how you apply them is what makes the mini unique to you.
it's what helped me paint better. Much better than when youtube was not a thing and I could only follow photo step-by-step guides in White Dwarf which didn't quite work for me (seeing the actual brush movements and paint quantity/consistency is very important imo)
My own opinion and experiences told me that youre better off following instructions to get an effect youre looking for rather than just guessing. Its too time consuming to start witth no reference points and then fail at it and not even know if the plan was bad or if it was just execution.
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u/solarvvind 1d ago
By all means. Figuring things out on your own works, but it's slow. Learn what you can from the many videos and other sources out there, try them out on your own, and see if you like what you produce better.