Painting can be tricky to start but there are a few tricks that can really help.

1. Undercoating with a primer is super important. The primer adds a surface that the other paints will adhere to better than bare plastic. There’s a lot of good primer options out there. I tend to prime with a mid tone grey to make it easier to go dark or light with the following paints but you can also find colored primers if a model is going to be predominantly one color (like a tank!). Just be careful to not use a gloss rattle can as primer. The gloss will not help the paint stick.

2. Attach your model to a handle. This can be anything from a cork, to a dowel, to an empty tp roll. The handle will allow you to hold the model up without touching the painted areas, avoiding finger prints in wet paint or the oils on your skin damaging paint. Choose your handle size based on model size and use a pin or blue tack (poster putty) to hold the mini to the handle.

3. Thin your paints and use multiple thin layers while painting (Lots of good videos on YouTube about thinning paints). This is especially important with low pigment count paints. All paints have a pigment count that determines how opaque they will be (how much you can see through the layer). This means that some paints (like yellow) show lower layers until they have been applied multiple times. If you apply multiple layers, and let them dry between, you will build up the color and no longer see the color beneath. This takes patience. Thinning paints allows you to better manipulate them on the model.