My first ever painted mini...Brute

There is already a lot of good advice here, but I'll go over my process here, but some of this will be repeats from what has already been stated. First step, clean your minis. Get a toothbrush and a cup iof cool water with 1-2 drops of dish liquid. Give them a dip in the water then gently scrub them. This isn't always necessary, but is a good practice to get into because it will help remove anything that may be on the minis that could prevent your paint from adhering. Let them dry overnight.

Next, get a thin piece of wood. I use the wooden part of a yard sign. Apply a drop of hot glue to your minis bases and just barely stick them to the wood. Don't press them down all the way flat. You want a little gap underneath. It will be important to get them off easily. Now you should have 3-5 minis attached to a piece of wood that can hold in one hand. Go outside and apply spray primer. People have different preferences here, but I'd recommend just getting white primer for a beginner. While holding the stick with your minis on it, apply the primer in short bursts while moving. The stick helps because you can rotate and easily hit them from all angles. You want to be sure to cover the minis, but you want to use as little primer as possible to accomplish this. If you put too much, it will fill up some of the smaller recesses and you'll loose detail on your final product. Wait 24 hrs to be sure they are dry. Using an eye dropper, apply a small amount of alcohol to the hot glue underneath the minis (this is why we didn't press them down flat earlier). After the alcohol hits the glue, it is much much easier to gently pry the minis from the stick with a butter knife. Painting time. To make this easier, I break pit the glue gun again and stick them to the top of empty spice shakers filled with cat litter. This puts them on a little stand that you can easily hold and rotate without having to touch the mini itself and the cat litter adds just a little weight so it doesn't fall over as easily when you put it down. Again just remember not to press the mini flat to it or it will be much harder to remove. Paint your mini now. I won't give much advice here, because there are tons of videos and guides on the internet, after you've painted a few, you'll learn what works best for you. After painting, apply a wash. If you want something that does a pretty good job over anything, I'd go with a brown wash like Agraax Earthshade from Citidal. It isn't perfect for everything, but it's good enough. After everything is finished up and you're sure you don't need to make any more touch-ups, I'd strongly recommend applying a clear coat to help protect the paint job you just sank hours or your life into. Personally, I put on two coats of Testors Gloss coat, then apply a coat of Testors dullcoat. The gloss coats protect really well, but the high shine makes it look kind it cheap. The dullcoat ontop knocks down the shine. I just woke up and typed this out on my phone, so I may have missed a thing or two.

/r/Gloomhaven Thread