My first painted minis! What can I improve ?

The first two look like Gloomhaven JOTL minis - they don't have a lot of detail in the sculpt. Don't feel bad if you can't bring out the details on those ones - the little detail that is there isn't great anyway. Ooh that little demo mini, bringing back bad memories, that one was awful to paint.

Looks like your paint is getting thinner as the series goes on, so that's progress. You kind of don't know what's worked until it doesn't so a little progress on each mini is good. As long as you keep experimenting you'll improve.

Looks like you've got the right idea with highlighting, but the colour you've chosen for the highlight on the white part of the cloak is darker? It makes it look like it's the primer showing through until you zoom in and realise what's going on.

One word that I find helps to remember when trying to pull out detail is "readable". Sometimes when you are painting along you'll have an idea in your head of what the character is supposed to be doing, so you'll paint the details as you would if they were just smaller versions of the real life thing. However, in practice the eye absorbs the entire miniature all at once instead of examining those details individually. Excessive contrast will bring out those details - both contrast in value (light/dark) and colour. At first it feels silly increasing the contrast but the goal isn't to make it realistic, it's to make it "readable" so when you look at the model in full you can still pick out those important details.

/r/minipainting Thread Link - reddit.com