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If you’re new, this is the fastest way to get started with mini painting!
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Mini Painting Guides
Free Mini Painting Starter Kit
A short guide covering the essentials to get started: tools, workspace, basic techniques, and a quick cheat sheet. Free to access.
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The Full Mini Painting Beginner Guide
We share our experience gathered so far in this 195-page comprehensive PDF guide to answer all the questions we had when starting.
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Interactive Guide
A fully interactive guide to mini painting available through the Supporter membership, built for people starting from zero or want a reset including videos, searchable context, and image zoom-in.
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Jackson's Art plastic brush protectors and plenty of other fine art products.
Interactive Colour Wheel BETA
Quickly find colour scheme for your mini painting.
Our Favorite Tools
Browse the paints, tools, and supplies we actually use.
Interactive Mini Painting Guide BETA
195 pages of answers, pictures, and videos to learn mini painting
Watch
Come along as we learn the art of painting miniatures from the ground up! This playlist follows our personal journey of improving step by step — from figuring out the basics to aiming for a big challenge: painting a D&D Hill Giant and a big dragon. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about learning, practicing, and getting better with each project.
What to expect:
- Our progress as we improve painting skills
- Honest experiments, mistakes, and little victories
- Miniature painting for tabletop RPGs like D&D
If you’re new to painting and want to follow someone who’s also learning, this series is for you.
Mini Painting Improvement
I really wanted to paint my D&D hill giant but my miniature painting skills were really not strong enough. And on top of it, painting properly shaded skin on minis can be very challenging. Using a wash can help, but it mainly makes it look dirty. So for a long time, I ended up painting skin just using a flat colour, not knowing what to do to make it look better. I embarked on a miniature painting improvement journey, focusing on key skills I would need, especially painting skin.
Need Minis?
There are so many great minis out there. Some artists paint for the pleasure to create a showcase masterpiece, others paint armys for the love of TTRPG games. Not all minis are made equal. They will generally be 3D printed on resin or PLA plastic. They can also be made of plastic through a injection mold and often need to be assembled. Beware, minis printed on low quality resin can easily snap! We have some recommendations for you in our toolkit.
Member Perks ⭐ : Interactive Mini Painting Beginner Guide
A fully interactive guide to mini painting available through the Supporter membership, built for people starting from zero or want a reset including videos, searchable context, and image zoom-in.
The Mini Painting Beginner Guide: Everything we learned so far (PDF)
(🏷️ 75% off for supporters)
There is always something new to learn about mini painting and we continue learning every day, but we wanted to share our experience gathered so far in this 195-page comprehensive PDF guide* to answer all the questions we had when starting.
*This guide is also available as an online interactive version, available through the Supporter membership.
Is this guide for you?
This guide is made for people starting from zero. You do not need painting experience or an art background. If you have never picked up a brush before or do not know what D&D is, this is for you.
It also works as a reset for people who have already tried mini painting but feel like things are not coming out the way they want.
What you will be able to do by the end
The guide takes you through the full beginner process, one step at a time:
- Walk into a hobby store and understand what you are looking at
- Navigate the tools section and the paint racks without feeling overwhelmed by the brands and terminology
- Select your first mini, your essential tools, and a small set of paints
- Sit down at your workspace and paint your first mini from start to finish
- Recognize when something is going wrong and know how to troubleshoot it
- Paint with a brush or an airbrush and have a finished mini you are proud of
We are not promising you will paint for competition. Our goal is to give you with a solid foundation to get started and keep going.
What is inside
Covered in this guide:
- What mini painting is, including a bit of history and a breakdown of key concepts
- The tools and setup you need to get started
- Basic colour and lighting theory
- The full painting process, step-by-step (no airbrush required)
- Common mistakes and how to fix them
- Airbrushing as an additional skill
- Cheat sheets and mini painting lingo
Not covered in this guide:
- Enamel paints or oils
- Vehicle models like planes and tanks
- How to play tabletop games
- How to design or 3D print models
- Advanced competition-level painting
Format
This document is a 11 x 8.5 PDF file (50 MB) for you to download and use at your own pace. It includes plenty of images, but also external links to videos and tools on our website.
Not included:
There is also an online interactive version included with supporter membership. The same content, but includes additional videos, searchability, and image zoom, designed to use in the moment at your workstation, at the hobby store, mid-session when you need to look something up fast.
A note from us
This guide exists because we love creating board games for our nieces and nephews at Christmas. That is what brought us to mini painting in the first place. We fell in love with it, and we wanted to pay forward the help we received from the hobby community when we were starting out.
To everyone who answered our questions, pointed us toward the right tools, and never made us feel silly for not knowing beginner concepts, thank you.
This is a digital product. The PDF is available for personal use only and may not be redistributed or resold. Interactive guide access requires an active membership on Fourthwall or Patreon.
Bonus!
With this template, you can build your very own miniature medieval paper house using just cardstock, scissors, and glue. It’s a simple, fun project suitable for both kids (with adult help) and adults who love creative crafts.