So you’ve got some minis sitting on your desk — maybe a D&D starter set, maybe a box of Reaper Bones — and you’re staring at them wondering where on earth to begin. You’re in exactly the right place. This page will get you sorted without overwhelming you or emptying your wallet.
Here’s the good news: you don’t need much to get started. Seriously. Some of the best-looking minis have been painted with a cheap brush and a handful of basic paints. The gear helps, but it doesn’t do the work for you — and that’s actually pretty great, because it means you can start today.
Let’s walk through what you actually need, what can wait, and how to set yourself up for a good first experience.
The Bare Minimum Kit
If you want to pick up a mini right now and start painting, here’s all you truly need:
Your Starter Kit
- A few brushes — You need two: a medium brush (size 1 or 2) for larger areas, and a small detail brush (size 0 or 00) for faces and fine work. Don’t spend a lot here. A cheap set is fine to learn on.
- A starter paint set — Army Painter or Vallejo both do good beginner sets. They’re already thinned to roughly the right consistency for miniatures, which matters more than you’d think.
- A primer — This is a thin base coat you spray or brush on before painting. It helps the paint stick and makes everything look better. Grey or black are the standard starting points. Skip this and you’ll regret it.
- A palette — Even a ceramic tile from a hardware store works. You need somewhere to mix and thin your paints.
- A cup of water — For thinning paint and rinsing brushes. Your kitchen will do fine.
Setting Up Your Workspace
You don’t need a dedicated hobby room. A corner of a table works perfectly well. That said, a couple of things will make your painting sessions a lot more enjoyable.
Light — the thing most beginners ignore
Bad lighting is responsible for more bad paint jobs than bad brushes ever will be. If you’re painting under a warm yellow bulb, you’re working against yourself — colours look completely different than they will in daylight. A cheap daylight bulb (around 5000K) makes an immediate difference. A dedicated painting lamp is even better, but a daylight bulb in your existing desk lamp is a great start.
A steady surface
Painting a mini while holding it freehand is harder than it sounds. A simple trick: stick your mini to an old bottle cap or a cork using a small blob of Blu-Tack. It gives you something to hold onto without touching the mini itself, and stops you accidentally smudging wet paint with your fingers.
What can wait
A proper painting station, a wet palette, a magnifier lamp, an airbrush — all useful things you might want eventually. None of them are for day one. Get a few minis under your belt first, then invest in the stuff that’ll actually solve the problems you’ve started to notice.
Your First Mini — What to Expect
It probably won’t look exactly how you imagined. That’s completely normal and nothing to worry about. The first few minis are about learning how paint behaves, how to hold a brush, how thin to go. Every one you paint teaches you something the last one didn’t.
A few things that’ll help:
- Start with a simple mini — Avoid faces and intricate armour for your first attempt. A simple creature or a robed figure gives you large flat areas to practice on without too many places to go wrong.
- Base coat first — After priming, cover the whole mini in flat base colours before you worry about shading or highlights. One colour at a time, no rushing.
- Use a wash — A wash is a thin, dark, flow-y paint that settles into the recesses of a mini and immediately adds depth and shadow. It makes everything look more detailed with almost no effort. Army Painter Dark Tone or Citadel Nuln Oil are the classic choices. Brush it over your base coat and watch your mini suddenly look three times better.
- Drybrush the highlights — Drybrushing means loading a brush with a lighter colour, wiping most of it off on a tissue, then lightly dragging it across raised surfaces. It catches edges and picks out detail. Again — more dramatic results than the effort involved.
Base coat, wash, drybrush. That’s a complete and respectable painting technique right there. Plenty of people play D&D with minis painted exactly like that and they look great on the table.
Ready to Go Deeper?
Once you’ve got a mini or two finished, you’ll start to notice what you want to improve. That’s where the rest of the site comes in.
Most of all — enjoy it. There’s something genuinely satisfying about turning a lump of grey plastic into a character. Your D&D party deserves to look the part.