Painting miniatures: the ultimate beginners’ guide

polygon.com:

Charlie Hall is a journalist, photographer, and miniature painter with 10 years’ experience working at Polygon. After spending time as a writer and reporter, he became Polygon’s tabletop editor in 2021. He’s served as a judge for GAMA’s Origins Awards . In 2023, Games Workshop included his work in a roundup of the hobby’s top painters . Read his photo essay from the Golden Demon awards .

Painting miniatures is an incredibly relaxing and rewarding hobby, one that can bring a bit of meditative joy to your free time while also adding beautiful bits to your favorite board games and role-playing games. But it can be daunting to build up the skills and tools you need to get started.

In this guide, my goal is to demystify those first few steps beginning painters need to take. Below you’ll find my personal recommendations, not just of the paints and other tools you’ll want to buy, but a handful of carefully curated teachers and artists I’ve come to trust over the last seven years of exploring. Let’s dive in.

There are so many different kinds of miniatures on the market that just narrowing things down to a handful of choices can be difficult work. My recommendation is to start with one of your favorite games or subjects.

Maybe you’re really into dungeon-crawling board games like HeroQuest, Zombicide, Gloomhaven, or Descent: Legends of the Dark. Maybe you’re more into strategy games, like Scytheor Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition. Or maybe you’re curious about more freeform miniatures skirmish games, like Star Wars: Legion, Marvel Crisis Protocol, Necromunda, or Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team. Wherever your interests lie, start with a game or a universe you really enjoy and that bit of passion you feel in your