Here goes a little bit outside of the box on how to paint in our new book, but if this is your first experience painting a model, you can start with the basic steps below to get you up to speed.

Buy yourself a small box of paints (the size of a business card) and a couple of paints that you’re good at mixing. (You don’t have to buy just one of them.) You can buy them all, but when you find a good one, you’ll know you can do it. (And remember, it will cost you more to buy one good paint versus a couple of good ones.) For the most basic models we recommend:

Able to handle drybrushing for very young children.

Learn how to mix two types of acrylics: acrylic-based paints that are opaque when dry and transparent when wet.

Learn the process of building up a base before you ever try to paint it. We recommend building up a base with base-of-the-line paints and then painting one color of that base-of-the-line paint over, then another, until you can create anything in the base that you’d like.

Begin your painting with the largest brush you’ve got. The most effective brush size is a Medium-Wash-able acrylic brush, which can take several coats. That is, start with one coat of one color of base-of-the-line paint, but you would only need to do this if you want to build up a larger “base” or larger, more complex image in the base.

Able to brush well. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, but you also need to be able to “bend” brushes to create a thin, even coat of paint. For the most basic, first-model paints, this can mean painting the areas just before the paint is used; then, after it’s been used for a little longer, painting the parts of the model that you painted before.

Learn how to drybrush. Learn to use your brush to create small strokes and not a big line; this is a skill that’s easier in the beginning as you’ll be more comfortable with the techniques (more on that in a minute).

How do you paint your models?

As you already know, most hobbyists learn painting in a hobby kit—that is, a kit containing a specific painting method and a few paint colors. If you already

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