I'm going to sound blasphemous to the competent painters here but I got back into wargaming only recently and hadn't painted in about a decade. I wasn't that good at it before giving up the hobby anyway.
But, I paint to what I call 'gaming quality'. By which I mean my opponent and I are going to be about 2 feet away from the models for the vast majority of the game so paint them to look good at that distance. Belt pouches won't be visible, faces will be splotches of a different colour etc.
A well painted army is a wonderful thing to behold but if you're just starting up I'd be more concerned with getting a consistent colour scheme and painting style for the army and the formations as a whole rather than worrying about getting to great quality.
I painted Imperial Guard (
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2mh7vx1.jpg)
To do this I:
1. no basecoat (I tried with and without, after leaving and coming back to the table I couldn't tell which models had been basecoated then painted yellow and which ones had just been painted yellow over the metal)
2. paint the entire model, head to toe (exception: vehicle tracks) in Desert Yellow (
http://www.blackhat.co.uk/coat_darms/paintcolours.php)
3. paint brown stripes, irregularly, across the yellow painted sections (exception: not on the infantry, too small for it to matter) using Tan Earth (see link above)
4. with a thin brush paint a thin line of black through each of the brown stripes (black line thinner than the brown stripe, black line does not fill the entirety of the brown stripes)
5. paint tracks/wheels/etc. black
6. paint anything you want silver in silver (I chose Boltgun Metal)
7. for infantry paint hands/faces
8. for infantry paint helmets in a different colour (I painted all officers/commanders with orange helmets and then members of different formations with blue/red/green/brown helmets to differentiate which ones belonged to which)
9. let everything dry properly and paint a single light-medium density white drybrush all over. The purpose is to give a semi-blending of colour and break up obvious edges - basically so it doesn't just look like a series of flat colours
10. if infantry glue them to a base and use a textured paint to base them, pick a basing scheme and stick with it! If you went for a camo look (I went for desert camo) make sure the base matches the camo scheme!
Bro you really need to basecoat.... The basecoat provides the foundation for what the paint adheres to. Without a basecoat, the paint is more likely to chip and peel off, even with varnish. Good basecoat and good varnish and you're sorted for at least a decade.
