Washes

Washes are very watery paints that are designed to sink into the detail on miniatures, to give it some shading.

To shade the miniature's skin and hair, I simply painted over them both with a flesh wash. This darkens up the raised areas a little, and accentuates the creases.

Drybrushing

Drybrushing is a great way to quickly and easily highlight rough surfaces like fur or mail. In this case, I drybrushed a pale green onto the miniature's armour to pick out the edges of the individual plates.

To do this, dip your brush in the paint, and then wipe the bristles on a piece of paper towel until there is practically no colour still coming off onto the paper. Then, you wipe the brush over the surface you wish to highlight, moving across the detail. You will see the raised edges of the detail slowly pick up traces of paint as you continue to wipe. The longer you continue, the brighter your highlight becomes.

Highlighting

For smooth surfaces, drybrushing tends to give a rather rough finish, so highlighting with a detail brush works better. For this miniature, I picked out the edges and raised folds of the tunic in a paler green.

Dip a fine detail brush in your paint, and wipe off the excess. Then, just run the side of the bristles along the edge you wish to highlight.

If you wish to make the highlight look a little more natural, you can blend the two colours together, making layers that progressively fade to the lighter colour as you get closer to the edge.

Eyes

I never consider a miniature to be finished until it has eyes.

For miniature this size, there's no need to get too detailed with the eyes. All you need to do is paint the eye white, and then apply a dot of black in the middle... or off to one side if you want the model to be looking to the side.

The black dot should reach to the top and bottom of the white, or your miniature will look like it is staring.