Painting miniatures looks like a craft with a thousand techniques and is really a short sequence repeated: prime, base coat, shade, highlight, varnish. Almost every finished model you have admired went through those five steps, and the difference between a first attempt and a good one is usually not knowledge of exotic techniques but consistency in the basic ones, particularly the thinness of the paint.
The order, and why it is that order
Primer gives the paint something to grip and shows up mould lines you missed. Base coats put flat colour on each area. A shade or wash flows into the recesses and creates depth. Highlights pick out the raised edges the shade darkened. Varnish protects the result. Each step depends on the one before, which is why skipping the primer or shading before the base coat is even produces results that look wrong without an obvious cause. Following the order matters more than executing any single step well.
Thin your paints, and what that actually means
The advice given to every beginner is to thin the paint, and it is given so often because it is the single biggest difference between a model that looks painted and one that looks coated. Paint straight from the pot is thick enough to fill the fine detail that the model was sculpted with, and once filled it cannot be recovered. Thinned paint needs two or three coats to reach full colour, and those coats sit in the surface rather than on it. The target consistency is closer to milk than cream, and getting there is what a wet palette makes easy.
The techniques worth learning first
Two techniques do a disproportionate amount of work. Washing, which is flooding a thinned dark paint over an area so it settles in the recesses, creates instant depth. Drybrushing, which is dragging an almost dry brush over raised surfaces, creates instant highlight. Both are fast, both are forgiving, and between them they turn flat base coats into a model that reads at tabletop distance. Edge highlighting and blending come later and are refinements rather than foundations, and it is entirely normal to paint a whole army without either.
Questions people ask about how to paint miniatures
What order do you paint a miniature in?
Prime, base coat, shade or wash, highlight, then varnish. Each step depends on the one before, and following the order matters more than perfecting any single step.
Why do people say to thin your paints?
Paint straight from the pot fills the fine detail the model was sculpted with. Thinned paint takes two or three coats and sits in the surface rather than burying it.
What is the fastest way to make a model look finished?
A wash to create depth in the recesses and a drybrush to catch the raised edges. Those two techniques do most of the visual work at tabletop distance.