- I had some initial failures, both in using the wrong paints (e.g. gouache) and bad techniques (not thinning the paints) that put me off.
- There were no tutorial videos back then, and photos with descriptions just aren't as good. My local GW didn't advertise painting lessons, that I ever noticed.
- Example painted models were intimidatingly good, which put me off since I believed I couldn't reach that level.
- Painting a model badly means a wasted model, when you're a young kid with no easy access to paint stripper.
- And later, when I could get painting lessons in a GW shop, they couldn't do spray tutorials. (Not inside for health and safety, and not out the back as that's a customer no-go area for insurance reasons.)
I've started with a test Plaguebearer model, since they've got a relatively small number of surfaces. This is one of the 2nd release (1994) metal models, and it's a testing model because it's miscast (note how the sword is abnormally short).


Lighting doesn't show the full detail, of course. Still it looks alright to me, fine for a tabletop standard, but with some flaws that I'd like to address on other models. The boils aren't right, in particular, but it'll do as a first attempt. And I think I'll do the eyes differently.
Time to get more models ready for painting...