Pretty new to painting minis, just finished a tray worth of undead (second tray is almost done). Any helpful feedback would be appreciated!

If you are new to painting minis then the best advice I can give you is to decide what type of paint job you are going for. If you are planning on entering a painting competition then watch videos on the Interwebs about techniques and practice your butt off. If you just want a decent paint job to play on the table with then don't spend a lot of time painting things that won't matter.

Personally, if I'm going for a tabletop job, I hold my test model at arms length at take a look at it. If it looks good at arms length it will look good on the table. In most situations no one but you will ever notice or appreciate any details you paint that show up at closer than your arms length away.

All that being said, I think you have a fantastic tabletop paint job there. If you want to step it up a notch do some light drybrushing or highlights on the cloth and armor, but it isn't necessary.

Looks great! You'll have your undead army up and running in no time! Fantastic for your first paints!

@NeonWolf Thank you for the kind words and advice. I am certainly going for a "tabletop" quality. Though I would like to push the higher limit of that standard. I am in fact planning on doing highlights but I am holding off for a little bit because I am not sure how to do it. For instance on the cloth parts, since it has been washed and darkened, can I highlight with the original shade of blue or should I go with an even lighter shade? My biggest question and dissatisfaction about my models is how the skulls have come out. I noticed that some other people who have posted have very clean skulls with nice clean shading. How can I achieve this? Is there a good tutorial I can watch?

@bumyong Thanks! To be fair they aren't my first paints ever. I painted like 5 or 6 Warmachine models like 3 years ago!

@klonoa You can go with whatever highlight color you think is best. I tend to drybrush more than highlight but I generally go back over whatever I've used a wash on with the original colored before doing a lighter drybrush. As for tutorials, I would actually recommend the GW ones you can fins on the WarhammerTV YouTube channel. They use lots of layering and edge highlighting but it can give you a good idea of the basics and a lot of them are just a couple of minutes long.

3 hours ago, klonoa said:

My biggest question and dissatisfaction about my models is how the skulls have come out. I noticed that some other people who have posted have very clean skulls with nice clean shading. How can I achieve this?

The only thing I've ever painted is half of my Imperial Assault core set. But from the videos I've watched (like Sorastro's videos) it seems like that clean skull look comes from going over the washed surface with the base color again, and blending into the darker areas where the wash has settled. I've never tried it myself, and it sounds a bit tricky, but I'm looking forward to trying it out.

It is indeed mostly going over it with the skull color after washing.

Washes stain bright colors, and the skull is an offwhite color most of the time so it will be stained by the wash. You want to go back over it lightly to make the edges pop and remove dark spots on the wide open cranium; leaving the crevices such as eye sockets, jaw, etc nice and dark.
The wash on bones is almost not even needed. Skull is about the only part i'd highly recommend it since it has a lot of deep crevices that would be a pain to darken otherwise. This is why highlights and lighting effects are done after the wash step, because it ruins such work.

Followed some of the advice here. Tried my hand at highlighting and also attempted to fix the skulls a bit. Was going to post an update shot but it says I am at my attachment quota. Not sure how to post multiple pictures to the forums I guess. *shrug*

7 minutes ago, klonoa said:

Followed some of the advice here. Tried my hand at highlighting and also attempted to fix the skulls a bit. Was going to post an update shot but it says I am at my attachment quota. Not sure how to post multiple pictures to the forums I guess. *shrug*

Try using something like photobucket and post the link in here.

Ok there is it with some minor highlighting. I think the skulls might come out better once I use the technique from the beginning rather than this batch where I had to go back and change what I did.

Update?

If Photobucket hit you too, I'd recommend Imugr. I switched and it's been pretty good.