How I have painted my halflings

I just wanted to share my way of painting with you.
Who knows, maybe you can give me some tips on how to improve or pick up some new ideas.
This means that this post will be a bit heavy on the picture side of things.

Let's get started.

I start of by cleaning the miniature and then base it. I just use sand.
I then undercoat it in black.

After undercoating

First step, I cover hair and skin in a light brown shade.

I then mixed the brown with the flesh colour and cover the skin areas. This color will then act as the shading for the skin. At this point I also do the eyes on the miniature. (Picture taken before doing the eyes)

For the next step, I paint the skin areas again, but this time with just the skin tone, leaving the shade colour in the recesses of the skin.

At this stage, I highlight the skin, mixing white to the skin colour. I do this in two steps, adding more white to the second highlight.

Highlighted skin

Once the skin is done, I highlight the hair by adding white to the starting brown color.

Once the skin and hair is done, I repaint black on areas which shouldn't be skin coloured, like the armour. I sometimes leave a black line between areas, to enhance the effect.

Next step is the armour, which in this case is green. I start out with a dark green, which will act as the shade color.

Once this is done, I repaint the areas with a lighter green, but leave some of the darker green in the recesses.

 I then highlight the green using yellow and just a tad of white.

Front and back of the highlighted armour

The next step will be the yellow and white. I start of by painting these areas in gray. The gray will act as the shading for the white, but also help when painting the yellow on the miniature.

Preparation for white and yellow

Next up I highlight the gray, adding more and more white to the mix. I never go as far as pure white, more of a light gray. This however looks white enough to me.

Next step, mixing yellow and orange for the shading of the yellow.

The yellow is shades and the gloves are "white"

This is the once again painted in yellow, leaving the orange/yellow in the recesses. I then add white to the yellow color for the highlight.

Highlighted yellow areas

 Before going on to the next step, I tidied the black undercoat on the not yet painted areas, like the metal.

As the next step, I did the leather straps. As for the shading, I mixed brown and black (not the same brown as for the hair).

 The leather was then simply highlighted with the original brown colour.

Finished leather

 For the final steps, I first tidied the areas with black. Then I applied the dark metal colour.

Metal shade

I then highlighted the metal using a lighter colour.

Highlighted metal

At this stage I'm usually finished with the metal, but I didn't like the way it looked, so I applied a bit of black ink, to bring some contrast out (around the base of the spikes on the helmet, shoulder pad and foot).

We're almost done. Just the base left

I paint the sand brown, using the same colour as for the leather details. Then I dry brush the sand, highlighting it with a bit of white added to the brown.

Base base colour

 What's left to do I retouch the base edge in black and add a star (in this case) or a number. At this stage I'd also recommend varnishing your miniature before adding static grass to the base. I do so, completely covering the sand. Once that's dry, I sometimes lightly paint a white line across the grass to represent the lines on the football field.

The finished miniature