Advise: Personal Worst Experience on Modeling & Painting

Along my painting and modeling journey, not everything are perfectly done. Its not always "WOW!! Cool conversion & painting!!"..... There are stuff that doesn't came out the way I want it to be and of coz its really embarrassing to show it. I rather hide it somewhere.. hehe...

Anyway I do learned from my mistake and here I want to share my experiences:

1) I DON'T CARE, JUST WRITE IT DOWN!!! Everybody has something in mind that you want to convert or paint you models in your own coolest way. And all the time, we don't like to write/sketch it out in a piece of paper coz keeping in our brain is the BEST.

This became a mistake that cost me a model. I tried to convert a Kharn the Betrayer to a jumping pose, so I started to cut here and there (chopped off the arms and legs...). In the end, I don't even know how to really convert it to the posing I want!! And I don't have the design blue print. So after that day, I told myself to always sketch it out regardless you want to start the project or not.

2)ALWAYS CHOOSE THE RIGHT COLOR BEFORE YOU START TO PAINT!!! Most of the time we just go ahead paint the models without even know whether it will turn out nice or not. When something gone wrong, its already too late and you spent alot of time to paint it.

Here's my story.... I never painted Deathwing Terminators and its bleached bone armor. Without even plan it properly, I undercoat it black and basecoat it with GW Foundation Paint Calthan Brown. When I'm in the painting bleached bone process, it took me 3 days (more than 8 hrs per day) to paint 2 terminators and the bleached bone are still yet to cover the base color. Until the 4th day when my wife had a looked at it, she immediately pointed it out:

"Hey, why you paint from dark to light instead of light to dark??"
"Aren't the Deathwing Terminators are all bright color?"

DUH!!! There it hit me!!

Dark color model: Undercoat black & base color must be dark.

Bright color model: Undercoat white & base color must be bright.

Well, hope it help you guys who are still a beginner. CHeerssss