Paint your figures all flat black first, this way if you miss a spot or two it will look like shadowing.  Then start with the lighter colors and end with the darker colors for the clothing and skin.  Always use flat colored paints.

Scratch building is defined in Wikipedia as “The process of building a scale model "from scratch", ie. from raw materials, rather than building it from [ ... ]

Micro-Trains Military Barracks Build by Modelersguild.com

Building this Z-Scale kit was a real pleasure. The parts fit nicely, the materials were right, [ ... ]

Hopper Weathering Clinic II
By Bill Mock
December 2009

So here's how those BN Hoppers turned out after the surface rust dried. Not bad. I'll [ ... ]