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.

Uncle Sugar gave me a bit a change, so as soon as I could, I got in touch with my favorite dealer.  Picked up another B unit for the CB&Q (this [ ... ]

I've read lots of advice, howto, intro, and helpful things on the internet about modeling railroads.

But nowhere is there any information for the beginner, [ ... ]

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 [ ... ]