One of the first difficult decision in entering a miniature painting contest is figuring out where the heck you want to enter in – Beginner? Intermediate? Masters? Where should you stake your claim?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of time in miniature painting communities or follow artists who win awards as easily as breathing. I tend to be fairly self-critical of my own work, so what I look at as “this is definitely beginner,” someone else will use as their goal for an intermediate level, and non-painters think is the best thing they’ve ever seen. (Fun fact, I was showing family the list of Golden Demon winners, and they swear up and down that I’m at that level. Family, I love you, but absolutely not, that comparison is like trying to have a toddler compete against Olympians. I appreciate the vote of confidence though!)

Add in that a lot of contests are have you categorizing your own work and have a wide variety of skill levels within each category, and trying to determine where you’re actually at is tough.

First Things First

• The best thing to do when you’re planning to enter a painting contest is to read the rules for the contest. These will have the categories for the contest and note the number of entries you can have, and the criteria to enter the competition. This will also note the contest style – Open vs Podium – and what other awards might be available, such as a Community award.
• In some cases, judges may also move your piece up a level if deemed necessary, which might lessen the stress of picking your category.
  • Example: The NovaOpen 2025 Capital Palette Primer states that “Entries may be upgraded to the next Division or moved to another Category at the discretion of NOVA
    Open staff and/or Capital Palette judges if they have a justifiable reason for the move. Entries will not be moved to deprive the Artist [of] an award.”
• Figure out what you’d want to paint – if you absolutely hate painting tanks, entering a Vehicle category may not be your starting point.

Types of Contests

Open Style

An Open contest means that you’re essentially just competing against yourself. There can be multiple Gold, Silver, or Bronze awards (or none according to some competition primers, though I haven’t seen this happen myself). The judges are looking at the individual pieces and determining its placement based on skill level or how they would award it on its own merits. If there are three models that could easily earn a gold, all three could very well earn a gold medal.

Podium Style

A Podium style competition, such as Golden Demon, for example, only has one Gold, Silver, and Bronze for each category. The smallest errors can be the difference between placing or not placing, and the competition can be fierce. Three models that are up for bronze, as an example, can’t all earn a medal, and so this is where errors could cost someone a medal or well-executed work can earn a medal.

Common Competition Categories

Beginner

Beginner level, which I’ve also seen listed as Apprentice or lumped together with intermediate for Standard, is for newcomers to the hobby, or people who have not been painting for very long. If you’re new to miniature painting and just starting out your journey into the hobby, this is for you. (As a general note, if you’ve painted for a few decades, or you’re routinely painting box art for a company, the Beginner category likely isn’t for you even on your first competition.)

Judges tend to be nicer to the competitor in the beginner category, and have more forgiveness than at the higher levels. I.e., if you make a minor mistake such as light placement, they will likely judge it less harshly than someone competing at Masters making the same mistakes.

What they look at:

• Composition – the composition of the piece overall. How does it look?
• Color – what color choices did you use?
  • Consider how green/red are typically used for Christmas colors, or blue for cold and red/orange for hot.
• Light/Contrast – is everything flat, or did you try to have shading and highlighting to show where light is coming from?
• Texture – did you try to differentiate between different fabrics? Does your leather look identical or your metal or can the judges tell that your Space Marine armor is different from the loincloth?
• Execution of Vision/Style – if you’re painting a night scene, for example, does it look like night or does it look like a bright summer’s day?

The below is an example of a bust (Tsubaki, from Axis Mundi) that won me Bronze in Beginner at Nova Open 2025;

The feedback I got was that while the color choices, skin, and technique was good, small things prevented me from doing better – namely, I did not matte varnish the piece, which meant that the glossiness of the paint was causing unintentional highlights that took away from the paintwork. I also received feedback on trying to make my fabric look more like fabric via textures, and to improve contrast.

And, a single miniature I did, also in beginner, that did not place despite me thinking it was painted better than my Tsubaki bust:

Wriel, above, did not place in Beginner. The biggest detractor was the base’s cork piece, which, as the judge providing feedback (Vince Venturella) pointed out after, should not be immediately identifiable as cork. Paraphrasing, it detracts from the piece and looks sloppy. With the fabric I got similar feedback as I had on Tsubaki of making it look more like fabric – adding texture to make the fabric look rough, or shininess to look like silk, etc. I did, however, get a compliment that I still hold dear to this day, that if the rest of the model matched the level of the skin, it’d “win competitions all day and twice on Sunday”.

Intermediate

Intermediate (or Journeyman, or Novice, or lumped with beginner into a Standard category) is hands-down the category that has the widest range of skill. You’ll run the gamut of people that just won a medal at the Beginner level who are hopping up to Intermediate, all the way up to people who are just shy of being considered for Masters.

What differentiates Intermediate from Beginner?

Intermediate is where technique starts to play a larger role in the judging criteria. Whereas Beginner gets the encouragement to try new techniques and can be forgiven for small mistakes with advanced techniques like object source lighting (OSL) or non-metallic metal (NMM) since they are presumably just learning the techniques, Intermediate level artists are expected to not only include these techniques, but to also have a better grasp of said techniques.

As an example, in Beginner, painting metal with one shade of metallic paint tends to be fine. You’ve shown it to be metal – great! At intermediate, however, that’s where you’ll be expected to either use True Metallic Metal (TMM, or using multiple colors of metallic paint [light, medium, dark]) or NMM (using non-metallic paints to simulate the look of metal) in your work.

For something like contrast, a Beginner level may be able to get by with using a single base coat color, a single shade of black, and a single highlight. Intermediate will look to have more range in the mid-tones and use more color in the shades – instead of black and gray in the shadows, Intermediate is likely to see purple shading red or blue, or yellow highlights for red rather than white.

Technique is also a larger focus in Intermediate. How entrants use light to draw focus, how they blend the colors together, how they use the colors, and even how they show (or don’t show) brushstrokes can all come into play at this level.

Example of Intermediate Level Winners

The following are from the NovaOpen Instagram page, on their Journeyman Division Best in Category Winners post, found here. I picked NovaOpen a) because I attend that convention, and b) I had a hell of a time finding other contest example winners from Gencon/etc that clearly labeled the winning piece + the artist; for Gencon I found a list of winners and a Facebook album with most of the photos unlabeled, so I couldn’t with 100% certainty tie back all the winners to the model photo. Each photo has the artist listed as a citation, and I’ve posted the link to their socials if I could find it – reach out if you find one I couldn’t locate and I’ll update!

Artists (links provided if I could find them):

• Robert Matt
• Evan Pawlukowsky
• Michael Blonski

Masters

At the Masters level, you . You’ve likely won awards at events like Golden Demon, Crystal Brush, and other conventions, do commission work, paint professionally with box arts or a well-known studio, you might teach painting classes, and/or are a familiar face in the miniature painting community. At this level you typically have cultivated your personal style and might even be an artist where, if someone looks at a display case, someone can point to the model and go “That’s an [artist]’s piece!” You may even be judging local or convention painting contests!

This level has serious competition. Familiar names in this category are the likes of Vince Venturella, Richard Gray, Sergio Calvo, Darren Latham, Zumikito, and many, many more.

What differentiates Masters from Intermediate?

The smallest details. Genuinely.

At the Master’s level, the tiniest detail can take you out of the running for a placement.

One resource used for this post was the Lantern’s Reign Discord Judging Stream video, where Trent Denison (Big Deno Paints) and Andrew Bucknell viewed and judged the 2025 painting competition from the unofficial Discord for Kingdom Death, Lantern’s Reign. They judged Beginner, Intermediate, and Master categories, and the feedback for the Masters was intense.

Color Value – One piece had a very saturated gold color, with desaturated purple, and it took away focus from the figure’s face. The skin and hair were also close to the gold color, making the head/face get lost in the figure. Another piece received several compliments, but they pointed out that the shadows of a rock could have included more blue to tie to the rest of the model.

Painting Application – they judged how the paint looked. Was it smooth where it should be? Does the skin look different from cloth, from hide, from metal?

Light – how does the light placement look on the model? Is it in the correct place? For object source lighting (OSL), is the light source the brightest object and fading out as it gets further away?

Texture – They pointed out how a wooden shield could have added in wood grain.

Basing – One model was on cork, and they could tell it was cork. (I got the same feedback, as mentioned back in beginners, so it’s nice to know that even the higher levels run into this issue).

Example of Masters Level Winners

Examples shown are from the 2026 Golden Demon Winners announcement posted on Warhammer-Community.com. As a side note – competition and convention hosts, this was perfect for seeing WHO won WHAT and with WHICH MODEL. It made it super easy to see the different pieces, the skills, and I wasn’t left trying to piece together what model was which.

Artists

• Daniel Joline
• Lukas Zaba
• Katarzyna Gorska
• TD Macdonald
• Neil Hollis
• Lukas Holmstrom

Bonus Spotlight – Minnow from Miniature Machinations

As a bonus, one of my friends, Minnow, aka Miniature Machinations (go give them a follow on Instagram!), considers themselves in the Master tier (and very justifiably so, in my opinion!). They were willing to chat about their self-categorization and give an example of one of their pieces that they’d consider to be Master level work.

When asked where they’d place themselves in regards to a competition painting level, they pointed out that they’d consider themselves “still very much middle to bottom of masters”.

“I have a good grasp of the fundamentals of painting and am able to technically execute them to a high standard. There is room for improvement still but any feedback I would be given will be able to be applied without much work and would be mostly focused on execution of the techniques used on the piece.”

Minnow, Miniature Machinations

As a bonus, they provided a sample of a Kingdom Death bust that they painted, the Flower Knight, that they feel is a good example of both their painting level and what they would consider as a Master’s level piece.

Overall Tips (All Levels)

• Choose a miniature you’re excited to paint. Boredom shines through art, and since you’re likely spending a ton of time on the model, pick something fun!
• If your model has a base rim, paint it black (or the color of your choice) and clean. Do not leave it bare plastic or sloppy.
• For online competitions, take a good photo of the model/diorama on a neutral background. Potato quality pictures will only hinder your work – unlike in-person competitions, the judges can’t pick up the model.
• Remove the mold lines! Those little bastards will cause shadows you don’t want.
• Matte varnish – the only highlights we want are the one we purposely cause.
• Hide your cork if you use it and don’t want it to look like cork. Modge podge, clay, texture pastes, etc, whatever you need to make it look less like cork.

Resources

I used a variety of resources for this post. Some are directly linked above, and below are ones I either used as references or thought would prove helpful to others, even if not used for the post.

• How Competitive Judging Works – HC 250, Vince Venturella
• Small Guide for Chossing the Right Miniature for Painting Competitions, Gallant Goblin
• Thoughts on painting competitions, Light Miniatures
• Miniature Painting Guide Collection, r/minipainting
• Capital Palette Miniature Art Show Primer, NovaOpen
• Competitive Miniature Painting Tips, Miniac
• Common Feedback Issues, Bird with a Brush
• A Judge’s Tips for New and Experienced Painters, CaptainCon
• Judging Miniature Painting Competitions – How Does It Work?, Roman Lappat
• If You’ve Never Been to a Miniature Painting Competition, Watch This, Zumikito Miniatures