Barbarian - Improving my layering skills

This is the miniature I've been working for this class, my ultimate goal is to learn/improve my layering technique as I want to start painting more professionally in the future. I want to take this hobby to a next level and in order to do that, I really need to improve my brush skills. This is a barbarian that I wanted to paint for a while now, it is perfect to practice NMM, hair, skin and leather painting, it is a bit bigger than a regular miniature, so there's a lot of space for improving my brush skills on it. This is the final result, but I'll be sharing the step by step shortly as well.

I've used Vallejo paints and only used contrast on the base itself, all the rest is using regular paint and working on layering and glazing techniques. I've got a few synthetic brushes, but allowed myself to get a Kolinsky brush for more control and precision (and also to treat myself, of course).

For the skin I experimented a lot with the glazing technique, something that I still need to improve is the transition and how to make them even more smooth, I believe you'll also see that on the next steps. Another struggling point that requires improving, was finding the perfect color combination, mixing the colors to find the perfect tone was a bit hard, specially for the first tone.

Here's where I had more fun with this project! Painting the hair was more intuitive and I enjoyed working on the different ways the light hits the hair and how to highlight it. The NMM was my favorite part as I was able to see the progress and results after each layer, it was also great to learn how light reflects into metals and how it behaves in an armor with fine details.

For the final step, I've combined all the unfinished parts, I painted the cape exploring a new technique with the brush and also did the final touches on her clothes and Axe. I've also quickly painted small details like her rune, rocks and handles, the base was also quicker than I thought, although I believe I was already a bit excited to finish it as soon as possible... That's one of my biggest learning with this project, I should be more patient with my painting, the parts where I took longer were the ones I'm most proud of, and that shows how important it is to take your time and make sure it is as you expected it to be, there's no problem in making mistakes and painting over it again and again...