1d4chan's Assembling, Painting and Basing Guide
What, seriously? We have documented almost every aspect of /tg/ except this one of the most essentials of all? Anyway, let's see if we can give you some 101 tips and save you some minis and money.
Where to start
So, first you need your miniatures of course, there are many options, rampant capitalism, aside from allowing these sort of hobbies, has ensured you can always have a wide array at the market, however there is also the fact of how much money, patience and luck you have:
Money: this first one is obvious, this is not exactly a cheap hobby, but if you are already here it means you are committed, depending on what company you choose to give your cash you may go from some dozens of european coins to enough bills to hire your own real life military contractors, we suggest you start with something small like a special character, or alternatively a squad of your favourite meatshields so you can have a few guinea pigs.
Patience: So, let's say you live in a place where this hobby is not exactly popular, certain regions lack the historical tradition of having elegan/tg/entlemen buying and building their own little toy armies and grinding through tens of pages of rules and profiles, this results in you being forced to ask for a delivery, which in turn means you may have to wait, also, as previously stated, you are going to do all by yourself what usually is done in a factory assembly line or by people who are paid to spend their time as handmade artisans, what is more, miniatures often have a level of detail which would make you feel you are head surgeon, but that's ok, we take the challenge, we are all craftmen, it's our pride, so all good, unless of course you prefer to hire the aforementioned person to do this job, but then why are you here?
Luck: Yes, luck, see, you may have find this awesome miniature advertisement and you would like to have it, only to discover the stock ran out, of course you can also decide it's time to rebel against the evil corporations and go to places like Ebay to buy from the people, by the people and for the people, or attempt to cheat through the chinaman (we just will say we strongly discourage you from doing this as it's pushing your luck even more, also we don't want to have the wiki killed), the thing is, you can buy second hand miniatures to save some money only to discover they are in a worse state than what was shown in the pic, after all, photo manipulation or just taking the shot in the right angle may hide away things, or perhaps you wanted to remove the paint and do it all by yourself only to discover the previous owner used oils instead of acrylics in your new plastic miniatures, so it's always a bit of gamble. Even if you buy your stuff first hand at an official shop you could end with a damaged model, things happen, while you may recover your money or get a replacement you already lost time, which of course is valuable too, so, yeah, try to play it safe as much as possible.
There is also the consideration of the weather where you live, dry, cold, wet, all these aspects will influence what you are doing, but a good simple rule is to do your hobby in a place with a comfy temperature and level of humidity for human beings and the occasional scifi and fantasy humanoid.