I really like the base work on these. Overall they are a little too uniform for my taste but thats just me. I'm new to painting also and I found one thing that I really needed to work on was photography. I would get some different light bulbs as the ones you were using here cast a very yellow light on everything, try to get the daylight sort of bulbs and the pics will look a little more natural. Also, I cant tell if your depth of field was really narrow or its a focus issue, but sometimes that close up the DoF can be really slim... parts of the mini will be in focus while others are out. looking forward to seeing more work...