First time painting...any recommendations for easier paint schemes?

I like to use black spray primer and then do some pre-lighting with white spray paint from above the miniature. When its dry it gives a really nice backdrop for your paints. Just soak the spray cans in warm water so they spray smooth. You also want to be about 2x as far away with the white and just lightly dust it on.

Be sure to thin your paints, 100 really thin coats is way better than 1 extra thick coat.

I personally don't use painting handles, I just super glue one end of a toothpick to the bottom of the mini, and then break it off when I am done. This method is pretty delicate, and may not work with very heavy minis or rough handling. The bottom of the base isn't incredibly important to paint, IMO.

In terms of simple color schemes, the easiest is of course solid colors, or if you want more than one color, to use large parts to pick other colors. For example, an all blue body with chartreuse arms. Once you start to get the handle on painting small, you can do much more elaborate schemes and weathering.

Keep in mind, your first minis will be bad, but that's okay because everyone's first minis are bad. Even professional mini painter's first minis were bad. As all things that take practice, you will not be happy with your first minis later down the line. So if you have a mini that is particularly rare, or one you really like, I would avoid the temptation to paint that one until you are satisfied with your skill in painting minis.

I have no advice on painting techniques (I used to speed paint warhammer 40k armies, making the quality not ideal for small scale skirmishes like this) but I DO recommend washing your mini's before you paint them to remove all the debris and oils that may be on them (especially if you have them 3d printed). A bucket of warm water, Dawn dish soap, and a healthy rinse + long dry time can remove any issues that could provide an uneven base coat.

Its really funny seeing almost an entire 2000pt Ultramines army floating unpainted in a bucket of soap.

This has become a painting handle thread, so I'll start with that. I use double sided tape from a hardware store to attach mechs on their bases to either wood rounds or plastic bottlecaps. I find that this makes a very good, and cheap painting handle that is quite secure.

I’ve held off because frankly I have terrible artistic and fine motor skills and I don’t want to ruin my mechs.

When you mention fine motor skills, is this a disability issue, or a simple appreciation issue? There are ways to work around either.

I was thinking about trying desert camo but I’m wondering if y’all have any suggestions on what might be an easy beginner scheme for me to get my feet wet, or any other tips on painting in general for the artistically challenged like myself

Sure, there are many, many methods to paint. If you want to go with a simple desert scheme, I would recommend either priming white, or a zenithal prime- applying black first and then white from above. Having the upper surfaces white will help with the lighter desert colors. The advantage to zenithal is that recesses that you might miss by hand will be black and won't stick out, and if you apply your khaki thinly enough you will get some subtle shading.

Either way, the next step would be painting a khaki color. With an all white prime, you would put this everywhere, with zenithal you can skimp out in the recesses.

Then you'll want to pick out a camo scheme. Real life or scifi can be a good source of inspiration. For simplicity, let's assume a simple large stripe pattern of a green or contrasting brown. Just block it out and paint it along the mech. Don't worry about the fine details yet.

Then I think washing is the next good easy step. Citadel's Agrax wash is a popular choice. I personally make my own stuff out of inks. There are other brands with their own offerings. Whatever you choose, a brown is a safe option here as it works with pretty much any colors in a desert camo so you won't need to take special steps. This still will be the first step requiring a little bit of control. It may be tempting to simply coat the entire model in wash, but that is making a lot of work for yourself on the backend and I'll explain later. Use a medium sized brush an with it loaded with wash, pull it along panel lines and inside edges where armor meets. While the wash is fresh and wet you can pull it around. Try and get away from big flat surfaces and more towards the crevices. Have patience and let it dry fully when you are happy with it. Once the wash is dry you should look the model over and do cleanup. Look for any ugly lines or spots left by the wash on flat surfaces and paint over them with your original color. This is why I don't recommend all-over washing, it will make this step very time consuming.

A drybrushing at this stage with a lighter khaki to bone color all over the mini is a next step. Start very, very lightly. If you are worried you aren't using enough paint to see results, just be patient and really be sure before adding more to a brush. No detail work here, you can drybrush all over the camo colors the same.

Finally: Details. With mechs it's really just cockpits and weapons. I'd paint everything black first. Once all the black is down, apply with metallic or light grey paint on the weapons. You can leave the black in the recesses and near any lines in the sculpt. Draw your color around the cockpit lines if there are in, and again allow a little black to show on the sides. After painting with metallics, always change out your paint water and give brushes a very good cleaning. You don't want metallics flakes contaminating into normal paints.

The rest of the fine details should be simple. Cockpits, sensors, things like that. Simple monocolor is fine.

Basing is easy and really makes presentation pop. For desert, either get a basing mix (Vallejo makes really good ones) or use elmer's glue to glue sand onto a base. Once your basing is dry. 2-3 colors of khaki (I use cheap walmart craft paint for this kind of thing), applied darkest to lightest with drybrushing gives you a good simple desert base.

Agree with the above advice mostly. I've only been painting a few months myself, so maybe some newbie advise for another newbie...

I like handles, and I don't think you should be using the toothpick method until you feel really familiar with handling your mechs, including the act of cutting them off the base and then re-attaching them later. Handles let you securely hold your model and move it without really much thought.

Also, basing is a great addition, but not super important at first. Eventually it will bug you. I like the superglue-baking soda method. Easy, high-quality texture for your soil.

As for scheme, I like the base-color-and-then-highlight-panels-in-a-pattern method. I found painting Mechs is really hard because of the creativity involved. There's no hair or pants or cloth wrinkles to take up all your time... So you gotta think outside the box a bit. I saw someone who did object-source-lighting for an Awesome on the BT Reddit that blew my mind the other day.

Additionally, YouTube is your friend. There's a video for everything.