Dry Brushing?

[brunner128]

Just wanted to say, hello to everyone on the forum. I have learned quite a bit in the little time that I have been on here. Thank you everyone for the great posts. Well since I'm totally new to painting minis my question is how do you dry brush and when is the best time or effect. My question is kind of broad, I'm guessing but I want to know how to apply dry brushing in all aspects of the model from the weapons to the model itself. I looked around and found a few "how to's" on YouTube but for whatever reason I cannot seem to get the "dry brushing" aspect to work. Either there is not enough paint on the brush even after several passes on the figure or too much and it covers the deep dark areas which defeats the purpose. Also please forgive me if someone has covered this question/topic. I tried searching for key words but I get error messages all the time so I don't know what I'm doing wrong and also forgive me for being so broad. I know what I'm looking for but I am not sure on the terminology. Thank you again for any help or direction.

[Olis]

Hail and welcome, brother. Dry brushing, you say?

 

How to drybrush (for beginners):

- First get some absorbant material. Kitchen towels are a pretty common item to use. You will need these to get the excess paint off of your brush.

- Next apply your chosen colour to your brush. Not too much, mind, otherwise you'll be wasting paint (and money).

- Now stroke your brush onto the kitchen towel, alternating onto cleaner areas if the area on the towel you're using gets saturated with paint (this shouldn't happen to much if you're limiting the amount of paint on the brush).

- Once the brush is barely leaving any paint at all on the kitchen towel (and I mean barely), then you can drybrush the model. Keep the strokes reasonably broad and try to only hit the upper detail relatively lightly.

 

A good tip for drybrushing is not to water (thin) your paints very much, otherwise the kitchen towels will actively pull the paint off of your brush.

 

I'd recommend using this technique for areas of high detail, such as hair, tank tracks, chainmail and vents. I'd also recommend attempting to brush across the 'grain' of the detail, of which the best example would hair as you'd nearly always see it flowing in one particular direction.

 

Hope this helps. :D

[Brother Nihm]

Either there is not enough paint on the brush

This is a common beginners mistake. If there is not enough paint left in the brush, you just do it again, and again, because there will always be some particles left in the bristles.

 

It is better to build it up in small steps than go all out and get too much paint on in one go.

[brunner128]

Thank you for the quick responses and for the tips. I will definitely give it a go. I’m sure I will have a ton more questions (which I do) but I will do more research before I post. Again thank you guys for the help.

[striker8]

I think the basics have been covered but I want to reinforce that it will take practice to learn but once you have the technique down it's one block you can build on in the future.

 

And feel free to ask questions, you can;t learn in a vacum.

[brunner128]

Ok, I will ask one more question. I started putting together my new attack bike. I always prime all of my mini’s but for some reason when I attempt to prime the bike, (I don’t how else to describe it) it runs off (almost looks like rain on a windshield after rainx). Whenever I work on my figures, I apply either white or black and go from there depending on my desired effect and it works fine. Yet when I attempt to paint black (or white) it does not stick, it just….Does not stick. I don’t have a lot of money to purchase spray primer so I do it the way I have done. Thanks again for the help and being patient with me.

Side question why does the search feature always give me an error message, no matter what I type?

[Olis]

I can answer the paint thing (I think), but not the search thing I'm afraid.

 

I think what might you be experiencing is where there is excess mould lubricant still adhering to the model (this can prevent paint from properly sticking) - if this is the case, and that's a tentative IF, then the solution might be as simple as just washing the model to get rid of the excess.

 

Hope this helps.

[cathar the great]

Search might be acting up because you are trying to search more than once per 30 seconds or something. But posting the full error message in the technical help forum section will get you better answers.

 

As for the priming problem: It's probably like others have said: washing the left over lubricant off them should help.

 

And do consider getting a can of spray primer, preferably from ArmyPainter and not from GW. I would recommend getting a spray specifically for miniatures as I have made some bad experiences with a black spray that was actually for cars (A whole land-raider went bye-bye under a five millimeter coat of black)

 

Once you start painting more than 500 points of infantry and/or vehicles it will save you a lot of money. Be careful with the spray primer, follow the instructions on the can and test it on some cheaper minis or pieces of plastic to get the right angle and amount of color you need.

 

You can find a nice (if a bit advanced) tutorial for priming here: Massive Voodoo Priming tutorial

 

Massive Voodoo has some great tutorials for beginners and pros, and the blog itself is also kind of awesome.

 

At you leasure, small tutorials for:

 

Basic Painting Techniques

Preparing a plastic model

Holding minis while painting

 

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Peter

[striker8]

Ok, I will ask one more question. I started putting together my new attack bike. I always prime all of my mini’s but for some reason when I attempt to prime the bike, (I don’t how else to describe it) it runs off (almost looks like rain on a windshield after rainx). Whenever I work on my figures, I apply either white or black and go from there depending on my desired effect and it works fine. Yet when I attempt to paint black (or white) it does not stick, it just….Does not stick. I don’t have a lot of money to purchase spray primer so I do it the way I have done. Thanks again for the help and being patient with me.

Side question why does the search feature always give me an error message, no matter what I type?

 

Few questions back to help narrow down the problem. What are you using to prime? Spray? Brush on primer? Or chaos Black paint and are you thinning it or not?

 

If you're spray priming the can needs shaken a whole lot more and the distance to the model needs to be increased. A brush on primer, either acrylic or enamle, doing this says the surface has to be greasy and a quick washing with dish detergent should clean it up, a light scrub with an old toothbrush never hurts at this point. IF you're using Chaos black to prime striaght from the pot the cause is usually grease from my experience. If your trying to brush prime with thinned GW paint the cause is plastic not having much "tooth." which means it's too slick and the paint has nothing to grab on to.

 

If brush priming is your thing, wash the mini's well. For acrylics you'll need to experiment to see how much thinning you can achieve before the paint refusesd to adhere, or try and enamel based paint like the Testors type( you will need to use an actual solvet thinner with these), some people claim gesso works as well but I have no experience with it. You have quite a few options here and different brands of paint will stick petter or worse.

 

My person favorite is spray priming if only for the speed and consistancy it gives. Everyone on line has their favorite pet spray and I've tried most ot them over the years and keep coming back to one which is the cheapest by far im my 20+ years painting. I use 97 cent cans of Wallmart Color Place flat black or flat white, for the cost they are outstanding and even on a budget if you get a bad can you're not out much. If you don't have a local Wally World then I'd recomend Krylon in the $3 range spray. You don't need to buy $15 cans of GW spray, nor is a true "primer" necessary, you just want something that sticks to the mini well and creates tooth for the acrylic paint to stick to so budget wise anything less than $5 a can should suffice.