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Hey everyone,

I just finished painting up my chimera, applied some mud effects , and am waiting for my decals to arrive in the mail so I can apply "Blazin Betty" (pin up girl decal and name of the chimera) on the side.

I attempted writing "kill it with fire" on one side and it looks okay but I want to be able to write other words or kill marks on my vehicles with a better quality.

Please help.

use a very small brush (I use the GW fine detail one) and a very steady hand try wrighting it in pencil first to get the hang of it and to give you some guide lines

Generally I use a Fin-Point Marker/Pen for such writing. I also use it on my purity seals and any name plates on my SM.

Generally Sharpie Fine Points work fine, but I went to AC Moores and got some Pigma Micron 005 and 01. They work even better and are easy to use. Just be weary, it basically comes out as your handwriting, so I hope you have neat handwriting.

DPBellathrom wrote:use a very small brush (I use the GW fine detail one) and a very steady hand try wrighting it in pencil first to get the hang of it and to give you some guide lines

Lol I need a super small brush then

MadMaverick76 wrote:Generally I use a Fin-Point Marker/Pen for such writing. I also use it on my purity seals and any name plates on my SM.

Generally Sharpie Fine Points work fine, but I went to AC Moores and got some Pigma Micron 005 and 01. They work even better and are easy to use. Just be weary, it basically comes out as your handwriting, so I hope you have neat handwriting.

That would be great if my minis were not dark colors and I needed to write in white

hhhmmmm... Tip-ex maybe?

anyone else have suggestions? I am defaulting to a tiny brush but if there is another technique lmk

I haven't tried it myself, but I've been planning on using a pin or sowing needle with a bit of paint on the end for super-fine detail.

Needles and other pointy things don't make good brushes as you don't get controllable flow of paint. You get a blobby finish rather than a fine line. A good pointed brush, thin paint, little on the brush and a steady hand are what you need.

I'm with winterdyne - the key is relatively thin paint (and therefore multiple coats) and a lightly loaded brush - you want the paint to lay down smooth and flow easily off the brush, but without running or pooling. It helped me to practice writing my words of choice in the style of choice a few times on primed scrap, first, to get a feel for it. A few subtle reference marks on the actual piece can help with alignment and spacing, if you don't want to attempt white paint over a pencil sketch or the like.

Not really strong on any techniques, i'm afraid. But what i'd do is to sketch the text on a paper to begin with, to get the size and style as i want it, and hence add it to the model.

The important thing is to stick with the size you want it - perhaps strip on some tape to the model or similar to know your workspace.

Another technique (if possible) would be to indicate squares on both the sketch and the hull of the vehicle as measurement. Not sure how i'd put it into practice in this case, but the technique works perfect, if you e.g. wanna transfer a smaller picture to a larger one (seen it done with a small picture of Superman on a comic book, that got added to a wall by adding squares to both the small picture and the wall (on a larger scale)). What it does - i believe - is reduce the working space, by dividing it into smaller, and perhaps more managable sizes for you to work with.
- The problem, though, is if the squares can't be added to the model. But if you're customed to drawing, your should be able to get a good by eye to where these squares WOULD be....
- By adding these squares to the paper sketch, i believe you'd have an easier time getting it onto the model.

But basically, if you sketch it up on paper and perhaps are able to lightly sketch the same stuff up on the Chimera, i think everything becomes alot easier...

You can get Fine-Tip Pens/Markers in a variety of colors, I know Pigma makes a white color as well. Check your local AC Moores...

Guess there are several techniques for this but what I do is start on a piece of paper and draw the symbol or text. Afterwards, I mark points of reference. These should be key points of the figure, for example the beginning and the end of a line. See the second picture I attached for example on the Dark Elf banner where I marked out some of them (that I remember now).
Then use thin paint and start marking these points of reference on the model/figure. Then fill in the gaps, look carefully on the paper and compare how the lines connect the points on the paper with how it looks on the model. Finally, tidy up the misstakes with the base color so that the lines appear clean. And as all others have said, use thin paint and a good brush!
And one more advice! If you want to have the same text or symbol on several places of your model/figure it really helps to do them all at the same time.