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Tried to paint the Crisis Protocol Spider-Man and really messed it up when it came to the webbing. Thought I’d done well painting really thin black lines (using flow aid for the first time) but it just got really dark. No amount of retouching the red brightened it up. Then I had the bright idea to cover it all with Carroburg Crimson and Lahmian medium which made it really glossy. It’s now been stripped and I’m going to have another attempt. But any tips for how to get it looking crisp would be much appreciated. I’ve attached photos of my dismal effort and the website image I’m aspiring to. I’ll leave you to decide which is which! Seriously any advice would be appreciated

Not sure there's a secret trick that will help. Just a fine brush, thin paint, and a lot of patience. I'd suggest maybe pushing the red brighter as the black will tone it down.

Are the black lines on the model recessed or elevated? If they're recessed you could try something like a panel-lining oil paint mix, Mig Oilbrusher for instance...

Your problem is that red blends into black very easily, particularly darker red. It's why you rarely see black on red in well made advertisements or sign writing, at least not without a delineating colour between them. This will only have been exacerbated by washing with carroburg.

Your black lining doesn't look too bad to be fair, but what youre missing is a high contrast red. That red needs to be SUPER bright because of what I mentioned above. Using gee dubs colours, I'd say the darkest part of the red should be khorne red mixed in a low ratio with mephiston red. From there you want to take it through mephiston, through to at least evil sunz scarlet. I would then personally even go brighter by adding a fleshtone like cadian for a final highlight on the lightest areas

Edit. What crispy says is valid, he's basically on the same lines as me. Personally I would hand line those bits rather than using washes, as I find that too messy for something like that.

The webbing is recessed, so I’d approach it in the most tedious way possible. But it’ll look like the studio job.
Prime black and paint each of the raised areas between the webbing individually. It’ll take longer but it’s much easier than trying to squeeze a brush into those lines without making a mess.

Now that I know the detail is recessed, I'm gonna have to echo Ghool on this one. It's tedious but the results will be much closer to what you want.

Contrast paint? If you were starting from scratch….

Thanks all for the tips. I would consider contrast paint but it's not going to get the webbing black is it? It'll just be a darker red. I think that the way to go might be the undercoating in black and trying to paint in all the red squares individually but that is going to be tricky.....

I would fine line the black by hand myself.