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Posted this on B&C first, but I'm also curious what some of the amazing artists here think...

Hi all,
I've noticed between this forum and a few others that I read lately that hard edge-highlighting seems to have taken over as the dominant style. It seems odd to me how pervasive it is, especially with the newer and younger painters, who often struggle with it and end up with poor looking models because they over-extended themselves for a very difficult and specialized technique that may or may not have paid off. What I'm wondering is... what happened to the days of recommending newer painters hit their figure with a drybrush or two in order to add detail and highlights easily in the name of making a solid looking tabletop force. I'm also a big historical armor modeler, and in the past 5 years we've seen a huge shift away from drybrushing towards airbrushing highlights and oil washes and dry pigments, but that was in the name of truer realism and authentic looking models in light of newer techniques and mediums. I guess my question to you all is why hard-edge highlighting has become so popular, especially with newer painters when it is a difficult technique with much tighter tolerances than something like drybrushing... and with some veteran hobbyists who seem to have forgotten all about other techniques.
Just a curiosity...

Not really sure. I agree that poorly executed edge lining looks really silly. I tend to do it as a modification of drybrushing, typically with the edge of a #2 flat brush.

Styles come and go, but techniques last forever. Where is all of the NMM work that we saw in abundance 3 years ago. Or dipping which was huge just last year. Hard edge highlighting is just the new thing (even thought the technique itself is older than dirt).

Drybrushing is still a valid technique and I still see a lot of it, but I'm noticing more wet blending and pastel dusting showing up as well. Painting your 180th ork with the same technique over and over really makes you look at trying something different when it comes time to paint your Tau or Necrons.

Things move and evolve. I don't think airbrushing (while looking really neat) is going to be very popular due to stupidly high setup and breakdown times. But people do use it. I look at models I did 10 years ago and stuff that I'm working on now. Yes my skills have gotten better, but the methods of laying down paint really haven't changed that much.

That's a good point I hadn't thought of... aside from some of the top guys on places like CMoN, NMM has pretty much fallen back away.

I have noticed that when drybrushing is suggested to noobs as a way of getting a decent paint job with minimal effoert and skill, inevetably an experienced painter chimes in and says "no don't do that it will look grainy over a flat surface."

I agree that that is not the absoulte best look, but blending can be challenging even for experienced painters who don't have others experienced in it to learn from. I know I have just started trying blending and layering and both are quite a transition from my normal basecoat, inkwash, drybrush method.

I am also just trying hardlining too, so I am contributing to the fad, though its not really that bad. Of all the techniques to learn, hardlining is at least easy to understand, even if it is more difficult to perfect.

Meph

Prometheum5 wrote:That's a good point I hadn't thought of... aside from some of the top guys on places like CMoN, NMM has pretty much fallen back away.

Frankly, I think that's always been the people it's been big with. It's a very advanced technique, that requires a ton of effort for something that looks IMHO pretty cartoony.

Any pics?

I've had good success with blending and lining on relatively large areas like terminator shoulder pads and big armor plates, but working on small areas like helmets has been very difficult.

I don't have any pics because lately I've been blending more than I used, but even before I was blending I liked smoother and broader layering than hard edges... basically look at GW's Black Templars but exaggerate that technique a lot.

Mephistoles1 wrote:I have noticed that when drybrushing is suggested to noobs as a way of getting a decent paint job with minimal effoert and skill, inevetably an experienced painter chimes in and says "no don't do that it will look grainy over a flat surface."

I agree that that is not the absoulte best look, but blending can be challenging even for experienced painters who don't have others experienced in it to learn from. I know I have just started trying blending and layering and both are quite a transition from my normal basecoat, inkwash, drybrush method.

I am also just trying hardlining too, so I am contributing to the fad, though its not really that bad. Of all the techniques to learn, hardlining is at least easy to understand, even if it is more difficult to perfect.

Meph

I've been painting on and off for years... I have no ability to blend. I drybrush AND use inks AND wonderwash! I am a real painting cheater. But the models look nice.

ender502

There are lots of good techniques out there to use and I for one won't criticize anyone if they choose to use one or all of them. For me, I refuse to put that much effort into the majority of an army. I do not see the need, especially when you consider that at some time, you will have to do some touch up work on all those models at some point in time. So for the most part, I go for solid colors with clean lines. If I do some blending, drybrushing or washing, it's only going to be on a character model or something larger. Personally, I just don't like the line high lighting but that's just my preference.

I don't really like the look of it either, but that's just my preference... I was just curious about its spread when it's such a difficult technique to really pull off, and is so easy to make look bad.

Would it be influenced by what they come up with in white dwarf? Personally most of my stuff is production line base coat , dry brush highlight , magic wash and some tarting up after. I just need to get the men on the board asap. I up the game a bit on the characters ,but at the moment I have a lot of orks to paint so putting a lot of time into one model is not gonna happen.

Fashions come and go.

There was a picture of a blue and white Piranha model which had dramatic hard edge highlighting -- I can't find the thread. It was a very distinctive look which suits the hard lines of the Tau vehicle and also gives it (in my view) an anime cartoon look -- I mean that in a good sense.

Most players do not have the time to put this amount of effort into every model even if they have the skill. No doubt top level painters are always looking to make their work distinctive. A new technique or style is invented, and gets popularised through WD and online forums.

It does not invalidate old techniques, many of which are much more realistic to attempt if you have to paint a large army.

I just like the look of hard line highlights on all the hard edges of armor on my models. I'm not a pro painter, but I feel like it makes my models a lot more interesting than if the armor was all an indistinguishable blob of color, especially from a tabletop view.

I try to avoid the chance of using hardlines as best I can. I do use them but only to the smallest extent. Whats wrong with just washing over a model?

GW's 28mm SF models lend themselves better to hard highlighting than say 15mm Roman Legions.

As far as I'm concerned any kind of painting is better than none.

Hardlining has always been popular. Reasons.

1) Eavy Metal team uses it -- alot. Anything with armor has hard lining to some degree. It might be well done, combined with some blending and/or washes but the core technique is hard lining.

2) GW and other painting tutorials suggest it quite abit.

3) It looks good on the table top, even if poorly excecuted. I can attest, my hard lining is far from perfect up close but still looks pretty damn nice on the table top. I'm not trying to win votes on CMON so why get bent outta shape about how the model photographs or looks on close inspection. That seems to be the basis of your critique (fourm pics and the like) -- i am sure many of the poorly exectuted models look fine for regular gaming and local tournaments.

Also, other techniques, while looking great on close inspection are just too subtle on their own to really grab attention on the tabletop.

4) The armies that it works best with are also pretty popular (eg Marines and the like).

Different techniques have their place on specific surfaces etc.

For example, drybrushing works well on rusty and worn metals and for applying burn and smoke effects to gun barrels etc, however, it looks poor on coloured armour/cloth surface when compared to blended or layered highlights due to the texture effect it creates.

Layered highlighting (when done correctly - most people just paint each layer entirely over the last and make the final highlight too large, ruining the effect) works well on armour plates, capes and clothing but doesn't work as well with rust effects, OSL and weathering.

Blended highlighting (or "juicing" - my favourite method) takes alot of effort and thought to make work well but is relatively quick to apply due to how thin the paint is. It's main downfall is that mistakes take alot of effort to correct so neatness is paramount at all times.

Personally I use a mixture of the above techniques on most models these days (obviously there are always exceptions!), with juicing being the main technique I use. I do tend to finish most top highlights with a thinned layered highlight though, the key really is keeping these small and on highly specific areas which in itself takes alot of practice and trial and error to get right.

While some techniques become highly popular for a time (due normally to some big names in the painting world doing alot of work using them) the above three tend to be fairly common andsomewhat timeless.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers,

Dante

I agree... seeing these pics in the codexes (especially for marines) seems to make people think that's the way to do them.

I just took a painting class at the local GW store for beginners (I've been out of the hobby for 5 years so it was Really helpful) and to the guys doing marines they suggested hard line highlighting... I believe it was similar to black templars, something like codex grey over a black base. VERY stark and distinctive looking. However, being shown it by the redshirt, I thought the guy pulled it off pretty well.

I did find this interesting because when I used to do marines I didn't know anyone doing hard line highlighting. Walked around the store to look at other armies being played, and found several marine armies and a tau army using the same technique.

I though it looked pretty good, especially from a normal point of view, but when you looked down close at the model what looked awesome from standing up was really noticeable as a line of different color.

I also think it has to do with not wanting to be too subtle for standard grunts... I was doing tyranids, and had gotten advice for a series of highlights (mechrite red to red gore to blood red) and when the GW redshirt saw the colors I'd picked, he dropped the red gore as too close to the mechrite red, and just went with blood red to blazing orange for the highlight.

And when I got them home... I decided it was still too subtle . For all that work you want it to be visible, and the hard line edge highlight is certainly visible!!!

So... maybe that's why it's so popular
Just my $0.02

Ok, I keep checking this thread, and have yet to actually see any examples of what you people speak of. Pictures darn it! PICTURES!

Have a flick through this months white dwarf(347) on how to paint space marines.
All will become clear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is very interesting. For years I've been a "drybrush only" kind of painter, maybe with a little bit of inking when it fits.
And I think most of my stuff looks okay. Not great, but I'm happy with it, an more importantly, I never field unpainted armies for longer than a month.
Now I see this vitriol directed at drybrushing, and I'm like "huh?"
But for the last few years a decade really, I've been painting orks, orcs, Plague Marines and Beastmen. It occurs to me that the sculpts on all of these models are forgiving to drybrushing. I recently started PP games with Cygnar and Trolls. My trolls I must say, look freaking great. I'm really proud of them. My colours were carefully chosen, I took my time, and the end result is pretty good. But my Cygnar...well, drybrushing doesn't suit the sculpt. The rounded lines, the flat areas...they just don't look right when drybrushed. So I've been looking for different ways to do it. I've been thinking about reverse inking (painting a really bright colour on and then inking it to get a darker colour). I don't have a lot of skill so hardlining might end up worse for me.
I dunno. It's just interesting to watch the standard climb higher and higher. I certainly think the top level stuff these days is just leagues ahead of when I started. Object lighting and the rest. Just mindblowing. I don't often post here, (on modelling and painting) but I read a lot, and i love it when someone takes the time to explain a techinque. I was confused about overbrushing until the dude doing the daemon army in 8 days (Sorry, can't remember the painter but the army was beautiful) explained it.

What exactly IS hardlining?

Basically it's highlighting the very edge of a surface, like a metal plate on SM power armor. It's a hair line highlight and done consistently on a model it does look nice. It's a tedious technique because it does take forethought on lighting placement so you can consistently place the highlights on the model.

My first attempts at painting were Space Wolves. I mixed up my own colours from generic acrylic and gouache paints. It was pretty damned standard, but I put a lot of effort into detail. My finesse on the small scale let me down, but almost everyone has trouble with lighting and colour on a small scale to begin with. I didn't even try highlighting; after a while I found that drybrushing with Space Wolves Grey helped them look uniform, and eventually I found that lining was even better.

Your 'finesse' will come from practice, but stay with you until your joints start to go. Then it's like riding a bike - there's people who can do it, there are people who do it all the time.

The blood red highlighted up to orange is a great example of how you make a colour stand out on a small scale. The only reason you don't highlight up to white is... well, everyone knows what you get when you mix red with white. Say you're looking at a big red shiny car. It's big, and very, very red. Light catches on large polished areas and you know, you can just see it. It's red.

On a tiny little model it's a different thing. A shiny red car in the distance looks substantially darker, and as far as you're concerned it is. This is imposed by scale as well, because less reflected light is reaching your eyes. The gloss/polish quality is hard to achieve (on a tiny plastic figurine with acrylic paint on it), but makes colour much more vivid. Watered down inks are a quick way to achieve this. I used to paint Skaven warpstone as flat gobbo green, then a couple coats of watered dark green ink. Nowadays it's basically the same, but I tend to work up to a hardline yellow over the first ink wash.

But why? Because ink still isn't enough to give you the impression of vivid colour. That's what the technique generally gets you. as Da Boss said, from a distance it looks great. Up close it can look unnatural... but then you remember how far you stand from the table, and the number of models... you want the 'impression' of colour. You're looking at a lot of red cars in the distance, and they look a lot redder in the yellow glare of the reflected sunlight than they do, say, at night. Uh... a better example would be compared to an overcast day, where the sunlight is filtered to more of a blue/white. It's easy to do if you can get past the fact that it might not 'look right'. If you don't think it looks right and you don't think you'll change your mind, fair enough. I don't think hardlining in itself is a core technique. I use different techniques on chainmail, armour plate, bases, glowy stuff, rotting stuff... I'm going to go and try to find some examples. In a lot of ways a hardline technique can be a poor-mans-blend.

Go for coherency, and hardlining will look great. You can build almost any brown up to bleached bone, for example; as long as the highligh is uniform throughout the army it will look great, and make those browns stand out.

I have some pure drybrushed metal rat ogres that look great, because they're big (and not the plastic ones). But the blood on their claws is based on a very simple chestnut ink/blood red mix, and the natural shininess makes the blood stand out against the mostly matt ratt.

Will compare this to smaller minis when I get pictures up.

Aduro wrote:Ok, I keep checking this thread, and have yet to actually see any examples of what you people speak of. Pictures darn it! PICTURES!

I belive this is what we are talking about, if i'm not mistaken.



Note the stark contrast between the base armor blue and the light blue highlights around edges of the armor.

unless I'm thinking something else...? Anyways, I like this style over a more traditional blended or heavyly drybrushed look because it's more distinctive and stands out, even from a distance.

i grew up on the 'eavy metal paintin' style...
the hardline highlightin' technique is what i've used for 20 years...
i like it...
i like smooth blendin' too, when i see it on other people's minis...
for myself, i start with some layers, and finish with hardlines...

here are a few examples:

this guy was painted in '01


this guy was painted in '02


this guy was painted in '05


another from '05


and finally, one from early this year



not the latest trend, but a tried and true technique...
a bit over the top for some people, but i like the comic book appearance of the finished product...

cheers
jah

Rymafyr wrote:Basically it's highlighting the very edge of a surface, like a metal plate on SM power armor. It's a hair line highlight and done consistently on a model it does look nice. It's a tedious technique because it does take forethought on lighting placement so you can consistently place the highlights on the model.

Ah, thanks. I thought that was just called edging. It's what I do for my models, just because it's the quickest way (I find) to give the models a 3D look.

And nice job, jah johnson. Those are really good. Not many models can take being blown up to large size and still look good.

I'd say the main reason that edging has become so popular is because it is by FAR the most overused way to paint space marines, to a ridiculous degree. I guess it just began to bleed it's way over from there, to armies like Tau and IG, and basically anything else with a well-defined edge. I admit that at some times it can look decent, at best, but it is now so overused that it almost makes me sick every time I see another space marine with an edging job.

I have never been one to condone "Just good enough" techniques, though. Probably due to the fact that this hobby is so damn expensive that I couldn't expect anything less than as close to perfection as I can get. I'm not going to drop this much money on a game so that all I can do is play it, and I've never understood people's ability to do that. I can understand not being able to stand your own painting ability, because I was that way for a while, but honestly, all it takes to be able to paint well is practice. Especially with a predefined figure like a tabletop model. I can also understand lack of time and monotony, but even so. I could never stand half-assing something worth so much, even if it takes me hours upon hours to ensure that that won't happen (Just so you know, I don't think I've ever spent less than five hours painting a model. And that's every single troop I have, no matter how important they are to my army. They all deserve the same treatment).

Drybrushing is useful for a painting newcomer, to help them understand the fundamentals behind shading and where exactly highlights are supposed to go on any given area on a model, but once someone has that down, all drybrushing will do is hinder you from progressing with your painting ability. It doesn't teach you anything else, besides how to be lazy. The techniques behind blending and drybrushing are as different as night and day, so drybrushing is not a good place to work your way up from. You'll end up stuck with it.

I'll go ahead and blame 'eavy metal and GW in general for endorsing the edging technique so heavily. It would be nice to see on, say, a few people's armies, but it now almost brings me to the brink of nausea. There are a few painters that exemplify this sort of technique and bring it in to their own (I.E. - Develain. I believe one of his thousand sons is posted in this thread), and so it is refreshing to see, but only because they take as much time with it as most painters who use a blending technique would.

What? I understand you saying that about YojimboJones's example, because it's very hard-lined indeed, but I can't think of any Eavy Metal jobs that look anything like it. I think it's just as simple a technique as drybrushing, it just takes a bit more patience because it isn't worth not doing in shades.

There's nothing wrong with YojimboJones paint job either. It's effective. But not everyone is going for cartoony - most people just want an effective job that stands out. Are there gangs of hardliners going around, shoving drybrushers and calling them dorks? How about I complain about people who drybrush chainmail? Even beginners can do it. We can't have BEGINNERS doing it!

And you know, some people are rubbish painters, but it's you who decided it was rubbish. I've taken pride in my painting from when I sucked, and I've tried a bunch of painting styles to date.
It isn't necessary to hardline Yellow Marines, for example, but a modest highlight in places (up to white) does it wonders from a distance. The same wonders as putting chestnut ink in the gaps. You know what looks great? BOTH.
It's all about how much effort you're willing to put in. Some can only afford the time to drybrush because they're not willing to play unpainted (or they're under peer pressure not to). Some will even contract others to paint their armies. Others will put painstaking effort into an army that isn't seen until done, though. Others will put in the effort to hardline because it appeals to them, but may not bother with shading or washes at all. Most people don't care; they paint until they've finished, and if they have the models put together they'll play with them in the meantime. Some choose not to paint at all.

I'm a slow painter, but I demand a lot from my finished product so it takes me a long time to paint an army. I'll do units at a time, finishing them before beginning another, so my armies-in-progess consist of detailed units (in order of coolness to paint, usually) and completely unpainted units. Hardlining happens where appropriate. Get over it.