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I am painting a good sized ultramarine army and everything is going well until it came time to highlight the armor. I don't need help with color choice, what I need help with is the technique of painting the highlights. I'm using a very small pointed nylon brush, but the results are coming out less than desired. Is there a certain brush material such as horse hair or something stiffer so the highlights stay on the edge of the armor and not drift onto the unwanted parts. Also is there a certain technique to how you brush the highlights on, basically I have been holding the brush at a 90 degree angle to the edge of the armor and running the brush down the edge. Hopefully someone on here can shed some light on this for me. Thanks.


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C'mon guys, over 50 people have viewed this thread and no-one has any advise on highlighting techniques. Doesn't anyone highlight thier power armor?

Its hard to give advice without seeing some pictures of the results you are getting.

For the most part it just comes down to practice and brush control.

I would suggest you take a look at some of the painting tutorials From Les Bursley, Jawaballs, or some of the many others on Youtube. They should show you how other people do it and maybe that will help you see what you are doing wrong.

Cue helpful links:

http://www.youtube.com/user/awesomepaintjob

http://www.youtube.com/user/jawaballs

http://www.youtube.com/group/WarGamerCommunity

Hope all that was useful.

I agree Stubby, I'm in the same situation as you Sub, always reading stuff that says to highlight, but never going into how to actually do it, but then I saw one of Les Bursley's videos (The Space Wolf one) and that helped me understand/be able to do it a lot more easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga-6ogjOSoo&feature=channel

Just watched this. Go to 8:04; I think it might help. Different army, but the technique should apply.

I'd generally recommend using the biggest brush you comfortably can for any given task. With a good quality brush you'll have a fine enough point even on a size 1 or 2 to do most work.
The trouble with using an incredibly small brush (0000 or smaller) is that the paint dries on it very quickly and your likely to clog your ferrule, slowly ruining the brush. What size brush are you using? It should say along the handle.

You should be painting on the highlights as you would apply paint in any other way. Only the top half or so of the brush should be "active", you should try to keep the lower part of the brush tip free of paint.
There isn't really a "trick" to it, you just need to develop patience and a steady hand. Speed comes with practice.

Thinning your paints is very important.
a: It gives you more working time with the paint
b: It helps smooth transitions between the base and highlight colour
c: It's much more forgiving with errors. Slopping on paint straight from the bottle will build up quickly and start to obscure details and show brush strokes.

Marines are quite forgiving in that where you should apply highlights is pretty clear on the armour.

Any more info that you can give will let people help you further. Is your base Ultramarine Blue? What are you highlighting with? What specifically are you not happy with? Is it just messy?

I use a pretty standard technique for all the Marines I've done.

1) Basecoat.
2) Wash a dark color into the recesses and low areas
3) Drybrush with basecoat color, lightly, to clean up the wash.
4) A very slightly lighter color of the basecoat is applied over a lot of the model's surface, wherever light would hit, around panel edges, etc. Not an edge highlight, but a feathered effect.
5) Edge highlight with a much lighter color.

Works for me.

I fin that wetting the brush before doing any fine detail work both preserves the brush and wettens the paint making it flow more like a thick ink instead of a paint. Note this dosn't work with pre-watered down paints and you have to be careful with the wettness of the brush as too wet with turn the paint into a wash.

Also, with highlights, I tend to find painting with the "side" of a brush far more effective than with the tip.