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Hello Friends,

My good friend XxRVNGRDxX, or as I like to call him Sean, just got me into 40K. I got a sizable army of Orks from him and I need to paint them. I have an art background, but painting the models are a new thing for me. Any tips on painting, but more so on the types of brushes to use. I've seen tutorials on youtube, but they never go over the brush types they use. I'm looking to get some basic brushes for now and plan on expanding that set later on. If you could give me a basic list of some basic brushes I should definitely get now and tell me the best use for them that would be great (preferable size of brush and bristle type, I'm not too concerned with brand. [unless I should be]). Most of my painting background is in oil paints not in model paints.

Weaver

I like the white nylon wilson brushes but most people will tell you to buy the smallest brushes you can find which is a bit pointless in my opinion what you need is a good point to your bristles not a tiny amount of bristles... It's really personal preference and experimentation I'm afraid. What I would suggest is that you find a nice simple colour scheme that you can paint easily and quickly or else it will take you forever to paint an ork army.

When I started out i bought a bunch of Citadel brushes. A base coat brush for base coats, a standard brush for details and a fine detail brush for fine details. You get the idea. I like the brushes myself. Ive had the set for over 3 years now and the only one I have had to replace is the basecoat one because it just wore out. You should also get a drybrush they come in handy for . . . you guessed it! dry brushing

I go to walmart and buy the purple set because they are ccheap and work just as well xD


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and look into army painter quickshades saves soo much time

even though ive never acually used them on a army
but i have them XD

Having an art background too, I can tell you that no matter what people say, for day to day painting (90% of what you do) you can tell the difference between high quality brushes and the cheapy ones when you use them. I am not talking in the final results so much as in the feel and how you get those results. Can people produce high quality work with cheapy ones? Of course, but from my experience in art school and now with miniature paining, it is more difficult to get good results with cheapy brushes and once I broke down and spent the money, i was much happier. I too am a bit on the new side to miniature painting, but having been to art school I knew I should just break down and buy the best when I could afford them as well as some of the cheapy ones. The cheapy ones have their place, do not get me wrong. I use the cheapy brushes ALL of the time for washes (mopping), inks and dry brushing. I do not need precision there and the washes are not particularly nice to a brush. They get all up into the ferral and piss me off and make it hard to clean. The exception to this is when I do pin washing and for that get a I use a #0 brush.

For my goto day to day brushes I use a kolinsky #1, #0, #00 and every so often on rare occasions like for SM lenses or human eyes a #000. I get mine from Dick Blick. I use the Dick Blick house brand, Escoda and Da Vinci in the round shape, short handle, natural hair. I got a few of each to see which ones I liked and so far the Escoda's are my favorite. Your mileage may vary.

I only stay away from brushes like GW, army painter and Vallejo for my day to day brushes, because their retail price is usually at or around dickblick.com's regular price on much nicer kolinsky brushes. I have a few of the army painter and Vallejo brushes and they are definitely good, but not as good as the kolinskys for the day to day brushes. Though I do like the triangle handle on a few of the Vellejo and army painter brushes comfort wise, but not enough to use them over my kolinskys.

When you get into things like stippling brushes or other what I call specialty brushes, from what I have seen having the nice kolinsky is not needed. your mileage may vary.

Also, regardless of what you buy, make sure you get a good brush cleaner soap. There is one in a round 1.5" tall, 3" diameter plastic jar with some old timey looking picture on the lid that works excellent. You treat your brushes nicely and they will last. That sound "dad" enough for you? ;-)

So in summary my opinion is, like hand and power tools, buy the best you can afford to make your life and results easier. Use the good quality brushes for applying most of your day to day painting and cheapy ones for most everything else. Do you need kolinsky brushes, not at all. Are they nice to paint with and produce results faster and easier? IMO, yes.

I too have a bit of an art background. When I could, I would go to the hobby store and get the small small brushes (#10-0, #5-0, etc), but they are a little costly. The ones I got right now is the big pack of 20 different sizes from Wal-Mart for around 5$.
Either set of brushes work well. For larger stuff, like the models, I use spray paint that I got from work.

Dan

My overall best utility brush has been the #2 flat from Michaels.

I started 3 weeks ago, I went for the complete n00b route and went for the GW products.

I got myself a standard brush, plus detail + fine detail brushes, they're fine, to be fair, as long as you've got a decent point on at least one of them. I got myself an airbrush for painting the 40k scenery, it would've taken too long by hand.

I think you only really need a dry brush, small or medium + the original 3 brushes I mentioned. That said, I'm painting to look good, rather than practicality because I don't play the game, just paint.

the GW website does really good tutorials on painting Space Marines etc Good luck

Thanks for all of the info so far. Anything else is still appreciated. I'm gonna pick up some brushes after work and some paints as well. I'm also going to be experimenting with undercoats. I'm going to do some in white, black and brown undercoats. Give me you opinions and techniques.

Thanks
Weaver

I don't have an art background but even I can tell there's differences between different brush brands. I usually can't justify the extra cost, as I'm quite low on funds, but whenever I want to treat myself I get a couple of the good ones. They do make a difference when painting.

As for undercoats, I spray white, because then I don't need 20 layers of the "weaker" colors just to cover the black/dark undercoat. To be honest, when I'm finished with a model, I find that the colors on the ones I sprayed in white pop a whole lot more than the dull-ish ones I sprayed in black. That may of course be down to inexperience and lack of technique, but honestly, I couldn't care less. I'm looking for an above average (for me) table top quality, and that's more or less what I achieve.

I prime in white, slap a couple of layers of acrylic paint on (citadel mostly, but also some vallejo model colors), then a generous helping of wash (citadel). This technique takes me between 4-6 hours for standard infantry. Yes! I know I'm a reeeeally slooooow painter. My excuse is that the faster I paint, the more expensive the hobby gets. Which is at least partly true.

Generly, try using many waterdown layers and drybrush and wash.