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Hi

I've been reading and watching a bunch of tutorials lately for how to paint my Space Marines. I find drybrushing mentioned a lot in general tuts and there are a lot of "How to drybrush" ones, but I've rarely seen it used on Marines. Most Marine guides go base - wash - layer - edge highlight. When should/can I use drybrushing? Is it/can it be an alternative to edge highlighting?

It works well if you're good at drybrushing and want realistic looking marines. You can either do the drybrushing before or after the wash. I usually do after the wash because I like the dry look it gives the miniature.

As a rule, drybrushing works best on models with a lot of detail. On fur, hair, that sort of thing, it looks absolutely fantastic and - let's face it - there's not really any other way you're going to be able to get a nice highlight on areas with that much tiny detail. It also looks good on leather, giving it that mottled, slightly scuffed effect that makes it look real and a bit worn.

As for Space Marine armour... while it's possible, it's also very easy to just drybrush it normally and end up with a horrible-looking dusty splotchy model. The trick is to make sure the paint is as dry as possible and then build it up slowly in careful coats, preferably drybrushing mostly on the edges of the marine rather than across blank panels.

However, in comparison to edge highlighting, I actually find that edge looks better and is easier to do, in my opinion at least. The trick with edge highlighting is to go back and tidy up the lines with the base colour once you've painted the edges.

Really it depends if you want crisp, smart-looking marines or ones that look a bit worn. Though if you really want your marines to look worn, weathering is the next thing you should research. And it's a lot of fun.

Well, hope the rambling helped a bit.

Use it on the weapons and eagles. Other than that stick to edging .

Drybrushing also bas a place whenever you are painting metal. Typically you paint a base color, wash it, drybrush with a slightly brighter metallic, then edge highlight.

It is one of the only time you will drybrush flat surfaces.

I dont drybrush marines, but it is an effective technique to acheive some nice depth in the color your painting. You could drybrush your marines....I would recommend if you decide to do this that you start by mixing a 2:1 ratio of the base color of your marine and a small amount of the highlight color, then keep adding the desired highlight color until your getting the highlights you want. Keep to the edges/light source areas. Also, DryB is a nice way to make quick work of metallics. Best of luck!

If you're doing Space Wolves, drybrushing is a silly fast way of doing all of their wolf pelts and talismans.

I dry brush my marines. The process is basecoat UM blue, wash with Asurman blue, then dry brush UM blue leaving nice shaded areas where they belong. I finish with edge highlighting, 50/50 mix UM blue and SW grey.

I stopped drybrushing for a very long time as it wasn't giving me the results I want.

I find now though that for dirty or light highlighting it works really well. I mostly use it after a wash particularly on metal paints, as well and time I want a muddy looking miniature I will give a good brown drybrush

hope that helps

The important thing to remember about any painting technique is that there is no single correct way of getting the effect you desire. Practice is the most important thing and it is possible to get good highlighting on SM armour with both edge painting, dry-brushing and ink washing.

I started painting Marines 25 years ago (gosh that makes me feel old) and drybrushing was one of the first techniques I mastered and still my favourite for quick and easy results. Just to show it has not gone out of date, here are some Space Wolf Hellblasters I painted up a couple of weeks ago. These were very quick and simple to do in just a couple of evenings. The armour was a base coat of The Fang followed by a generous drybrush with Fenrisian Grey and final light drybrush with ceramite white just to pick out the edges of the armour.

Not Golden Daemon standard by any stretch of the imagination but quick, easy and they look good on the tabletop (and will look even better once I finish the bases).

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