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what's the trick to painting really fine details? I'm specifically thinking of things like borders on cloaks, lettering and such but i guess this applies to any freehand detail. here are a couple examples of what I mean, courtesy of CMON:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/80935?browseid=2139892
http://www.coolminiornot.com/299226

I've tried using tiny brushes, but the paint (which I generally thin 1:1 with a water/flow-aid mix) often dries out on the tip before I even make it to the model. if I use a brush with a bigger belly (e.g., a raphael 8404 size 0 kolinsky brush) and a good tip, I end up applying way too much paint. if I add retarder to the paint, it thickens and I don't get good flow off the brush. I haven't tried re-thinning the paint after adding retarder on the assumption that it would prevent the retarder from working.

aside from a steady hand, what's the secret(s)?

Emperor's Tears.

really small brushes




as you can see they get really small

try a thinner mix on your paint as well

I hear some people love using window cleaner, the blue stuff

Try using acrylic ink instead of paint.

acrylic ink? is that the same thing as the inks that are used for washing & glazing?

Yes, it's the same ink used to make washes and glazes. I use The Daler Rownley FW inks to do fine line freehand markings.

A small brush, lack of caffeine and sugar in your veins, patience, steady hands and drawing skills.

Super small detail brush, thinned paints (using acrylic thinner, not water), and a steady hand. Having lots of practice is a good idea, too.

@heavybolter: thanks for the tip on the inks; what makes them better for detail work then regular paint beyond them being thinner? slower drying time? safe to use with a standard brush?

@breotan: I've not heard of acrylic thinner before. how does that change the behavior of the paint vs. thinning with a water/flow-aid mix?

No matter what color you ultimately want to achieve, start with a color that is similiar to the color you are painting on. This give you a way to control mistakes better and blend them back into the primary color. Use small brushes....I like to use a 18/0 princeton brush....never fails me. You have to take extremely good care of the tip though, so designate this brush only for features like eyes, lips, lettering, designs, etc. And finally, keep your paints thin....always keep them thin when painting details, this gives you more control. To thin down citadel paints, I just add equal parts water and keep my paint on a piece of loose tile I picked up from home depot for 36 cents. Personally I prefer that over a wer pallete. Best of luck!

--oh and 1 other thing, buy yourself some brush cleaner and an art store for acrylic paints.....keeps your brushes in top shape. Its amazing the geniuses at GW ahvent started marketed this product yet....but they should for the players who stay centric to GW products.

@Element206: cheers, good info there. short of changing my brush, I'm doing all that already, so maybe that's something I should look at (using a different brush).

thinking on it more, I wonder if it has anything to do with the colors I'm using (GW skull white and GW chaos black, mostly). skull white is pretty chalky, even when thinned, and it dries on the tip of my brush in a heartbeat. is GW's new ceramite white any better about that?

A few things I've just discovered:

The Optivisor. Though this takes you to another level of dorkyness, I'm assuming we're all comfortable with this or we wouldn't be here? Not only does it magnify 2-3 times, but my hand completely steadied up when I painted with it. It was strange, but I can now paint eyes, edges, and other tiny details. This wasn't the case for my magnifying glass, which (since it was a single lens, not two) was very hard to get the depth perception down correctly. Irritation with the failed results from the magnifying glass kept me away from the Optivisor for awhile. Bummer, that!

Have you looked into very fine (<1mm, some get quite small) tipped pens? Try an art store and see what they've got for very, very small tips. I use those for pupils, and painting "writing" on purity seals, scrolls and whatnot. You can also drag one along grooves in models to blackline between armor plates, satchels and belts, and other features you want to emphasize. I've been very pleased with the results I've gotten from the tiny pens I've picked up.


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PS I've had a little trouble with paints drying up too - I've just thinned the paint out, and using the Optivisor (no, I don't own stock in Optivisors...) I get it applied quicker, before it dries up

Micron pens. They will cost you through the nose, but they do the trick. remember to seal when finished.

i draw my freehand designs on the mini with a pencil first...
way easier to commit with the brush when you have a guide to paint over...

i use a Raphael (series 33 i think) 00 for all my detail work, and it does great...
the paint doesn't dry quite as fast on the tip as it will on a smaller brush...
i basically paint the whole mini with only two brushes, a 2 and a 00, plus a GW fine detail brush for my metals...
all three have sharp, straight tips, which makes all the difference...

if you are doing freehand with black and white try painting the first layer, after sketching on the design, in brown or grey...
that way if you make a mistake it's easier to cover up...
there will be mistakes, and the patience to tidy them up is the most essential part of good freehand painting...

cheers
jah

I have never tried to do anything to that level of awesome but you could try oil paints. They have a much longer working time.

varl wrote:thinking on it more, I wonder if it has anything to do with the colors I'm using (GW skull white and GW chaos black, mostly). skull white is pretty chalky, even when thinned, and it dries on the tip of my brush in a heartbeat. is GW's new ceramite white any better about that?

Ive never had a problem with black drying out too quickly, but yes, whatever formula is used to create white is just a day ruiner in terms of painting white with a fine brush. The new ceramite is the same way also. That color just coagulates quicker than anything else. I know when I paint details I tend to have my lamp pretty close to the model which generates heat and doesnt help the situation.....whats your lighting situation? Also, if you want to paint with but also want it to remain useful for more than 5 seconds on your brush tip, try mixing it with fortress or codex grey (dont know the new color names) --- this helps me tremendously....then again, I never paint with pure white or pure black


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pancakeonions wrote:The Optivisor. Though this takes you to another level of dorkyness, I'm assuming we're all comfortable with this or we wouldn't be here?

thank you Pancakeonions --- you sir have earned quote of the day merits!

evidently there are players out there who are in dork denial.....once I was playing with a group of guys at my LGS and I used the term 'nerds' referring to our playing group.....immediately some of them stopped kidding around and got serious, they geniuenely acted like I had offended them. ---guess I should have known that adults who play with little army men and randomly quote ficticious phrases from a rulebook are not nerds, but hardcore badasses!

varl wrote:@heavybolter: thanks for the tip on the inks; what makes them better for detail work then regular paint beyond them being thinner? slower drying time? safe to use with a standard brush?

@breotan: I've not heard of acrylic thinner before. how does that change the behavior of the paint vs. thinning with a water/flow-aid mix?

They flow better than thinned paint. But the ink does need to be sealed after or it can rub off sometimes. Another thing you can try is getting yourself some Vallejo Model Air paint which is super thin for airbrushing already. That with an ultra thin sable brush, something like a 10/0 or 18/0 even. I alternate between inks and model air for that kind of stuff.

i think by acrylic thinner he is referring to acrylic airbrush medium/thinner. It thins without increasing transparency of the paint. I think it also acts like an extender the way glaze mediums do.

cheers for all the helpful responses

@pancakeonions: I love my optivizor! one of the best tools I've bought so far... my painting took a huge leap forward after I started using it.

@poda_t: alas, if only they made a micron pen in white... I do have a black one, which I originally got for purity seals. I find that I can paint finer lines than I can draw with it, though, so it doesn't get much use now. I've heard about another line of technical pens (name escapes me at the moment) that you can use different colored inks in, but they were quite expensive and sounded like a major hassle to use.

@jan-joshua: do you find that it's hard to get the paint to cover over the pencil marks? I tried that once to do some lettering on a scroll and ended up gouging the base coat a bit and then had a hard time getting black paint to stick to it. may have been that the pencil lead I used was too hard, though (HB, I think)

@Element206: ha, yeah. people playing with plastic army men need to take themselves less seriously :p regarding my lighting setup, I'm using a couple otlites (17W overhead and 10W off to the side, I think). they put out a little heat, but nothing like most table lamps would. I usually have the model more than a foot away from them, so heat from the lamps shouldn't be a big issue. ambient room temp might, though, as this room tends to be warm (75+ F).

@heavybolter: any brand recommendations for an 18/0 brush? I'm generally fond of the raphael 8404 series, but I think they only go as small as 6/0.

hey varl..

i use a #2 pencil, and roll the tip around on some scratch paper to make a really fine point, and then just lightly sketch a design...
you do have to be careful not to gouge the paint, but i've never had a problem with paint not sticking to the graphite...
the very light sketch is probably the key...

i only bother with the pencil for big or intricate designs...
for scrolls and purity seals i just wing it...
it's just about practice really, but then i paint a few hours a day so i stay in a rhythm...
i never seem to have success with freehand if i've had a few days off, and usually tackle it after i've done a day or two of less challenging work...
a little confidence goes a long way...

cheers
jah

Looks like there are some helpful tips in here.
As for getting super fine detail, part of it comes down to the sequence you paint things as well.

I'll add (like the others) that a high quality brush and thinned paint is needed. Not necessarily a tiny brush though, just one with a perfect tip.
I don't use a magnifying glass either when I paint.

When doing freehand, it helps to know what you can do and can't in terms of cleaning up your work (making the detail finer) which depends on when you add it to your model and what you have in terms of paint under the freehand already. For example, a shaded and highlighted shoulderpad will be much harder to add freehand over since any mistakes will be very difficult to clean up with the blending under the design.

I have this post here that talks about some of these issues: http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2011/02/freehanding-when-to-do-it.html

The other part of freehand is NOT trying to paint it as you see it completed.The trick is learning how to break complex designs and shapes down into very simple lines and shapes that you build up until you have a complex design.

This post here is a good example of a skull: http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-draw-skulls-forge-world-style.html

thanks for stopping in, ron hope the studio's coming along.

I think we might be drifting a bit... what I originally meant by freehand detail was things like lettering, scroll work, decorative borders on cloaks, etc. and not so much chapter icons or larger, more complex designs. I understand the mechanics of doing larger designs, but I struggle with the really tiny stuff. that's the bit I'm trying to get help with in this thread.

you should try using a wet pallet.

also a small brush isnt key,its the tip you need to worry about.