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Hey guys I've only been painting for a week, and have a really limited color palette of about 10 citadel colors, so please excuse any lack of highlighting etc. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for me, the deathwing are my latest painted miniature, and in my opinion they look pretty good. A couple things I'm having problems with.

1) Seems hard to find a good consistency of paint, I tend to water down too much.
2)I bought a new citadel fine detail brush to go with my starter citadel brush, but it seems to keep going into two seperate tufts of bristles, when I am just really gentle and constantly using my tongue to fix the point on it it works, but is there something I can do to get it to stop seperating like that?

Any other advice you can give me based on these pictures is greatly appreciated!

Those look great for your first miniatures! Consistency of paint will come with practice. As long as you are making the effort to put it on in thin layers. To prolong brush life I use the "Masters brush cleaner". It comes highly recommended. It works wonders for reshaping brushes. Also try to save the detail brushes for when you really need them, they tend to wear out faster.

THAT is your first week ever of painting? I hate you, so much.
My very first Space Marine back in '96 was an embarrassment I have mostly scrubbed from my memory. Back in my day, when we painted our first models, we sucked at it.

Anyway, yeah, keep practicing until you've mastered the art of thinning your paint. You'll get it eventually. It's really easy if you use paints in dropper bottles, because then you can get exact amounts. If you don't want to buy the other paint brands that come in dropper bottles (Vallejo, Reaper, etc), then you can still buy cheap empty dropper bottles and transfer the GW paints into them, which will save your paints in the long run, as I think the current GW bottles still have issues with drying out.

Your brush that keeps separating is either faulty, or you might have let some paint get inside the base of it.

The reason it's doing that is, from what I understand, residual paint on the brush. Try using turpentine to clean them every once and a while. I've heard (though I have not actually done so) that it's a pretty good option.

Secondly, as for your actual painting, it's very difficult to make it out as the picture is quite blurry. From what I can see though, I do notice your lines and details aren't crisp and clean. Consider doing the details last, before you apply washes, then touch up with your base color, and then wash.

Eep dont put turpentine on it, its a natrual hair brush!
As a rule of thumb... dont put anything on it that would be bad for your own hair.
Some brush cleaning soap (usually a little screw top pot containing some soap) will do the trick, and leave the brushes in a healthier condition (probably than when it was new)

Personally I don't rate citadel brushes very well... they just dont last and can be rather hit/miss on quality.
Any brand of Kollinsky Sable Pointed round sizes 000 through to 2 will compare to most of the citadel brushes in sizes but maintain an actual point (easily I might add) .... My favorite brands are Windsor and Newton series 7 and Rosmary & Co series 33.

Edit; lol I forgot to talk about your painting! Which btw is pretty damned good for your first week. Don't be afraid to mix colours. With a limited pallete of ten colours as you say, you should be able to mix a much wider range than 10. It doesnt have to be paint by numbers as much as GW would have you believe.
Girl painting did a video on mixing your pallete... swoops to youtube for a linky....
http://youtu.be/cze-c95I2II

That's one week of painting?! A full tactical squad and a terminator squad? That's pretty much light speed for me.

Those are phenomenal results for your first week of painting. Getting those silky smooth surfaces is definitely a challenge. Best advice I can give there is be very careful to get a thin primer coat, and go super thin for your basecoat. I thin to the point where it takes me 4 full coats to do a base blue on ultramarines.

Your brush accuracy looks really great as well. Pretty precise looking stuff there. You'll be churning out gorgeous models in no time at this rate.

As everyone says, those are great for your first week of painting!

My advice would be to focus on getting the right colours in the right places. You can come back to them at a later point to highlight or shade, but for now work on getting the base colours where you want them. You don't seem to have any problems with this

As for the brush, I'd suggest investing in some decent brushes and taking care of them. Make sure you're only loading the brush with paint at most halfway up the bristles. Getting some quality brushes like the Winsor & Newton Series 7 is really worth it though, if you're careful with them and keep them clean.

Re: brushes.

I'm a very big fan of the cheapo orange synthetic brushes. They've got more spring to them than the natural ones and they seem a little more resistant to paint buildup. Pick up a pack of them for $5 at your local hobby store. In terms of "nice" brushes, you only need 2, IMO.

- Da Vinci Forte Basic 0 (extra stiff bristles which is awesome for detail work). This is your workhorse detail brush

- Winsor and Newton series 7 000, round. This is for those absurd tiny details like lenses and eyeballs.

These will last ages and do pretty much any conceivable work you'd need.

Niexist wrote:
Hey guys I've only been painting for a week, and have a really limited color palette of about 10 citadel colors, so please excuse any lack of highlighting etc. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for me, the deathwing are my latest painted miniature, and in my opinion they look pretty good. A couple things I'm having problems with.

1) Seems hard to find a good consistency of paint, I tend to water down too much.
I suggest a ratio of one to one (water/paint) and check the consistency by drawing your brush across your palette. If the colour is solid but not thick its okay.

2)I bought a new citadel fine detail brush to go with my starter citadel brush, but it seems to keep going into two seperate tufts of bristles, when I am just really gentle and constantly using my tongue to fix the point on it it works, but is there something I can do to get it to stop seperating like that?
Buy master brush cleaner and use it to clean and shape your brush.


Any other advice you can give me based on these pictures is greatly appreciated!

Thank you so much for the kind words all, I'll definetely be buying the master brush cleaner as I plan to take care of my investment . As far as detailing, haven't done any of that until today when I went to my FLGS and bought 5 new colors!!

Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade, Reikland fleshshade, bugmans glow, cadian fleshtone, mephiston red, evil sunz scarlet, catachan green, warpstone glow, leadbelcher, brass scorpion, imperial primer, ulthuan grey, zandri dust, ushanti bone, and one more I can't remember.

Anyway I wanted some more colors to start painting the "main" characters from my dark vengeance boxed set, and I did one today that I think looks great in my opinion! Here he is!