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Hi, I've just started getting into painting Warhammer. I have an annoying problem which I cant seem to solve, when I am trying to do fine detail work on my skaven such as edge highlighting the paint drys on the tip of my brush really quickly making edge highlighting hard for me to do.
The only way I've been able to get around this problem Is to load my brush up with more paint and not twirl the brush to a fine tip or to water my paint down a lot, this makes a mess of trying to do thin lines though.
If anyone could help me I would be grateful.
Thanks.

First, welcome to Dakka!

The two things that come to mind are using a wet palette, or a form of paint additive. I know there are a ton of things people mix with their paints to affect the flow/dry times/consistency etc.

But I just use water and paint from the pot, so let’s wait for one of those people to drop by and give some better advice.

Hi, thanks for the welcome!
Yeah I am using a wet pallet. I also transferred my Citadel paints Into dropper bottles, I did use a little bit of flow aid to get more paint out of the pots.

Hi Tozers: Welcome to Dakka. Here's my 2 cents: Take with grain of salt!

1. You have already hit the nail on the head. The paint drying on your brush tip is because there is not enough paint on the brush. This also occurs when you are using a very small brush as the well in the brush isn't large enough to hold much moisture. I find that a wet palette helps keep the paint at the right consistency for me. (This is not for everyone! Some of the best painters use old well palettes or tiles!)

2. For painting lines, you do need a higher than normal amount of moisture in your paint, otherwise the paint won't flow enough and you will end up with an uneven line as the paint begins to clump due to drying. You will probably not get a solid line in one pass due to the thinness of the paint. Try experimenting to get the right consistency for you.

3. Edge highlighting. Try painting with the side of your brush. This way you can load more paint onto the brush and don't have to worry about the paint drying so fast. I was shown a method where you load the brush, then unload it onto a paper towel half way between normal and drybrush and then slide the side of the brush along the raised edge. This gives more control because you don't have to worry about the tip of your brush wobbling around while you try to paint that raised edge. You may find that you need more than one pass to get a solid line. You can shortcut this by not unloading the brush as much before adding the highlight, but this sometimes causes the paint to ooze a bit making the edge highlight less clean.

Hope this helps!

Happy painting!

Hmmm, I did not usually have this issue but I have a few ideas:

1) Yes, the wet pallet does help prevent the paint drying before you even get it to brush so that is good.
2) I use something quaintly called "gunk" = ~5 parts water, 2 parts "matt medium" and a couple drops of flow aid. I wet my brush a bit with that first before going into the paint. It helps prevent the paint wicking into the ferrule a bit too (prevents the brush from getting frizzy).
3) There is product out there that is called dry retarder or slo-dry: http://www.liquitex.com/slowdrifluidretarder/
4) An added note that helped me: when "refreshing" paint pots getting dry: add the "matt medium" not water, it makes a world of difference.

Pretty much items 2 and 3 should kill that issue dead, 4 will help a bit.
Good luck!

 Talizvar wrote:

3) There is product out there that is called dry retarder or slo-dry: http://www.liquitex.com/slowdrifluidretarder/

Just wanted to put in a word of warning about using retarder: Use according to the instructions! Too much retarder means your paint WILL NOT DRY. Depending on how much you put... you can fix this with a hairdryer or heat gun, but be warned. It may also change the shade/finish of your paint. I found the Liquitex stuff made my paints glossier against my wishes.

Thank you all for the great tips!

I'll try to load my brush with more paint (also making sure it's thinner than normal for lines) and see how that goes.
I'm very new to painting in general so learning paint consistency and how much to have on the brush is a learning struggle
Defiantly the thing I am struggling most with at the moment.

A picture of an "attempt" of painting Skaven
http://imgur.com/a/40M0P

@Tozers: Your skaven already looks great! The head and tail in particular look fantastic. The only niggle is where you have the bright metal highlight on the shoulder. Depending on where the light is coming from will have the brightest points. I feel the shoulder won't necessarily get that bright and the highlight might look out of place, especially after you put the arm on.

Thank you! I will go over those highlights with the base paint again (I did it on the other side as well) I see what you're saying about how the light would hit the miniature, it does look out of place.

Welcome to the community!!

I would also start early with working with more mediums and thinners other than just water. Of course, if you're set on using a wet palette, you may want to avoid this, but given that you're just starting, experiment with a dry palette and mixing it up with some mediums. GW offers the Lahmian medium, which I think is great, although being GW, is rather expensive. I find plain old water to be useful in certain applications but rather difficult with others.

I've been looking at Lahmian medium, been tempted to try it.
Mediums are quite confusing though not sure which ones I would want... Thinners, Flow improvers and the one that increases drying times.
Such as flow improver Is that the same thing as thinner mediums?
I've tried a dry pallet with just A4 paper but my paint seems to dry so quickly on the pallet I'm having to re-drop more paint quite a lot.

Just wanted to chip in and say that skaven looks damn good to me.

Tozers wrote:
I've been looking at Lahmian medium, been tempted to try it.
Mediums are quite confusing though not sure which ones I would want... Thinners, Flow improvers and the one that increases drying times.
Such as flow improver Is that the same thing as thinner mediums?
I've tried a dry pallet with just A4 paper but my paint seems to dry so quickly on the pallet I'm having to re-drop more paint quite a lot.

A lot of painters use a glazed bathroom tile as a palette. It needs to be glazed. If it has a rough texture, it will soak up your paint, making it fail at its job as a palette. Paper - even the waxed cardboard kind has a tendency to soak up moisture (and by extension - paint) as well. A piece of plastic also works well as a dry palette. If you play Magic the Gathering, some of my friends use penny sleeves as emergency palettes.

If you want to muck about with wet palettes... I bought a cheap plastic 50 card hard clear plastic box (Ultra Pro here in NA... not sure what they have on your side of the pond). I put some folded paper towel in it and some baker's parchment in it, cut to size as the wet palette surface. There are a number of tutorials on line... but I find the clear plastic box, with its lid makes for a very small... but very portable wet palette. You can also cap your palette when you need a break, greatly slowing evaporation.

A lot of great info thank you!

I'm very curious to try a dry pallet now, would a plate with some baking parchment on top work well?

Tozers wrote:
I've been looking at Lahmian medium, been tempted to try it.
Mediums are quite confusing though not sure which ones I would want... Thinners, Flow improvers and the one that increases drying times.
Such as flow improver Is that the same thing as thinner mediums?
I've tried a dry pallet with just A4 paper but my paint seems to dry so quickly on the pallet I'm having to re-drop more paint quite a lot.

As keezus mentioned, you really don't want to use anything absorbent as your palette, which is drying up your paints because the most liquidy parts get absorbed into the pores of the paper, leaving a paint "paste" on the top that dries out very quickly. Keezus mentioned a glazed bathroom tile, which is an excellent idea (gonna try that myself), but you can also go to any art supply store and pick up a stack of those glossy white plastic palettes as they seem to get the job done for me. I also have a stack of matted plastic palettes, depending on the model's surface texture, so I can get the right consistency.

As far as medium goes, that ALL depends on your personal preference and what your project is. I haven't used flow improvers with a brush, but I do use it in my airbrush if I find that whatever paint I'm using is causing some sputtering, so I can't directly comment on its effectiveness as a typical medium. I recommend purchasing just one small bottle from a handful of reputable manufacturers and tinker with them on different projects. Lahmian medium is a great all-around medium for my taste. If I need my paint to be thinner and slightly more runny, I'll use water 1:1.

By the way, that is impressive work for a first-time painter! Keep up the good work!

Okay cool, I'll try a bathroom tile for my pallet, see how using a dry pallet helps with my paint consistency.
Hopefully I'll get a better feel for it and then move back to a wet pallet afterwards.