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Greetings fellow painters,
I have come to seek your counsel,

I have been more or less regulary painting minis for a couple years, and improved on a number of things, but;
One thing that really bothers me when trying to paint details, or if I want to achieve a really thin line (especially for edge highlighting), is that tiny dot of paint that forms at the extreme point of the brush, and keeps the paint from flowing correctly.

I have very good brushes, Winsor and Newton 7s, Raphael 8404, Da Vinci Maestro, in good condition, which form a great point.
I thin my paints (Vallejo Mostly, some Army Painter as well)
But no matter how often I wet the brush, it happens again after a few seconds, really.
I have tried loading the brush more, doesn't help.

So I can't blame the brushes, I feel it happens with all paints, although maybe not as fast.
But when I see videos on youtube, etc., people don't seem to have that problem.

Especially the WarhammerTV vids, he has as tiny amount on paint on the brush, and it just seems to flow wonderfully just as he touches the miniature.

Any advice? Anything I'm overlooking?
Thanks in advance!

Buy a retarder medium, or just a thinner, it will slow drying.

Thank you for your reply.

You say thinner, I usually only use water (tap actually). Would using actual medium help some amount, or does it specifically has to be retarder?

I suppose I can give it a shot, but it doesn't get mentioned too often, I feel like most people don't use them?

Funny I was going to ask the same thing, having just spent the a night painting tiny cracks. Half the time there is no paint coming off the brush of I wait a split second too long.

I think what you are seeing in videos is just the strokes being done those few milliseconds after loading the brush.

I found I had to hold the model carefully, think through carefully where the hand needs to go and as qickly as possible move the brush from the wet pallet to the model. With practice you can speed up without loss of quality.

Otherwise there are retarders that may help. Those are agents that when added to paints will delay the drying times. I haven't tried them, bit they are quite commonwoth airbrushes (where you don't want paint to dry up inside causing clogging.

You could try wetting your paint in such an agent instead of water.

Aldo use longer tips. A brush tip that is longer, will hold more water above where you load the paint. This Will hjelp keep og moist slightly longer. This helps, I noticed myself.

Thicker tips would help too, as long as they're thin enough for your detail.

in the painting studio, humidity counts. As does ambient temp and airflow (aka air movement, like from a fan or a heater vent).

Also, us brush lickers do it for a reason, one of them is saliva acts like a slow-dry and helps prevent dry-tip.

Water is the least likely to help in situations like this. Use of lahmian medium or slow-dri or a thousand other similar products will help.

Whtv is using Lamhian medium, and it's just a thinner, it will improve the flow of paint, not slow the drying (not much at least). Try with this first, if the results will be not satisfying, then buy a retarder medium, this will definitely fix your problem.
I'm using both, in different situations. Painting hardcore details - retarder, making a nice smooth colour transition - thinner. But mainly I'm using just water (I prefer distilled above tap, it's clearer, got less microorganisms inside).

Also winter probably means dryer air.

I just use water. Just make sure you keep your brush and paint wet

I could try the lamhian, I actually happen to have a pot I bought in the warhammer world shop, in 2013 ^^
it's not even opened yet

torblind-> well this problem is not new i've had it for years,

i should definitely get distilled water, i'm actually curious as to how much the water i rinse my brush with and use to thin my paints might impact the painting itself...

Possibly a dumb question, but is the paint perhaps drying out a little "before" it even gets to the tip of your brush?

You mention you use Vallejo and AP, so you're obviously squeezing the paint onto a palette or some sort of interim surface. If it's not a wet palette, maybe that's the cause?

Otherwise, I'd also recommend Lahmian (or DIY dish-washer rinse aid & deionised water). But I think you shouldn't really need to with those paints ...

 War Drone wrote:
Possibly a dumb question, but is the paint perhaps drying out a little "before" it even gets to the tip of your brush?

You mention you use Vallejo and AP, so you're obviously squeezing the paint onto a palette or some sort of interim surface. If it's not a wet palette, maybe that's the cause?

Otherwise, I'd also recommend Lahmian (or DIY dish-washer rinse aid & deionised water). But I think you shouldn't really need to with those paints ...

Instead of using DIY medium, try W5 dishwasher rinse aid (blue bottle, you can find it in lidl). With this you can also make own wash

If you already have dropper bottles, pop the top and add some medium/thinner inside the bottle directly then shake it. I'd also drop in some metal pellets to aid in the agitation.

Follow the law of "thin your paints" and you won't run into paints drying on the brush before you apply it.

 skchsan wrote:
If you already have dropper bottles, pop the top and add some medium/thinner inside the bottle directly then shake it. I'd also drop in some metal pellets to aid in the agitation.

Follow the law of "thin your paints" and you won't run into paints drying on the brush before you apply it.

I do not recommend using normal metal balls, even if they are made from stainless steel, they will react with the paint sooner or later, believe me. Buy some proper one, e.g. AK making ones that will not corrode. You can also find glass balls, but they could be a little lighter than metal ones.
I'm sorry for so much quoting, but I had to warn you before this.

Oshii wrote:

Spoiler:

 War Drone wrote:
Possibly a dumb question, but is the paint perhaps drying out a little "before" it even gets to the tip of your brush?

You mention you use Vallejo and AP, so you're obviously squeezing the paint onto a palette or some sort of interim surface. If it's not a wet palette, maybe that's the cause?

Otherwise, I'd also recommend Lahmian (or DIY dish-washer rinse aid & deionised water). But I think you shouldn't really need to with those paints ...

Instead of using DIY medium, try W5 dishwasher rinse aid (blue bottle, you can find it in lidl). With this you can also make own wash

Oshii ... I think that's exactly what I just said (I just didn't mention Lidl or W5 as I don't know if the OP has Lidl).

The thing is, i do thin my paints.
And I also use a wet palette, although I'm not sure it behaves the way it should. All the baking/parchment paper I can find here seems to have some form of silicon coating

 War Drone wrote:

Oshii wrote:

Spoiler:

 War Drone wrote:
Possibly a dumb question, but is the paint perhaps drying out a little "before" it even gets to the tip of your brush?

You mention you use Vallejo and AP, so you're obviously squeezing the paint onto a palette or some sort of interim surface. If it's not a wet palette, maybe that's the cause?

Otherwise, I'd also recommend Lahmian (or DIY dish-washer rinse aid & deionised water). But I think you shouldn't really need to with those paints ...

Instead of using DIY medium, try W5 dishwasher rinse aid (blue bottle, you can find it in lidl). With this you can also make own wash

Oshii ... I think that's exactly what I just said (I just didn't mention Lidl or W5 as I don't know if the OP has Lidl).

Sorry, you are right. This is the effect of reading too fast and my poor English...

AmauryTheWarrior wrote:
The thing is, i do thin my paints.
And I also use a wet palette, although I'm not sure it behaves the way it should. All the baking/parchment paper I can find here seems to have some form of silicon coating

I'm sure some Golden Demon winner will suddenly appear to castigate & castrate me for saying this, but IME don't use baking paper.

 War Drone wrote:

AmauryTheWarrior wrote:
The thing is, i do thin my paints.
And I also use a wet palette, although I'm not sure it behaves the way it should. All the baking/parchment paper I can find here seems to have some form of silicon coating

I'm sure some Golden Demon winner will suddenly appear to castigate & castrate me for saying this, but IME don't use baking paper.

Well in that case I still have to get the "commercial" paper, this I haven't tried.

Hi Amaury: As others have stated: Thinning your paints helps quite a bit.

I have found a stumbling block for paint drying on the brush is because not enough paint is being put on the brush. This often happens when you use a detail brush with a small belly: e.g. a GW artificer brush.



These days I use a size 3(!) Windsor Netwon series 7 as my primary brush. It holds its tip while having a massive belly. This lets you load it with more paint so you don't have as short a work time between loading and applying paint.

Retarder works to an extent, however proportioning it is important as adding too much will cause problems. Some retarders will also alter the dried finish of the paint. Depending on your desired outcome, this may not be ideal.

About baking paper, it should be waxed on one side only. The problem is that is hard to find one, most of papers are waxed on both sides.
Try to get stickers paper, you can ask in supermarket, or in bigger companies (I got mine from iti/dulux factory). They are literally throwing it away, and you can easily get a whole reel of it.
I hope you will understand what I meant, if not I'll just show you what I'm talking about

Acrylic paint does dry very fast.
I just drip brush in water more times. Between each painting pass, rinse and dip, add a bit of water into paint and continue.

I simply clean out my brush and reform the tip every minute or so. Though, as keezus mentioned, how much paint you have in the brush as well as the size of brush you're using will affect drying times.

A wet palette and some retarder medium are likely all you need to solve your problems, that and make sure that your brush is at least damp before you put any paint on it.

Rik

Well, I can't find my pot of lahmian medium.
But I'll try to get some, not necesseraly citadel though. I'm sure this will be handy at one point or another.

But I'm wondering if this just might be my pot of vallejo scorpion green that somehow turned bad... It's still liquid, but somehow, the result on the wet palette doesn't look very smooth...

Now, tried working on my Dark Eldars from 3rd ed (yeah, 2004, still not painted, sigh) in vallejo warlock purple, I was not really frustrated by this, and actually have been able to paint some decent lines...

I have never had vallejo pots dry out, but can they go bad other ways, I wonder?

AmauryTheWarrior wrote:
Well, I can't find my pot of lahmian medium.
But I'll try to get some, not necesseraly citadel though. I'm sure this will be handy at one point or another.

But I'm wondering if this just might be my pot of vallejo scorpion green that somehow turned bad... It's still liquid, but somehow, the result on the wet palette doesn't look very smooth...

Now, tried working on my Dark Eldars from 3rd ed (yeah, 2004, still not painted, sigh) in vallejo warlock purple, I was not really frustrated by this, and actually have been able to paint some decent lines...

I have never had vallejo pots dry out, but can they go bad other ways, I wonder?

I have had some vallejo pots go bad quite soon. Probably half bad already from the store. Paint comes out more like a paste.