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Hey guys!

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on writing text on space marines?

There are several places on the models where there is supposed to be text written on them, I don't mean the purity seals, those are easy enough. But the places where you need actual text. I find it super hard to get the text to look good, so have tended to just leave the areas blank, but it looks kinda dumb and unfinished.

Kind regards,
Björn

Some examples:

"Get good" is the harshest and probably best advice - the rest of your work looks exceptionally clean so it is well within your ability to use a fine pointed brush and practice until you can do it (there are threads here about it, but I cannot for the life of me remember who was in the one I am thinking about).

Personally, I am not good enough for that and tend to go the easier route with a micron pen

Steady hand, lots of patience.

Plan it out. Make sure you know exactly what you want to write, and practice (on paper or the GW pallette) if possible to make sure you're happy with the text.

Start by drawing a line at the middle of the scroll, then write starting with the first, middle, and last letters (by space) then fill in the gaps. So if you were writing "PURIFY", you'd start by putting the P and Y at either end, then the central RI, then the U and the F. It sounds weird, but it helps prevent letters being squished down one side.

Also, you don't need to write with a paintbrush. Try using a black fineliner instead, it's easier to control at that scale.

Always try a couple of practice pieces beforehand until you settle on a design you like, then repeat it a couple of times to help your muscle memory.

The absolutely biggest help for me was creating custom stands to position the part of the model that's to receive the lettering perfectly for my hand. Basically, don't try and hold the model to angle it the right way. Find a way to anchor it so you can relax and rest your hand while you script, and it becomes much more manageable.

Just my two cents.

Fine liner w/ spray on fixative. Fine liners are water based and will separate if you use brush on sealers/varnish.

Smallest micron works well, also you might try using a very dark gray instead of black, as black text can actually clash a bit with the faded and weathered look of the thing you’re writing on.

Aelyn gives good advice for spacing your text. I do the same thing.

If you want to use a brush, I recommend using your absolute best kolinsky sable, but not smaller than 0 size. I also recommend using flow improver, a little water, AND retarder medium. Reasons for these suggestions is you don’t want your paint to dry on the brush. Too small of a brush combined with acrylic paint means it will dry on the brush before you finish a single line.

For technique, make sure you ALWAYS “pull” or “drag” your brush. Rotate the model in your hand so that you always pull the brush behind your stroke direction. This is a techniques they used to teach in architecture and engineering drafting classes for making smooth, straight, and precise lines back when drafters actually used pencils. I don’t think they teach this anymore in any schools, but you may find a video somewhere if you look.

This technique also works equally well for painting stripes or lines on your models.

Quasistellar wrote:
Smallest micron works well, also you might try using a very dark gray instead of black, as black text can actually clash a bit with the faded and weathered look of the thing you’re writing on.

Aelyn gives good advice for spacing your text. I do the same thing.

If you want to use a brush, I recommend using your absolute best kolinsky sable, but not smaller than 0 size. I also recommend using flow improver, a little water, AND retarder medium. Reasons for these suggestions is you don’t want your paint to dry on the brush. Too small of a brush combined with acrylic paint means it will dry on the brush before you finish a single line.

For technique, make sure you ALWAYS “pull” or “drag” your brush. Rotate the model in your hand so that you always pull the brush behind your stroke direction. This is a techniques they used to teach in architecture and engineering drafting classes for making smooth, straight, and precise lines back when drafters actually used pencils. I don’t think they teach this anymore in any schools, but you may find a video somewhere if you look.

This technique also works equally well for painting stripes or lines on your models.

You rotate/spin your pencil not the model. This is for when you're using a straight edge because as you draw the tip degrades resulting in change in lineweight. For free hand "straight" lines, they teach you the "shaky hand" technique. The shaky hand lines makes you perceive the line as being straight because you'd actually need superhuman precision to actually draw a straight line without a tool.

I'm an architect and I never learned to move my drawing board to draw straight lines.

 skchsan wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
Smallest micron works well, also you might try using a very dark gray instead of black, as black text can actually clash a bit with the faded and weathered look of the thing you’re writing on.

Aelyn gives good advice for spacing your text. I do the same thing.

If you want to use a brush, I recommend using your absolute best kolinsky sable, but not smaller than 0 size. I also recommend using flow improver, a little water, AND retarder medium. Reasons for these suggestions is you don’t want your paint to dry on the brush. Too small of a brush combined with acrylic paint means it will dry on the brush before you finish a single line.

For technique, make sure you ALWAYS “pull” or “drag” your brush. Rotate the model in your hand so that you always pull the brush behind your stroke direction. This is a techniques they used to teach in architecture and engineering drafting classes for making smooth, straight, and precise lines back when drafters actually used pencils. I don’t think they teach this anymore in any schools, but you may find a video somewhere if you look.

This technique also works equally well for painting stripes or lines on your models.

You rotate/spin your pencil not the model. This is for when you're using a straight edge because as you draw the tip degrades resulting in change in lineweight. For free hand "straight" lines, they teach you the "shaky hand" technique. The shaky hand lines makes you perceive the line as being straight because you'd actually need superhuman precision to actually draw a straight line without a tool.

I'm an architect and I never learned to move my drawing board to draw straight lines.

Was your drawing board a 32mm scale miniature?

I forget; was I talking about architectural drafting or adapting some of the technique to painting tiny miniatures with a brush and acrylic paint? (I do admit I only took 2 short courses 20 and 25 years ago so maybe they do still teach the basics of using pencils, but the couple young folks I met that do engineering drafting had no idea about pencil techniques. Maybe it’s different for architecture courses.)

Sorry to get snippy but posts like this irritate me when people ask for help. If you want to help the OP maybe actually explain the shaky hand technique and how you can use it to paint or draw lettering on miniatures? Things that seem second nature to experienced artists with formal training are not always intuitive or apparent to others, hence we have a forum to ask and answer questions and provide helpful feedback.

Quasistellar wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

Quasistellar wrote:
Smallest micron works well, also you might try using a very dark gray instead of black, as black text can actually clash a bit with the faded and weathered look of the thing you’re writing on.

Aelyn gives good advice for spacing your text. I do the same thing.

If you want to use a brush, I recommend using your absolute best kolinsky sable, but not smaller than 0 size. I also recommend using flow improver, a little water, AND retarder medium. Reasons for these suggestions is you don’t want your paint to dry on the brush. Too small of a brush combined with acrylic paint means it will dry on the brush before you finish a single line.

For technique, make sure you ALWAYS “pull” or “drag” your brush. Rotate the model in your hand so that you always pull the brush behind your stroke direction. This is a techniques they used to teach in architecture and engineering drafting classes for making smooth, straight, and precise lines back when drafters actually used pencils. I don’t think they teach this anymore in any schools, but you may find a video somewhere if you look.

This technique also works equally well for painting stripes or lines on your models.

You rotate/spin your pencil not the model. This is for when you're using a straight edge because as you draw the tip degrades resulting in change in lineweight. For free hand "straight" lines, they teach you the "shaky hand" technique. The shaky hand lines makes you perceive the line as being straight because you'd actually need superhuman precision to actually draw a straight line without a tool.

I'm an architect and I never learned to move my drawing board to draw straight lines.

Was your drawing board a 32mm scale miniature?

I forget; was I talking about architectural drafting or adapting some of the technique to painting tiny miniatures with a brush and acrylic paint? (I do admit I only took 2 short courses 20 and 25 years ago so maybe they do still teach the basics of using pencils, but the couple young folks I met that do engineering drafting had no idea about pencil techniques. Maybe it’s different for architecture courses.)

Sorry to get snippy but posts like this irritate me when people ask for help. If you want to help the OP maybe actually explain the shaky hand technique and how you can use it to paint or draw lettering on miniatures? Things that seem second nature to experienced artists with formal training are not always intuitive or apparent to others, hence we have a forum to ask and answer questions and provide helpful feedback.

Sorry you were offended by my post. It too irritates me when people on the forum offer misleading suggestions (not being snarky).

Truthfully, pulling off freehand writing with a tiny 0 brush will only come from practice or by happy accident. There are no "easy way" to pull it off I'm afraid. The fine liner suggestion was for the OP as a means to achieve the goal without needing to practice writing in tiny fonts using a brush.

Few tips on improving the freehand product - remember that freehand writing is no different than doing fine details - this is to say that you can always clean up the letters by covering up the mess using whatever color you are using to paint the parchment area. The letters aren't the only markmaking that's available to you.

The shaky hand technique I mentioned is only really good for long lines.

As for Quasistellar's suggestion of moving the model as opposed to moving the brush, yes this can be done, but this too requires some practice using your model holding hand to essentially think in reverse (upward movement on the model is a downstroke on the brush, left goes right, right goes left, etc).

Also, if you don't want to be too invested in actually writing something on the parchment areas, you can kind of "scribble" something on to give an illusion that something is written there but it's too small to be legible.

You could also just cheat and buy some decal paper and print your own pig-Latin.

kb_lock wrote:
"Get good" is the harshest and probably best advice - the rest of your work looks exceptionally clean so it is well within your ability to use a fine pointed brush and practice until you can do it (there are threads here about it, but I cannot for the life of me remember who was in the one I am thinking about).

Personally, I am not good enough for that and tend to go the easier route with a micron pen

That is likely the nicest thing anyone ever said about my miniatures Thank you!

Do you have an example of the results of your micron pen?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Aelyn wrote:
Plan it out. Make sure you know exactly what you want to write, and practice (on paper or the GW pallette) if possible to make sure you're happy with the text.

Start by drawing a line at the middle of the scroll, then write starting with the first, middle, and last letters (by space) then fill in the gaps. So if you were writing "PURIFY", you'd start by putting the P and Y at either end, then the central RI, then the U and the F. It sounds weird, but it helps prevent letters being squished down one side.

Also, you don't need to write with a paintbrush. Try using a black fineliner instead, it's easier to control at that scale.

Really helpful advice! Thank you! I'll give it a go!

What is a fineliner?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Aipoch wrote:
Always try a couple of practice pieces beforehand until you settle on a design you like, then repeat it a couple of times to help your muscle memory.

The absolutely biggest help for me was creating custom stands to position the part of the model that's to receive the lettering perfectly for my hand. Basically, don't try and hold the model to angle it the right way. Find a way to anchor it so you can relax and rest your hand while you script, and it becomes much more manageable.

Just my two cents.

Alright, I am having a pretty poor track record with it so far, but I guess I'll get there sooner or later


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Quasistellar wrote:
Smallest micron works well, also you might try using a very dark gray instead of black, as black text can actually clash a bit with the faded and weathered look of the thing you’re writing on.

Aelyn gives good advice for spacing your text. I do the same thing.

If you want to use a brush, I recommend using your absolute best kolinsky sable, but not smaller than 0 size. I also recommend using flow improver, a little water, AND retarder medium. Reasons for these suggestions is you don’t want your paint to dry on the brush. Too small of a brush combined with acrylic paint means it will dry on the brush before you finish a single line.

For technique, make sure you ALWAYS “pull” or “drag” your brush. Rotate the model in your hand so that you always pull the brush behind your stroke direction. This is a techniques they used to teach in architecture and engineering drafting classes for making smooth, straight, and precise lines back when drafters actually used pencils. I don’t think they teach this anymore in any schools, but you may find a video somewhere if you look.

This technique also works equally well for painting stripes or lines on your models.

Thank you for the advice!

This is the pen most of us are mentioning. Practice and layout your design on paper first unless you are just doing squiggles.

https://www.amazon.com/Pen-Pigma-Micron-Pen-005-Black/dp/B005GKF5R2/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=pigma+micron+pen+005&qid=1554915912&s=gateway&sr=8-12