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I’m really struggling with thinning paint for edge highlighting and other detail work. Things like highlighting hair. My layering generally isn’t too bad but for this kind of detailed stuff it’s really hard to get the consistency right. Either the paint is too thick and then the line aren’t fine enough or I thin it down too much and it runs everywhere or, if I wick the brush, just leaves a really inconsistent line on the miniature. None of the videos I’ve watched seem to address this problem and none of them seem to have this problem - the fine stuff always just looks easy. So what am I doing wrong? Does anybody have any tips or could anyone point me in the direction of a vid that could help? Cheers

It's difficult to suggest much, as it unfortunately sounds like it's simply a case of "practice, practice, practice", which I'm sure is the last thing you want to hear at this moment. After you've been painting for long enough, things like judging paint consistency become kind of second nature. You can (and probably should) always test how the paint is flowing from your brush - I often have various hues of paint plastering my left thumb (the thumb of my model holding hand) from repeatedly making sure the paint is flowing correctly with a test stroke or two (ooh-err missus!).

With regards to things like uneven lines for highlights, there are various things you can make sure you're doing: make sure your hands/arms are braced (often this means they're touching each other); make sure you move the model so your paintbrush hand is in a natural position, rather than keeping the model static and moving your painting hand around it; use a magnifier to see the areas you're highlighting more clearly; highlight with the edge of the brush, rather than the point, wherever possible (sometimes, of course, you have to use the point, and that's where having your hands braced is really important again).

In general, and particularly with highlighting, you need very little paint on your brush. It's always better to have less paint going onto your mini than you need rather than more, simply because you can add more paint, but you can't take it away - or at least it's very difficult/time consuming to take it away.

Other than these very generic pieces of advice, I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe someone else on here has better insights than me?

I like to give the thinned paint a minute or two to evaporate off the palette a bit before fine-fine work.

How are you doing your edge highlights? Because the paint consistency parameters for decent edge highlights are quite wide, so it may be your technique rather than your paint. Are you using the middle of the bristles with the brush perpendicular to the edge that you're highlighting?

Practice for sure. If you are wicking your brush and finding there isn’t enough paint on your brush try using a bigger brush with a fine point.

Brush stroke on the back of the hand to see how the paint will perform, before putting it on the model, should allow you to be able to mix up the right consistency

If you slightly damp the paper towel you wick your brush on it will pull less paint out of the brush too.

Sometimes its best not to wick it on a paper towel at all but to just paint some lines on your hand or something until you feel it's not flooding off the brush any more.