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I finally have some of my Word Bearers painted up and am ready to put on the final touches of the script they like to write on their armor, vehicles, friends, etc, and i see that a handful of YouTubers use micron pens. I'm ok with this, provided the tip is fine enough and the color is grimdark enough, like a khaki color. All the pens I see are brigjt primaries and secondaries, or black.

Any of your recommendations?

I'd just use your smallest brush, it's no easier to use a pen if you know how to paint.

I've typically found brushes easier than pens.

Get the smallest brush you can find, put a bit of flow improver and drying retarder in the paint and go to town.

Regardless of whether you're using a brush or a pen a smooth basecoat is a must, if it has a grain from spraying or brushstrokes from brushing when you come to do the fine detail the brush or pen will bounce over the roughness.

https://sakuraofamerica.com/pen-archival

These guys have a sepia color in .15mm size which should work for what you are doing. They have more colors available in the .2mm size.

clively wrote:
https://sakuraofamerica.com/pen-archival

These guys have a sepia color in .15mm size which should work for what you are doing. They have more colors available in the .2mm size.

Interesting that they have more colors. I’d really like a white, which it looks like they don’t make. I’ve only ever seen the black in the .2mm size.

Which is what I use for my squiggles.


People with skill, talent, and steady hands can use brushes. For the rest of us, micron pens are a blessing.

 Nevelon wrote:
People with skill, talent, and steady hands can use brushes. For the rest of us, micron pens are a blessing.

It's less 'skill and talent' and more hours of frustratingly painting tiny lines and going back over them with the base colour because your hand decided to spazm at the last second. About 50% of the text I've tried to paint looks somewhat passable as actually text, the other 50% looks like the text had been finger (or rather foot) painted by on Ogryn; but that 50% is because I lost interested in trying to get the bit of parchmnent to look good or the bit of parchment is in a place on the model that is at least partially concealed.

 Nevelon wrote:
People with skill, talent, and steady hands can use brushes. For the rest of us, micron pens are a blessing.

Skill, talent and steady hands are not traits I possess and I still find brushes easier than pens.

I spent a while practicing with both and after a while playing with pens I found I could write no smaller or neater with pens than I could with a brush.

The tricks to the brush is...

1. To use a small one. I know some people say #1 or 2 brushes are good for details because they have good tips, that's true to an extent but when it comes to fine text a small brush offers far easier control because it's less sensitive to pressure/amount of paint on the brush/viscosity/etc. Just buy a couple of decent quality small brushes.

2. Flow improver. Allows paint to flow off the brush easier instead of chunking up.

3. Drying retarder. Longer work times are important because with less paint on the brush you have less time before it dries.

That's about it. Get those things and IMO brushes are easier than pens and will let you paint finer and more controlled lines.