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so i tried to edge highlight my minis for the first time today and I just could get a straight line nor any really good results
i am a little shaky but I can get that under control if I concentrate and hold my breath
so is it just me who cant edge highlight or do I just have to keep trying?
thanks!

Brush control only comes with practice. Are you trying to highlight with the point, or the edge of your brush? It is easier to get a crisp line with the edge of your brush. Also, you don't want to the brush to be too loaded with paint or it will run.

Yes, practice. Lots of it too.

There are a few tricks though. Brace your wrists and forearms on the table to minimize shaking. If it is uncomfortable you can use some sort of padding. You can always go back over the edge highlighting with the base color to straighten things out , essentially 'erasing' the irregularities and thinning the edge.

 keezus wrote:
Brush control only comes with practice. Are you trying to highlight with the point, or the edge of your brush? It is easier to get a crisp line with the edge of your brush. Also, you don't want to the brush to be too loaded with paint or it will run.

´

so I am painting with a tip ( i have the gw small layer brush ) and edges with the edge of my brush
I tried it on my un-undercoated Dark Eldar with abbadon black and I got some lines that were pretty good but most of them were too thick
the biggest problem I have right now is inconsistent line thickness, if I can get that down I should be able to do good edge highlights
do you guys have any tips for that

I have much better results if I drag the brush towards me, rather than do a swiping motion to the side like I often do when basecoating.

Can we see some examples? It might help us give you advice. I found that edge highlighting works best for me if I use the side of the bristles, rather than the tip.

Wont lie i am also terrible at edge highlighting. some people make it look so easy...

Don't forget that if you get an uneven line, you can paint out the bulges with the previous colour and straighten the highlight.

these are my current try's

You should have some paint on them. Now you are trying to get the highlight to stick to plastic.

That will destroy your progession. You need acrylic to stick to acerylic.

Use the side of the brush

i just tried that out on a not yet painted mini to not make any mess when im painting my minis and using the side is kinda difficult cuz the Edges Dark Eldar models have are so slim

Lightly drag the side of the brush along the sharp edges of the model. You control the thickness of the line with the amount of pressure you use and the amount of paint in your brush. You want to "trace" the lines with the side of the brush, not "draw" them on with the tip, because that is much harder.

As above, put some black primer down and work with grey. Worst-case scenario, when you apply your base coat, you'll have natural highlighting on the edges from the lighter "priming".

You can do that with any Dark Colour. Use black primer, drybrush white, and then go over it with your main colour. You'll get lighter edges, without the powdered look of drybrushing. Works particularly well if you use "wet" paint, that will tend to run off of the edges and the "white" sections.


If that doesn't work for you, you can drybrush, then paint up to the edge with your base colour. For example, Medium blue Base, Drybrush light blue, then go back and paint all but the edges with medium blue again.


I can't stand doing edge highlighting. I mean, I can do it, but it's too time consuming for my patience.

 greatbigtree wrote:
As above, put some black primer down and work with grey. Worst-case scenario, when you apply your base coat, you'll have natural highlighting on the edges from the lighter "priming".

You can do that with any Dark Colour. Use black primer, drybrush white, and then go over it with your main colour. You'll get lighter edges, without the powdered look of drybrushing. Works particularly well if you use "wet" paint, that will tend to run off of the edges and the "white" sections.


If that doesn't work for you, you can drybrush, then paint up to the edge with your base colour. For example, Medium blue Base, Drybrush light blue, then go back and paint all but the edges with medium blue again.


I can't stand doing edge highlighting. I mean, I can do it, but it's too time consuming for my patience.

Once you get control over the pressure and paint loading parts I find edge highlighting to be way faster than doing something like touching up all of the base colors again. Depending on the model it's not as hard as people think, as long as there are some nice, crisp edges to work with. If you have to "draw" your own lines that's where it gets tricky.

I appreciate that it's doable, but drybrush and wash is quite acceptable for my table-top standard, and I can do that to a whole model in about 5 minutes. Purely a time-thing for me.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are alternative ways to get sharp edge highlights other than "edge highlighting" with the side of a brush and very light pressure. I particularly like the look of using White drybrush on Black, followed by "main" colour. I have a tough time shading blue properly, for some reason, and the white-on-black works great for me in those cases. A wet, royal blue leaves a great colour contrast.

That also works really well with "cloth" materials, that have creases to work with. You don't get the same "glint" effect as edge highlighting. It's slightly different.

I understand you don't want to waste any figures.

If you want to practice without doing that may I make a suggestion?

Stick some left over pieces to a length of sprue, get that piece primed and base coated then highlight that.

Spares and sprues are the same material as what you'll be painting for real. Spares have the added benefit of having similar details to what you will be painting so make for the best practice.

Even if you manage to highlight, highlioghting with black will try to trick your brain. Highlight with white.

Something else to maybe try as well.. you know how a golfer will take a couple practice swings next to the tee then step up and actually swing? I will often do that with the loaded brush (0-000) if I'm working on getting precision lines. Hold the brush slightly above the object so it's not touching, then start the motion back and forth of the line you are looking to achieve over the object and slowly lower your hand down till it just starts touching it. You'll see a paper thin line start to appear then just continue lowering your hand until it it's the thickness you desire.

Takes some practice as does any of this stuff but it works pretty well (at least for me) once I got the control down.

Also as stated above you'll want to use the edge of the brush sometimes as well. I personally wouldn't attempt those specific lines with an edge. I'd do the first method mentioned for those. That's me personally though. I'm sure others would use a brush edge for those and they'd be perfect.

Yeah best to practice on a painted model (or piece of sprue) because the drag will be different anyway than doing it on bare plastic and you want to try to practice it as you'll actually be doing it.

Patience and practice is the main answer, as others stated. Also, getting the right colour. I like quite bright edge highlighting on my ork stuff and I've been having a problem with the light purple I was using fading into the dark, main colour too much. So I switched to a pink, which from a distance, doesn't even look pink because of the purple.

Also something you might want to do is use the next lighter highlight colour, before your extreme edge highlight. It helps it blend in, and makes it easier to correct mistakes. So for instance, if you were using Naggaroth Purple as a base, then you could use Xereus purple, and then the lighter one, for the edge highlight (I forget the last ones name).

Last thing - depending on the steepness of the angle you're trying to paint, I've found sometimes you need to come back the other direction, so that you see the edge highlight from both directions. It's probably more of a problem on vehicles because they're larger. Also, don't try to do the highlight in a full stroke at once, do it a bit at a time (unless the area is really small) - I've found it helps keep your pressure more consistent, as you tend to push harder at the end and at the beginning sometimes.

If you look on youtube, there are tons of videos about pin striping. Many of the techniques used in pin striping are directly relevant to edge highlighting, so much so that I've considered by a pin striping brush to experiment with for edge highlight and Eldar freehand work.