Latest posts for the thread "help with doing words on model?"

help with doing words on model?

Lamoura — GMT

Hello! i am currently working on the two knights that come with the imperial knights renegade set and i am stuck with writing their names on the banner thing below their heads that has that weird n like shape. i have no idea how to do it and would love any advice on how to paint it and it look nice, i have also considering using a pen or fin tipped sharpy if that would work. Any advice would be helpful! <3

help with doing words on model?

AllSeeingSkink — GMT

I bought pens to do fine text but frankly, in the end, I find a brush better. I have pens down to 0.03mm, but the brush is more controllable and to actually get the 0.03mm pen to produce a 0.03mm line requires a very fine touch/

The main things that come to mind are

A steady hand....

Plan out the text (can be useful to start with the middle letter painted centrally and work outwards, if you work from left to right it's hard to get the positioning right....

A bit of flow improver and retarder can help control the paint on to the model...

A good fine Kolinsky brush (for 99% of work I use a #1 brush with a good tip, but for text it helps if you actually use a smaller brush size, the smaller body gives you a bit more control)....

Make sure the paint under the text is smooth, if you're trying to paint text over a rough surface it's MUCH harder.

I also had some success using oils rather than acrylics, but YMMV. Try not to use harsh solvents with your good Kolinsky brushes, but if you use oil paint and just thin it slightly with a bit of thinner and also a bit of oil and then clean your brush out with soap and water rather than thinner, it should be fine. The downside to oils is they take ages to dry. Wait a couple of days after painting the oil for it to dry and then varnish it to protect it.

help with doing words on model?

Chef_of_Cadia — GMT

Micron makes some really fine tipped pens that stay pretty good if you let them dry. As AllSeeingSkink put it, know what you're going to write. For some reason I wasn't sure what cheeky slogan I was writing on my Chimera and wound up having to paint over it because it smudged and wouldn't rub off.

help with doing words on model?

Buttery Commissar — GMT

Remember if you write the words like you would with a pen, your brush will resist differently. Treat the letters like symbols, and use a lot of pulling and fine motions to draw the shapes, rather than write.

help with doing words on model?

Farseer Anath'lan — GMT

Do straight lines in as few strokes as possible, keep them looking neat. Curved lines need to be done in small strokes to keep them regular.

Clean up after, using the same very small brush. Don't worry about getting things perfect first shot. It's the clean up that makes it look good.

If you're really worried, gloss varnish it first and use plenty of drying retardant. That'll let you wipe it off.

All from my personal experience, so take with salt.

help with doing words on model?

Talys — GMT

A few mini-tips:

- As Skink said, plan out your text: trace the shape, and then write it on a piece of paper, spaced out the way you want it. Cut that out, place it above your target, so that everything is positioned correctly.

- After you do a base coat on your banner, add a little bit of brown into the basecoat paint to make a slightly darker version of the paint. Then write out what you want.

- Trace the above version with your darker ink color. Often, a dark brown is easier to use than a black.

- Use a very fine, very *clean* paintbrush. A dirty paintbrush, or one with anything less than a perfect point won't help your cause any.

- As Buttery Commissar put it, pulling motions are easier than than common "writing" motions. More specifically, for letters like a capital R, S, or P, if you try to use a brush like a pencil or pen on the curvy parts, the give on the brush will make it so that you end up with a mess. Practice will make perfect

- Getting the right paint consistency and the right amount of paint on the brush is really key. Depending on your color, you need to thin the paint to the point where it doesn't run, but where it doesn't dry on the tip of the brush or come off inconsistently, either.

- Don't practice on your Knight. practice first on a little sprue, or something else you don't care about .

help with doing words on model?

Lamoura — GMT

Thanks for the tips im going out tomorrow to pick up some new brushes since most of mine are old and falling apart partially thanks to my cat attacking them, im gonna practice on something separated but the piece on the knight has a curve to it so it may end up to be more difficult to paint the words than writing them with a pen.

help with doing words on model?

Talys — GMT

@Lamoura - the curved surface is not really a big deal, one way or another, as it's fairly gentle, and you're just writing 1 letter at a time.

However, it is much harder to write letters with a paintbrush than to write the same letters with a pen, because you've spent your whole life writing with pens and pencils, and probably not that many with a brush.

Incidentally, if it's the large block of writing on the Knight, you may get away with one of the brush pens. Micron makes some, and they work pretty well. The advantage, really, is that the tip never dries. However, they are not suitable for writing at shoulder-pad sizes, because the lines are just too fat.

help with doing words on model?

AllSeeingSkink — GMT

I found writing with pens on curved surfaces harder than using a paintbrush. Though I guess it depends on the font you are using. Normally I'm printing in all caps when writing on models, if I were doing cursive lower case stuff I'd probably want to blow my brains out trying to do that with a brush

EDIT: Sorry, I see now Talys meant brush pens rather than simply fine nibbed pens. I haven't tried brush pens myself.

help with doing words on model?

Talys — GMT

@Skinik - Yeah, they look like this:

You can get them in all sorts of colors.

On the bright side, if you have a super light feather touch, you can actually write really fine lettering (and the tip never dries). The lines are finer than the finest pigma micron pen (.03 or whatever it is). It's as fine as I can do with my teeniest paintbrush.

On the not-so-bright side, the harder you press, the fatter the line (by a LOT), making it really hard to consistently write really fine lines, because even if a stroke is very slightly fatter, it looks like poo, IMHO. Also, it takes a while to really dry -- try to paint over it while it's not totally dry makes a mess. I find that in almost all cases, an actual paintbrush is easier. But then again, I use a real paintbrush a lot more, so there is that.

help with doing words on model?

Big Mac — GMT

micron pens for additive process, xacto knife carving into paint for subtractive process, then washy color like GW turquoise oxide technical paint into the crevasse.

help with doing words on model?

Lamoura — GMT

I think it can get it to look nice i practised on one of the unpainted peaces and the words worked well except for messing up a g so as long as i keep practising it will come out nice, at worst i can get a friend with super good handwriting to do it for me.

help with doing words on model?

AllSeeingSkink — GMT

It's less about having good hand writing and more about having good coordination and steady hands.

When painting a model you can rarely get your hand in to a comfortable position as if you were writing on a piece of paper. And that's assuming you're using a pen, you can't really use a brush like a pen and expect it to come out well, you have to do lots of smaller strokes with it. Using a pen on a model has its own challenges which is why I prefer using a brush anyway.