Was: Dead Dwarf Now: Paint range discussion

[JT-Y]

ALWAYS use a palette. ALWAYS add water.

The only two fixed rules of painting. No paint should be used straight from the bottle.

[el Superbeasto]

As for brushes I use W&N series 7's.
They aren't cheap but they are excellent. Many times I've heard it said that ''I'm not that good a painter so it's a waste of money to spend that much on brushes''.
Not so. You couldn't write neatly with a pen with a damaged tip or that the ink keeps clogging and clumping from, and the principle should be the same with brushes; good quality brushes do help.
Besides, cheap brushes are a false economy. A £3 brush may last a few months, but a £10 plus W&N S7 will last more than five years, I'm currently still using brushes that are seven years old or more.

Which size do you use with W&N? And is it the "miniature" range you would recommend?

[robsoma]

Agree with joy, thinking paints is a must and you will notice massive improvements as soon as u start. Brushes, I've always used cheap ones and most last me quite a while. May give the w&n a try as have intended to for some time.

[JT-Y]

No, avoid the W&N S7 Miniatures as they are 'miniature' versions of the standard range, so too short a bristle.

I tend to use 0 through 3. 00 and 000 are too small for most things, but do sometimes have their places.

There is a common misconception that you need a very small brush to do fine detail or achieve fine blends, but it ain't so.
What you need is a good quality very fine point, and S7's deliver that.
Beyond that you must think of a brush not unlike a pen; you want a large brush belly that can be loaded up to hold plenty of paint, which will then flow out of the belly, towards the tip, and onto the miniature, in exactly the way that ink flows down from the ink chamber into the nib of a pen.
A too small brush is not unlike a pen which is running empty; you are forever stopping to reload the brush in the same way you are forever stopping to shake the pen, or angrily scrub a biro around on waste paper. Try writing a complete sentence neatly with a dead biro. Can't be done.

This is exactly why you must never use paint straight from the pot also. When using a palette you can see the consistency of the paint, judge the flow by how it moves on the palette, and properly load the belly of the brush by drawing it backwards through the paint and turning it,so that paint fills the belly but excess isn't able to accumulate.
When dunking the brush into the pot, or the puddle in the lid, you have none of these important factors in play, and the brush becomes a spatula to scrape the paint onto the model. it is also exceptionally rare for the paint in the pot to be of the right consistency. Even the thinnest, most tepid of paints need water adding to get the required consistency. As for how thin the paint should be, the answer is as thin as you are comfortable with, but aim to thin it more.

Everything else is just advice to pick and choose from, but the above pretty well covers the set rules of the task that can't be avoided without seriously hampering your efforts. Without adhering to these basic rules all other advice becomes redundant as it presumes the painter is following these rules.

[Steam Ball]

What JT-Y said about brushes (and other tips), plus add Raphael 8404 to the list of quality tools. Sizes in similar range than W&N s7, maybe a one step less (the Raphael #1 seems a bit bigger than the W&N #1). Or go to art shop, and ask for the watercolour brushes, fat belly, very sharp tip, they should have things like W&N, Raphael, Escoda, Isabey, daVinci.

No need to buy many, just buy 1-2, so you can swap quickly or do some techniques, of good quality for the main steps that are "soft", base color, shading and so on (not "hard", like drybrushing, glues, etc). Never let the paint reach the metal part and wash them at the end of session (buy cleaner soap in art shop, or use hand soap, add drop of alcohol for extra kick) and they will last for ages (hair conditioner now and then also helps).

I have some good paints from their Model but do seem to spend more time shaking and remixing them than actually painting with them.

Add shakers (metal balls, pewter left overs, rock beads) and store the bottle on their side, like wine. A lot easier to mix the components back.

Also try Vallejo Model Air, very fluid, and you can use them with brush. Metals in that range are have very small particles, and you can mix the "greys" (Alu, Chrome, Silver...) with transparent inks to get fantasy metallics, like car paint.

Personally I had droppers it means you have to put them on a pallet of some kind.

Wet palette... always, it lets you see the paint consistency, mix colors, and keeps the paint fresh for days if it can be closed.

[Indigo]

I once knew a guy who was painting a necron army and decided to go for a drink. After drinking the equivalent of a bottle of vodka he came home and finished the monolith but thinned the paint by putting the loaded brush in his mouth, essentially using saliva as thinner. The finished monolith was pretty cool. Though he vomited during the night and now the inside of his toilet bowl is boltgun metal.

I'd argue that is another rule to be added to the list.