Miniature Painting

Koushirou said:

And don’t mean to turn the thread into noobtown, but got pretty frustrated with myself. Husband got me some new brushes a little while back and I’ve been trying my best to take care of them. I’ve barely used them so far (pretty much just since I started doing the Armada minis) and yet I’ve already got one split down the middle. I’ve been rinsing them more often during painting, making sure not to let any water get up past the metal bracket, only try to get paint on the first half of the bristles instead of the whole thing, and after I’m done lather them up in some of The Masters cleaner and leave a tiny bit on to shape them. Could it be cheap brushes or am I still fucking it up somewhere along the way? Is it possible to have too much of the conditioner? Am I not getting the bristles wet enough when applying it?

Click to expand...

When I made this thread it was specifically for noob town because we had some people just starting or think of starting so don’t stop asking noob questions. Every single one of us here went through the exact same noob shit you’re going through. Being frustrated is fine and asking more experienced people questions is how you learn and get past it.

So, I’d suggest stripping those if you aren’t happy, it’s really easy. Just soak it in Simple Green over night and use a toothbrush to scrub it off. It’s cheap and you can get it at Lowe’s, Walmart, etc.

I’d also suggest priming them white instead of black. Painting white over any dark color makes it difficult and look like shit in my experience. And don’t use pure white, use some ghost white that has some grey in it.

To get your burners to really glow buy a true Fluorescent Blue, do a few layers of that on the white undercoat until it’s really bright, then add some pure whites in the center of the blues, if you can do a thin layer of white so some blue shows through in a wider area, then another smaller area with more white and so on until the center is pure white, lightening to the bright Fluor blue. Maybe look at spacecraft engines in paintings to see where they put the white in relation to the flame color. Now since your models are so damn tiny you probably won’t be able to do the gradient portion with the white and may have to settle for just some white centers.

Attached is an example of one of my glow pieces, then a super closeup so you can see the white blot method in the center. First time I tried I thought it was going to look like shit but I was really happy with it and have done it to a bunch of models since. You can always try the method on card stock too so you don’t have to strip models if you don’t like it.



As far as your cheap brushes...yeah they don’t help, and Masters cleaner is garbage compared to Jentastics drunken unicorn goop.


I suggest buying that and one of their bombwick brush sets. It’s the best bang for the buck brush I’ve found by far. It looks like their sable set may be out of stock but their synthetic is in. I haven’t tried those so not sure if they’re as great as the sables. Some people don’t like using animal hair though so maybe you’d like em.


There are some single sables available if you want to try them out but the sets are a bigger savings.

Haven’t painted in months, but Koushirou glow questions made me want to finish up some that have been sitting around for a while.

Took a few pics of the process.

Painted the areas I wanted to glow with pure white, thinned so it seeps into the crevices to cover the dark wash that seeped into the crevices during the wash phase. You can be kind of sloppy with it because the green will cover up the sloppiness.

Once that’s dried went over it with several layers of pretty thin fluorescent green. Also went around the areas that I did not paint white, to blend the glowing in and around the spots that I did paint white, to give the glow effect. You can be pretty sloppy with this as it’s thin so it dries fairly faint in the non-white areas Hit up the areas around the object a few times til you have the glow level you want. Pretty easy.

Aazrael said:

What is that green paint you are using? Flourescent green? Would be a nice paint for doing the glass pieces inside scopes of the guns!

I've seen a few of these builds in groups but I'm too noob to try doing a cell shaded build, takes a lot of handpainting I'm thinking which I suck at. Your minis all look great and I cant even use the brush to add chipping.

View attachment 353187

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Vallejo Game Color Fluorescent Green. They have a whole range of Fluorescents.