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Hiya, folks! Okay, so in response to questions about some of the arcane magicks I've deployed in my Work In Progress threads I'm going to try and narrow down and illustrate a few things and see if they might be helpful to other people. With the rise in popularity of layering techniques, drybrushing was largely relegated to the status of primitive technique. While not suitable for every case, I believe drybrushing is still an essential tool in any painter's arsenal. So what I'm going to try to do in this thread is explain the fundamentals and then give some examples to show that like any technique there's a lot of neat stuff you can do with it. I'd like to stress that this is not, strictly speaking, a tutorial. A lot of what I present over the coming days is stuff you'll have to learn a feel for in practice. I'm just going to try and break down things in an explainable way and give you some fun stuff to try. This is easier said than done, so I'll ask you to bear with me as I try to cobble it together in an organized way. But first, some theory! If we take miniature painting and break it down to its most basic form, we find three main categories of method that we can break down on a line like this: Drybrushing-------------------Layering------------------Washes On a fundamental level, every single basic, common miniature technique is either one of these or evolved from one of these. They define as follows: Drybrushing: Using unthinned paint on a brush, removing most of it by wiping it off, and then applying the remainder on the miniature for a quick highlight. Layering: Using slightly thinned, but controllable paint, to gradually build up highlights with a smooth transition. Washes: Using very thin paint to apply paint to recesses, generally as a shade. Now if we go back to our line above, we can add another method in: glazing. Glazing is one of those obscure methods that tends to confuse new painters. But it's not so mysterious if we put it on our line in the right spot: Drybrushing-------------------Layering-------------Glazing-----------Washes As you can see, it falls quite naturally between layering and a wash, being a hybrid of the two: thin like a wash, but applied like a layer. Now things get freaky, because one of the things I do that people have asked for some elaboration on is "wetbrushing" or "dampbrushing". But, again, this isn't all that mysterious if we add it to our line: Drybrushing------------Dampbrushing--------------Layering--------------Glazing---------------Washes And as we see, like glazing it is a hybrid between drybrushing and layering. Using the strengths of both to make something new. So the focus here to start with will be drybrushing, and then once we're through with the basics then we can get freaky with it and have some funtimes. Next post will include some fancy picture illustrations, make me look all professional and stuff.