Paint Brushes

[dispatchdave]

I have to say, I love it when people from the West/Midwest say they can stand up to 110 degrees, then come over here (GA) and complain about how hot our 80 degrees is.... Humidty'll getcha like that.

[dwarvenranger]

Being born and raised in Fl myself you'd might think that I'd gotten used to the heat and humidity. But you'd be WRONG! Is it sad that I play Icewind Dale II to try and make myself feel like I'm in a reasonable environment?

[Doug Sundseth]

I have to say, I love it when people from the West/Midwest say they can stand up to 110 degrees, then come over here (GA) and complain about how hot our 80 degrees is.... Humidty'll getcha like that.

 

Goes both ways.

 

90° and 90% relative humidity is extraordinarily unpleasant. (I got to try that when I lived in the Tidewater area of Va.)

 

But 115°, even with low humidity, (Phoenix) is its own special kind of hell.

 

And running a hearth oven when the temp was over 100° outside and we had the door open to cool down? Yep, did that in Modesto, CA.

 

Walking to work for weeks when it was below -20°F because my poor, old car wouldn't start (Laramie, WY) teaches you to breathe shallowly to reduce the pain (and that you can tell the temperature by how fast your breath freezes in your nostrils and mustache).

 

Six weeks of rain Every. Single. Day. (Zweibruecken, Germany) is psychologically horrible.

 

90 mph straight-line winds (Boulder, CO) is brutal even when the weather is otherwise nice.

 

25° and driving sleet (Washington, DC in March) was probably the coldest I've been, since I was there for a business trip and hadn't prepared for that kind of weather.

 

And 104°, 35% rel. hum., and 40 mph winds (Fort Worth) is yet another kind of horrible.

 

IME, none of them is really all that much worse than the others. (That said, I haven't been in Iraq in the summer, which might well trump all of them.)

[Qwyksilver]

I grew up in Death Valley. Heat holds no horrors for me.

 

Humidity, on the other hand...

I spent a week in Death Valley visiting my brother in law. In February. I got weird looks for wearing shortsleeves and jeans in 75 degree weather. I drank 5 L of water a day and still felt dessicated.

[sumbloke]

I much prefer the heat to the cold - comes from growing up in Western Australia. A couple of years ago, when I went to Europe, was the first time I'd been in snow.

[buglips*the*goblin]

Best thing about rain is that I don't have to shovel it.

[CashWiley]

That explains the noodly little arms. You probably don't have to chop cordwood, either!

[The Inner Geek]

And 104°, 35% rel. hum., and 40 mph winds (Fort Worth) is yet another kind of horrible.

 

I live in Fort Worth! And, I HATE the heat in TX. I never noticed it as a kid, but as I've grown older and rounder, it kills me. I love Texas, but really it's some sort of dumb that I live here. My wife and I watch House Hunters and House Hunters International on HGTV. I'm convinced that the cost of living is low here because it's the most hellish place on earth. The bugs sting, the plants poison, the weather is either too hot or too cold... It's halfway through October and I'm still having to run my air conditioner! Another two to three weeks an I'll have to turn the heater on.

[ub3r_n3rd]

This thread is making me laugh. It went from a brushes question to comparing weather in various regions of the world.

[Last Knight]

This thread is making me laugh. It went from a brushes question to comparing weather in various regions of the world.

 

Thread creep. You know what that means...

 

 

THREAD ZERG!

[Furongian]

I agree with what the others have already said, but if you want to read an in-depth discussion of different brushes, here's a link to an article I posted on the subject last month:

http://flamingtales.blogspot.ca/2012/09/brushing-up-on-painting.html

[ced1106]

There doesn't seem to be consensus on brush sizes. Would two kolinsky sables be a good start? Let's say a size 2 and a size 0? Or are these too close to each other in size?

 

What about for base coating? What would you recommend for blocking in colors in larger areas, while still being able to control the edges of the painting area?

 

Sure, if you can afford it, go for those two sizes. But, as a n00b, I made enough mistakes with brushes (and I've only been doing armies now) I'm not so wild about recommending an expensive sable brush to someone who might accidentally damage it. I'm also learning different ways to paint, so I don't know what sort of brush I'll eventually settle upon. Likewise, if I'm only going to do some eye sockets, a detail brush that doesn't hold much paint may still be fine.

 

Here's at least six seven brushes you'll need, plus a pen. The first two will be sables. The drybrushes are what you demote your learning brushes to. Sure, maybe in a month or year your cheap brushes won't do the paint job you want them to, but you'll still need them for drybrushing and painting glue and water to your bases.

 

Detail brush, non-metal

Basecoat brush, non-metal

Drybrush, non-metal

Blacklining pen

Water and glue brush for bases

Detail brush, metal

Basecoat brush, metal

Drybrush, metal

 

As for edges, blacklining, or prime black. There's also "black primer + white drybrush".

 

Blacklining:

http://www.how-to-pa...lacklining.html

 

Blacklining pen:

http://www.amazon.co...d=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

If anyone has another suggestion for blacklining pens, please start a new thread. Thanks!

[Doug Sundseth]

Sure, if you can afford it, go for those two sizes. But, as a n00b, I made enough mistakes with brushes (and I've only been doing armies now) I'm not so wild about recommending an expensive sable brush to someone who might accidentally damage it. I'm also learning different ways to paint, so I don't know what sort of brush I'll eventually settle upon. Likewise, if I'm only going to do some eye sockets, a detail brush that doesn't hold much paint may still be fine.

 

Cheap brushes are too expensive, especially for armies. Good brushes will take more abuse (though I'd recommend that you learn the two or three things needed to take care of them) and are much easier to paint with throughout their lives.

 

Yes, even for new painters.

 

And larger brushes are especially important for armies. A nice large-bellied brush will allow you to paint (for instance) the base coat on the left arm of half a dozen figures without going back to the palette. Or paint the whites of both eyes of those same figures without stopping. A very small brush won't lay paint on as smoothly and will require many more visits to the palette.

 

FWIW, last Saturday I was painting the eyes of 15mm Swiss crossbowmen and arquebusiers and I used a Da Vinci #2 round. It wasn't any harder to get the paint in the right places, and it was faster. I'll also note that the #2 I was using is about 4 years old now.

 

Here's at least six brushes you'll need, plus a pen.

 

Buy whatever works for your style, but I don't find any need for more than two brushes, and I use the #2 for about 95% of my painting. (I've never seen the need to switch brushes to paint metallics.) To be fair, I do very little dry brushing.

[Heisler]

My mantra to new painters is to learn to paint with the largest brush possible. As long as the tip is good you can paint anything you can see. Even the detail and freehand on my competition pieces is typically painted with a DaVinci Maestro #1.

[Gailbraithe]

I use Princeton Artist series 4350 Golden Synthetic brushes. I usually buy them five at a time, 2 #2 Round, 2 #0 Round and 1 #4 Filbert. That comes to about $15 after tax at my local art store (I never buy brushes from hobby stores). At the same time I buy 10 disposable plastic palettes (the 10 well tray style), though the price I pay is way better than Dick Blick (it's around $.39/tray). I usually use 1 tray per painting session (a 3-10 hour shift, average 5 hours), and paint between 3 to 10 miniatures per session depending on how uniform the units are (my personal best is painting 60 Ork Boyz to tabletop quality in 2 six hour sessions). I only use the brand new brushes for detail work, and I use my older brushes for priming, coverage, drybrushing, etc. Eventually I use them for glue, and then they are generally thrown away. I usually get in about 2 to 5 painting sessions a month, which means I buy new brushes every two to five months, probably four times a year. So I spend about $60/year on brushes and always have everything I need - a crisp point for fine detail work, some more worn brushes for coverage painting, some drybrushes, and some total garbage brushes I can use to get superglue into a tricky spot if I need to.

 

I tried using the Windsor Newton series 7 brushes everyone raves about, but I had to mail-order them, they were quite expensive, and they didn't last any longer than the PA series 4350s, so I don't consider them worth the cost.

 

(PS: If its not clear why I went into detail about the palettes etc., its because I buy new brushes when I run out of palettes, not necessarily when I need new brushes. This leads to situations like the one I recently found myself in, where I returned home with a new set of brushes only to realize I still hadn't used the last set of new brushes I bought. I have something like 48 brushes at the moment, and maybe 7 have never touched paint.)