Dry Brushing: Hello customizers and modelers, I hope everybody had a chance to experiment with using washes on their figures. This month I'm going to teach you a technique that goes hand-in-hand with washes it is called DRYBRUSHING. I almost ALWAYS use washes and drybrushing together. Drybrushing achieves almost the opposite effect of a wash. If you remember a wash puts paint into the recessed areas of a figure, thereby making them stand out. Drybrushing highlights the RAISED areas. When you use this technique after you apply a wash you can achieve a great looking figure. Technically drybrushing would be defined as the technique of using an almost-dry brush to apply paint to the raised details of a figure or model. You do this by whisking the almost-dry brush back and forth over the surface. Using different shades of a color, or even different colors you can get some real cool affects. To begin with, whether I am drybrushing, painting or even putting a primer coat on a figure I never dip my brush directly into the bottle. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1) it makes it hard to control the amount of paint you are putting on the brush. 2) It makes it difficult to properly clean the brush and thusly shortens the "life" of it. It does this by getting paint up into the metal "band" that attaches the bristles of the brush to the handle. So what do I do? I do one of two things, I either use a "palette" (you can by inexpensive ones at art supply stores but I wouldn't bother.) What I use is the plastic lids off of almost any food container: margarine, Cool Whip or soft butter. In the case of enamel paint (like testors) I use the paint on the inside lid. Always make sure it is properly shaken up first; if you don't you can get off shades of the color because the pigment isn't fully mixed. If using a lot you may have to put the lid back on and re-shake a few times. In fact I keep most of my paint bottles upside down so the pigment part of the paint doesn't collect on the bottom. Here is how drybrushing is done: first put a small amount of paint on the tip of the brush. (Remember my rule from last month: "less is more, you can always put on another application of paint, you can't take one off"). Then wipe off "most" of the paint. Hence the name drybrush. You can either brush it off on a scrap piece of paper, cardboard or whatever, OR just brush it on a rag a bunch of times (yeah I know a "bunch" isn't very scientific). The amount of paint you want to leave on your brush will vary depending on the effect you want to achieve. You should now have a brush with a VERY small amount of paint on it. When you apply the paintbrush VERY lightly over the surface, back and forth in a "fluttering" motion. Because of the light touch you should be using the paint should end up on only the parts of the surface that are raised. If it flows into all the "nooks" then you either have too much paint on the brush, are not using a light enough touch or both. It will take some practice to get it right. Once you get the hang of it there are a lot of cool effects you can achieve by: varying the amount of paint, the thickness or thinness of the paint or the pressure on the brush. I am going to give you some things to try out. If you do these it will help you understand the technique. Some examples: METAL: Anything that is supposed to be made out of metal (manhole covers, armor, guns, swords, pipes etc.) will look GREAT when you drybrush. Have you noticed that when you paint something that is supposed to be metal silver or gold or brass it doesn't look right? It just looks too silver/gold/brass, the color is just way too solid. Try this technique. Get something that is supposed to be metal, but NOT just a smooth surface. A miniature knight or orc with armor and weapons (do you know what I mean by miniatures? The lead kind, you could use pewter but those are expensive any gaming store should sell them. They are used for many different kinds of wargames from fantasy to historical to outer space). Or a gun of some sort from a figure (plastic is weird, some paints won't stick to some kinds of plastic, so first you have to put a base coat of a paint that WILL stick. Try different paints on different plastics. Once you get a good solid coat of any color (I usually paint EVERYTHING white or grey first) then other paints should stick. OK, let's say we have a gun and it has a base coat on it so we can now paint it the way we want to. First off paint the whole thing (the metal parts) a flat black, yup black. Let it dry completely. Now get the silver or preferably steel or gunmetal paint (all mettalics are enamel). NOW we drybrush. Put a SMALL bit of paint on the tip of the brush, and wipe almost all of it off (remember rule # 1 when in doubt use less, you can always put more on, you can't take it off though). Brush just the tip back and forth quickly (think of a hummingbird's wings, but not THAT fast. See how the metallic paint covers just the high parts (you can do it on flat surfaces but don't try that yet it is a lot trickier). You will probably want to do a few applications, let it dry in-between coats. To highlight a silver surface drybrush gold on it VERY LIGHTLY, to highlight gold use silver. Ground: I don't know if you ever do models but you can use this on the bases I told you about too. For action figure bases you first have to put the real dirt onto the white glue as I explained before. Let it dry. They paint it black. For a model You can paint it a base color if it is dirt use a DARK brown, if it is grass a DARK green (Have you seen the Marvel model kits? For inexpensive models -$10, they are pretty good; I am working on the Ghost Rider now. I build the resin kits too, there are a LOT of comic characters made, they are expensive kits but very good). The Figure Base: It is Black. Start with a Dark brown and drybrush it. This time you will use a bit more paint as you change colors you will use less and less. Remember rule # 1. After the dark brown dries (do a good number of coats the black should be visible only in the low spots.) Do the same thing with a lighter brown, then again with a lighter brown. You can just add some white paint to lighten it up so you don't have to buy a lot of brown paints, as you get lighter add some yellow too. Use less and less paint each time, this highlights the higher parts and leaves the lower ones the darker colors. Go so far as yellow but very lightly, and even a bit of green, even lighter. Model base: Really it is the same technique the goal is to highlight parts without getting paint on the recessed areas. So drybrushing is a way to highlight stuff. I use it on almost everything. Look at the picture of Nightwing I made. His hair was painted black, then I drybrushed grays. His whole uniform uses the technique. If you look at Moon Knight you can see I used some light blues to shade areas. With Nightwing most of his uniform is black which you can't shade because, well its already black you can't get darker. So I just highlight the black using grays. With Moon Knight I could not highlight the white. If a character has a middle color say red, I would shade with a darker red. (Add blue not black, adding black makes the red look 'dirty') and highlight with an orange maybe even very lightly with a yellow (to highlight red use yellow, white makes it pink and we know that superheroes DON'T wear pink). So in closing Drybrushing=highlighting. If you give a surface a wash first then (after it dries) drybrush it after, it will really stand out form other peoples figures. Using the two techniques in combination looks great. The wash makes the recesses darker and drybrushing makes the raised areas lighter. As always have fun with it, experiment you might find a completely new and better way to use it. Let me know what you've done, I am always more than happy to answer any questions you have drop a line to azreal@frontiernet.net.