I'm looking for some good paint brushes for painting my figures, I have been using GW brushes but they are not that good. So! what are some of brushes you guy's use?
I've mostly been using Winsor & Newton series 7. A #1 brush covers most of my needs, and I'll occasionally use a #0 for very fine linework. If you're getting real hair brushes you'll want to take care of them; I recommend "The Masters" brush cleaner.
I bought a few Windsor and Newton brushes but I'm terrified that I'll gunk them up or split the tips so I keep using cheap throwaway acrylic brushes instead. I should look up some brush care guides and try them out.
I realized that I take pretty shitty care of my brushes, I usually use citadel ones but I've started to branch out. Army painter, some other sable ones I can't remember the name of. they're all pretty lousy though.
Winsor & Newton is awesome! Size 1 is good, I happen to have a 000 one, and that's good for really thin stuff. Raphael 8404 is also awesome, I use size 0, which is actually bigger than W&N size 1. I heard Rosemary is good to, never used that though.
I've only used a single army painter brush, it was bad. Don't. Use the W&N. It's not that horribly expensive. It will get worn, and there's not much you can do about it, but even when worn, it's still better than most of the brushes. If you don't paint 8 hours a day, they will be good for at least a year, or more. They cost something around a single blister mini, so you can spend that each year on brushes. But they likely will last longer. Don't use crappy brushes!
It's definitely important to keep around some cheap brushes for stuff like spreading glue, applying grits, drybrushing, etc.
also I advise to use big brush (size 3) they last longer, improve your painting and you can paint almost all the mini (except eyes and makeup fancy stuff)
Is it possible to make rounded dots with WN brushes? I have vallejo and citadel ones and I'm struggling with painting eyes as outcome is elipses instead of dots.
Don't paint them as dots, paint a line from top to bottom. Having the pupil completely surrounded by white is the main cause of crazy-eyes-look when you're learning to paint them. Not only this is easier, it looks more natural. Here's a guide on this, and if you want video instead this one by Dr. Faust goes on similar lines. As for painting dots, if i were trying to do it and the brushes made it hard for me, i'd use a Sakura Micron pen instead.
So much this. a "dot" looks cartoonish and loopy Even in 2-D art in high school, one of the first things we learned was that our instincts tell us that an eye should be like a target – but that isn't representative of how real humans look.
If you struggle with dots or lines try painting black and then cutting in with white, I have done it both ways and on some minis it's easier to do an alternative method.
Also some of those citadel brushes aren't far off w&n prices anyway, I however just use their small layer, I get through 1 every couple of months but I don't feel guilty about abusing it!
I'v also painted eyes both ways and when I find it much easier to get a good look from placing white in the corners than from placing black in the middle.
I may try getting a #2 or #3 next time I need to replace my brush. I find the #1 to be pretty versatile, but I'm always up for trying something new.
I've used an incredibly fine marker to put a vertical black line through the white of an eye for a while now, makes things a lot easier in my experience.
Thank you for your replies guys, even if they dont reallyanswer my question. Maybe l should rephrase - does shape of the tip of WN brushes allows to make dots that are more like circle than elipses.
