Hi, Does anyone know what is meant by dry brushing paint on to surfaces. One of my old model railway magazines mentions it (with repesct to weathering) and I was trying to figure out what they meant. Thanks, Ian
Its were you paint highlights on edges with very little paint. Get paint on your brush and wipe most of it off by draging it over something like a peice of cardboard and then brush over the leading edges of an item, takes lots of practice but can be very visualy appealing when done right as it intensifys the illusion of depth.
Sure. Basically you put just a little bit of paint on the brush, and then brush it onto some scrap cardboard or something until it’s almost gone (dry). Then lightly brush the raised surfaces on the model (rivet heads, steps, etc.). Among other uses it’s great for simulating sunlight on a model, simulating wear marks on grab irons, etc.
As has been said… minimum amount of paint on the brush.
The whole purpose of the technique is to move as little paint at a time as possible. You may repeat strokes to build up more paint… you do not use more paint per stroke- or other placing technique.
You can use it to hioghlight as has been said or over wide areas… the techniques you use will vary.
A little of how to do it.
- use hard bristled brushes… so that the tiny blobs of pint can sit on the very tip of the bristles and be “knocked” off from there onto the surface.
- use a comb cut brush end. this can be a less hard bristle. If you can manage to only contact the extended bristle ends (not the short ones) you will automatically be putting less paint in contact with the car side. With this brush you can hold more paint in reserve in the brush head (as a % of brush head size) than with the other brushes.
- There is a brush head called a “deer’s foot” which is a mass of fine bristles bunched hard together in a very tight head. If you master the art of getting a minimum load of paint on this head you can stipple a mist of paint onto a car side. (Stippling is a prodding action making contact with only the point of the bristle… you do not want a wiping action which is what you may or may not use with the other brushes).
How to get a small amount of paint onto the brush head.
- Use the paint as it comes… don’t thin it… that just makes it more runny and less easy to control.
- It is easier to put a lot of paint onto the brush end and then take it back off than to try to only take a small amount of paint onto the brush end. My usual method is to take a blob of paint from the end of the tube (I use artists’ acrylics) and dump it into one of the spaces inside the car’s underframe. This gives me a working reserve and the surface of the blob starts to dry making it easier to skim off just a trace. … I’m a
There is a sort-of opposite to dry brushing.
I’m not going to call it “wet brushing” because you do not want to add solvent… adding solvent creates a wash which has a totally different effect.
My method mostly uses a fairly wide flat brush. Different bristle hardnesses will alter the effect.
What I do with this other method is to load a position at the top of a car side (typically a covered hopper) with a blob of paint. This is then drawn down the side and off the bottom of the side. Dump the surplus paint onto a suitable receiver. Wipe out the bulk of the paint from the bristles. (dry wipe it out - don’t add any solvent as it will mess things up). Then repeatedly draw the brush vertically straight down the side taking paint off. The bristles want to be wiped clean every stroke or every second stroke. Work below each blob may spread sideways a little but it must go straight down. When one blob has been done I move one step sideways and repeat until I fall off the end of the car.
When I get this right it gives a brilliant “rain streaked” finish on a car side. On one car which has MP reporting mars and a UP shield I masked a square over and around the shield before painting. When I’d done this technique I removed the masking. The effect is that someone has come along , cleaned /repainted a square on the car side and applied the UP shield. This gives the car some history.and makes the livery amendment recent… so the car is running just after the change of ownership.
As described this can “rain streak” a whole car side. Used more sparingly it can represent spills that have been water streaked down a car side and/or washout of dirt/rust from rust spots. The width and hardness of bristles used for this varies enormously but they are all flat brushes.
One advantage of this method is that you are pretty much garuanteed to have enough paint