Dry Brushing Tips

Put a very small amount of paint on your brush, wipe most of that off on a paper towel or some card stock, and lightly drag the brush parallel across the height points on the surface of the model. Hope that makes sense.  Maybe someone else can explain it better?!

Lee

Dry brushing is real easy, once you get the hang of it. simply put a bit of paint on your brush (as you normally would to paint) and then on a clean surface (such as a piece of paper) brush to get rid of the paint you just put on.  Little or no paint should come off before you are ready to 'dry brush'.  On your model, brush over the desired surface and the end result will be that the raised surfaces will be highlighted.  This seemed strange the first time I was shown how to dry brush, get rid of the paint before you actually pain?? trust me it works a treat.

I suggest you give the technique a bit of practice on something other than your new fang dang model to get the hang of how much paint you need on the brush etc.

The advantage of dry brushing is that it will only apply a little bit of paint at a time so it means that there is a little bit of room to make a few mistakes.

Remember the best way to learn is give something a go and then practice.

major_au

Do remember, on an Aircraft, dry brush from front to back.  A gloss painted or natural metal Aircraft will be cleaner than a matt (WW2) type Aircraft.  On a military vehicle, dust etc tends to 'swirl' on the sides, plus some splashed mud.  But on the horizontal surfaces it may go all over, may gather in crevices, or may have been washed off by rain.  On the front it may be splashed up towards the back. It's a subtle process but the end result can really make a model stand out.

albertsponson

I love drybrushing!  One method which helps me a lot is this:  After I remove the excess paint off the brush and just before I work the model, I'll actually pick up a scrap piece of sprue.  I'll practice dry brushing the little numbers which identify the part on the sprue.  This quickly shows me if I've got too much paint remaining on the brush or if it's juuuuuust right.  I don't have many scrap models lying around so this technique helps me out a lot! Hope it works for you! :)

Eric

One thing to remember when dry brushing is to clean your brush one in a while.  The small amounts of paint on your brush dry up fast and can create little balls of paint.  This can cause streaks.  So clean your brush often.