a couple drops of dish soap and warm water and a soft toothbrush
1 Like
Would that mess with an acrylic topcoat? Or does it not do anything after the acrylic has cured for years?
acrylic is kind of soft, so I wouldn’t go overboard. where that means, soaking for hours and scrubbing with a stiff brush also for hours, repeated over multiple days
source: me trying to remove ancient paint jobs from second-hand miniatures without paint stripper
Up to more GUNDAMS
I forgot what I posted about last so here is an Efreet that I painted a few details on last year and left in a box one arm short of done for some reason!
I decided to do seam removal on it and… it was a pain in the ass! I dunno, probably won’t do that again unless the seam is truly egregious!
The arms went really fast at first and gave me false hope
The legs took like 6 glue applications each, it was annoying! And they’re still not perfect!
Topcoated it today finally after waiting for a week of rain to clear. Found out my favorite flat coat (mr super smooth clear) dissolves gundam marker though 
here the grey bled over the white Tamiya acrylic
Then I decided I needed to CHROME MY JETS but really I needed to cool my jets because I touched one before it was fully cured and embedded a ton of crap in the paint and I had to start over
While that cured I picked my EWAC Jegan back up and spot painted a few details. They look nice!! Much better than stickers
I need better hobby brushes, any recommendations?
6 Likes
what’s up with your current brushes? nylons splaying out?
without knowing anything about what’s up: get a few golden taklons from Blick, flat/filbert/shader & round, #2 - #4, see what works. golden taklon is cheap enough to experiment with but quality enough to be useful
#2 round Kolinsky sable brushes are safe general purpose brushes: their point retention and belly (paint-holding-ness) are second-to-none. great for detail work & covering not-too-large areas. any art supply place will have a range of own-brand sable
but I barely use mine. they need slightly more care & attention than a synthetic that costs a fraction of the price, and can still fishtail. I have a big bag of $2 synthetic round #2s for mixing, transferring, &c. and they’re great for putting on coats. they hook & frizz all the time but it’s easy to pick out the best behaved when needed, and put the others on glue duties
#2s are probably too small for gunplas, need to go back to the pot/palette a lot to cover an entire limb. airbrushes solve that but bring their own share of troubles
2 Likes
Right now I’m a spot painter, so I’m not really worried about entire limbs. I am about to dive into weathering and people seem to use extremely fine brushes for “pin washing”, tidying panel lines, etc. Really I don’t feel like my brushes are precise enough, mine are all just cheap craft store taklon/nylon brushes. The bristles are getting splayed and really fine detail work (like the gold on that jegan arm sensor thing) are tough! I might try a toothpick for something that small in the future
I have a big bag of disposable-cheap flat nylon brushes I use all the time for brushing dust off etc but I don’t really paint with ‘em
Interesting, sable wouldn’t have been my go-to but I’ll see what I can find
2 Likes
Sable is excellent for fine detail work. I found it easier to maintain than synthetics, contrary to what I had been told.
Just grab a cake if this and clean it every session:
Make sure to see if you use stuff other than acrylic that it doesn’t eat away at natural bristle, but other than that I’ve been coasting on my sable for about six years now.
Plus, that cleaner works on everything and massively extends brush lifespan. It smells amazing too. Like a lemon tart.
4 Likes
Yeah that shit rules, I’ve long used it on my much-too-large-for-gunpla oil painting brushes
One thing I find frustrating about hobby paints is that it’s often really unclear what the hell they are made of, especially when it comes to japanese brands. For example, Tamiya “acrylics” are flammable because they use organic solvents. When you say “acrylic paint” in any other context I’ve encountered it means water-based. Technically acrylic just means the binder is an acrylic polymer and doesn’t imply any particular solvent but c’mon. I just want to make sure the various layers won’t dissolve each other/my brushes!
2 Likes
I don’t gunpla, but @physical has informed me that there’s art materials discourse afoot!!! I LOVE talking materials!!!
I’m not sure what base your paint is, but so long as you don’t need like, denatured alcohol as a solvent, these brushes have been a runaway hit for me: https://a.co/d/7bKVbas
I don’t for one second believe that they’re actually sable. They def feel like a soft taklon if anything, but maybe I’m wrong. Whatever they are, I love them with my acryla-gouache. As with any teeny tiny brush, making sure to use just the tip (yes yes, I know) has been key in making sure they don’t splay. Otherwise paint gets stuck around the ferrule and dries and there’s no hope of recovery. That could just be a me problem though.
Also! Don’t get too hung up on trying to match brush sizes: there is no industry standard for brush sizing, and sometimes there’s even variation within brands! It’ll drive you nuts.
I also super duper second that master’s brush soap @AutomaticTiger mentioned! If you ever have a brush with dried oil or acrylic on it, Winsor and Newton has a brush cleaner/restorer that has been able to break down dried paint film for me before. It’s pretty intense stuff though so I usually don’t bother unless it was a really nice brush and there’s no other hope of saving it. It’ll def melt synthetics if you leave it in too long.
4 Likes
I know Amazon photos are very suspect, so I took a shot of those brushes with some coins for comparison. Fun fact! Canadian coins are the same size as their US counter parts! Except we don’t have pennies so I had to go hunting for that one. Cheers!
5 Likes
Yeah splaying is a ferrule thing, because it’s all the crap getting up in there and pushing the bristles.
1 Like
Thanks! Those look like exactly what I want!
It’s definitely an issue that there can be paints with multiple different bases on the same model and it’s not clear which paint uses which base. Every company wants you to use their thinner so they’ll never talk about general purpose chemicals. There are some paints that are “lacquer” based where alcohol can be used as a solvent but at $3 a brush I’m not super concerned. My $25/pop Princeton brushes get babied (in Master’s soap, of course) and those aren’t getting near a room that contains hobby glue haha
It’s annoying coming from an oil painting world where the base is pretty much identical across manufacturers (linseed oil) to something where you basically just have to try and see.
Here’s the US equivalent for anyone south of the border https://www.amazon.com/Brushes-Miniature-Painting-Watercolor-Warhammer/dp/B07VBJBCTX
1 Like
One day I’ll figure out what Mr Color Acrysion is. Bought a bunch thinking it was some kinda laquer and wanted to experiment. I have not the faintest clue what it actually is.
It’s ‘aqueous’ but can’t be thinned with water.
1 Like
Wow this is unhelpful even by mr hobby website standards
2 Likes
oh yeah I’m immediately getting these
1 Like
Those brushes and a basic set of vallejo paints are arriving on Saturday! It’s a rainy day, I have no plans, and I’m excited!!
I’m building an EWAC Jegan and I wanna SPACE WEATHER IT
there’s no weather in space so you make it grey
5 Likes
Ooh! Vallejo is great, I wish I could get it more easily around here.
dont forget a lot of intense impacts and INTENSE BLEACHING from COZMIKQUE RAYS
1 Like
i bought a resin five star stories kit and my adult self and teenaer self have been high fiving continuously since sunday afternoon when i saw and touched said kit
3 Likes