manifold

Alas, I didn't get much painting done between spending time with my girlfriend, and actually playing Warmachine. But as I was painting I kept thinking that I should be able to fit five shades from light to dark. As it stood I could fit two maybe three tops. I vowed to be more careful, and so I made sure I wiped off the appropriate amount of paint touched the tip of my brush to the mini and carefully dragged out the thinnest line I could produce. Unfortunately instead of the thin controlled line I wanted, I got a six-lane expressway. Okay, so maybe it wasn't an expressway but it certainly was a major road, and definitely wider than it could be for me to actually shade/highlight. Perhaps it was a sign that it is time to get a new brush. So off to the store I went and got a new brush.

Was a new brush 100% necessary? No, not really. I could just cover the excess paint up with the next color (or previous one depending on how it went). I noticed that this was basically all I was ever doing after I base coated and started shading/highlighting: Going back and trying to fix whatever paint was no longer where it should be. So hopefully this will allow me to improve my brush control instead of just having to go back and fix everything. I'm hoping I can actually get a reasonable number of highlights/shadows on a mini with this new brush.

I DID work on eMagnus' sword some more, and I got it looking table top quality, but not quite NMM. I may just have to concede that this attempt at NMM was a good learning experience, but a failure and use a metallic paint.

Recap of lessons learned:
Not too much water. I tried a technique which called for too much water and I wasn't ready for that.
Not too little water. I used to not thin my paints much if at all.
Wipe off excess paint. I used to try to paint with all the paint my brush picked up.
Work on good brush control. I still have issues keeping my brushes under control. Hopefully this has improved with a new brush.
Use a good brush. I needed to buy a detail brush that isn't extremely small (for sanity and smoothness), nor extremely large. Hopefully this as well has improved with my new brush.