Drybrushing brown

davehal9000 · Post by **davehal9000** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:20 pm

I've always had problems weathing a brown finish and having it look right. At the moment I'm working on a Viper pilot, but can't seem to get the brown jacket drybrushed properly. Any suggestions?

Post by **TER-OR** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:48 pm

I'm using oil paints for most of this work now, though for minis I will do acrylic paint blending - sequentially lighter shades as required on surfaces. Work dark to light.

Oils I use for the final drybrush highlighting, but I have a friend who uses them for almost all his figure painting.

davehal9000 · Post by **davehal9000** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:24 pm

I always end up getting something that looks too washed out. What color should I used to lighten the brown?

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:41 pm

Try tan. Add a few drops and see. Then add a few more. I've come to the conclusion that dry-brushing is not for the faint of heart, nor impatient. Takes time.

davehal9000 · Post by **davehal9000** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:44 pm

I normally don't have problems with drybrushing, just a couple of colors.

Mr. Badwrench · Post by **Mr. Badwrench** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 4:52 am

For the brown jacket, start off with a very dark brown. Add a drop of blue to the paint to make it almost a chocolate color. Cover the entire jacket with this color. After this, go over it with a heavy drybrushing of the base brown color. This should cover almost all the jacket, except the deepest recesses. Continue with the brown base coat, but add a drop ot two of ochre. Aim for about 50% coverage with this, mostly on the upper surfaces and the tops of folds. Do it again with almost pure ochre, only highlighting the top surfaces. Finally, add a drop of white to the ochre, and just drag the nearly dry brush across the shoulders, upper arms, and upper chest. You should almost be uncertain if you've left any paint on at all.

When drybrushing figures, always pull the brush "against the grain" of the sculpt. Where the folds in the cloth run mostly in a horizontal direction, pull the brush across in a vertical direction. Build up color slowly, so that a: you don't leave any brush lines, and b: you don't fill in fine surface detail with thick paint.

Anyway, hope this helps. Good luck!

NikToo · Post by **NikToo** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:24 am

My suggestion would be to layer the paint. I usually first put down the base color, then using a darkened version of this I put a quite thin wash in the deeper areas. I then use a lightened version to carefully highlight where it's needed. If it gets too noticeable I use a bit of the base color to blend in with the highlighting.

MillenniumFalsehood · Post by **MillenniumFalsehood** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 7:55 pm

I guess I'm weird then, because I actually apply the lighter colors first when weathering and then work my way back to dark. I am fairly pleased with the results. Is applying dark first better?

Post by **TER-OR** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:30 pm

Generally, people start dark and go light, as the shadows are already built in that way. You will usually make the raised surfaces lighter - to follow light patterns, which makes it easy to glaze your way to lighter colors and then drybrush.

Go Flight · Post by **Go Flight** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:07 pm

MillenniumFalsehood wrote:I guess I'm weird then, because I actually apply the lighter colors first when weathering and then work my way back to dark. I am fairly pleased with the results. Is applying dark first better?

I always thought the "rule" was for drybrushing go dark to light. But for washes go light to dark. FWIW.