Beginner query on painting

Hi guys. Just a few quick painting queries from a beginner.

1. Brush care. What is the best advice on brush care? My brushes have cake on th ferrul of the brushes, which brings to next question.

2. Thinners. Is tamiya's paint thinner recommended as an alternative for pianting and brush care? Otherwise, what would be a good conventional alternative to get? I'm looking for conventional materials which are easily available and reasonably priced.

Just in case you are wondering what I am doing, you can check my web presence at the following sites.
Darkgathering.blogspot.com
boardgamegeek.com/article/8272300#8272300

Thanks.

hi dwolve.

it would be great if u can intro yourself 1st in the Battlegrounds and Profiles section.

nice blog btw.

Noted and thanks.

I have not used thinners before so I can't comment on that too much but as for getting paint on the ferrule of the brush it is better to practise preventive measures.  

As such ...
1. Try not to mix paint with the brush you are going to use to paint the mini.
2. Put paint on the tip of the brush and not load it completely.
3. Regardless of how careful you are, capillary action will cause the paint to enter the ferrule so make sure you wash and rinse the brush out after use and DO NOT let paint dry on your brush.
4. Despite careful care, paint WILL get into the ferrule. In that case, there are some products sold specifically for cleaning brushes. I have not used them so far because all my brushes are of low quality but maybe some others in this forum can help you out.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to Wargamers Malaysia dwolve

1. Try placing your brush on a cup bristles facing up. While adding paint, try not to dip the whole brush into the paint pot as it will cake on the brush and messed up the bristles. When done painting wash the brush throughly with water and wipe it on a tissue.

2. I strongly recommend Tamiya thinner as it is not rough and extremely potent like the industrial thinners.

Thanks FourEyedMonster, MrChaos.

I should have a brush I can use to load up the paints to my palette very soon as the brush tip could no longer be sharp (is now a fork actually). I've been getting my paints directly from the pots all these while until a few weeks ago after watching a video from YouTube. Plus I have often paint using the same brush until I have finished with the specific colour before washing for the next colour.

I'll definitely be getting a small bottle of Tamiya thinner soon as a test for my paint jobs.

Finally got my genestealers completed!

Good start! A word of advice, try mixing n thinning your paints a bit. For example, for your genestealer's head, keep the base as purple, but for raised details, try mixing 80% purple with 20% bone or something like that. You should get a lighter shade of purple you can now use to go over details.

saw your genestealers If you can try to play with either dips or a good wash army painter has some very good washes your mini will look 2 times more lawa than it is now. Still very good effort bro keep it up

Noted and thanks for the advice guys. Mixing paints was something I never liked to do since I was a kid as I usually ruined things with it during art classes XD

Oh the horror!

Will slowly work around as I'm still trying to get the hang of applying paint on my brushes. Will probably start on that with my incoming Termies.

Any one tried paint stripping their plastic miniatures?

Yes, I use dettol. Not the bath foam. Real pure dettol - the solution should be like bronze-colour.

Just pour out the amount you want into an unwanted jar and drown your models in the solution. After a few hours, you should be able to peel the paint off your models. You will probably need a cheap brush to remove any excess.

After that, just wash your models under a tap

Dettol strips paint? That's interesting. Gonna check it out. That should be less toxic than brake fluids from what I have seen online.

Thanks dann.toh!