Fine, straight reflection lines.....aaargh

[Willdorling]

Hi Guys,

When you are painting fine lines on a flat surface (ie not corner where you can use the side of the brush) using white/very bright highlight what's you approach?

Struggling a bit at the moment. I go quite watered down and build it up but over several layes I lose the clarity of the line. Is this the recommended approach and I just need to practice and get tighter or should I go less dillute and hit it once or twice?

Cheers
Will

 

[AndyG]

Straight lines are a real swine to do. The brush is naturally bendy and produces cursive lines with ease straight is hard quite often the thickness changes etc. the only way I can realy do it is to try your best doing the line then tidy it up with the base colour. Not much help only a lot of sympathy!

 

[AllTerrainMonkey]

If you're not already mounting whatever you're painting onto a spool, pill bottle, old paint bottle, cork, etc., then do so (I usually use double-sided carpet tape). Then rotate whatever you're painting so you can paint a capital letter I or lowercase L; your hand is probably already very well trained at how to make that very straight line. Traversing from left to right (or vice versa) or any different angle will most likely be hard.

If it's a very large flat surface try taking watered down white paint and putting a few tiny dots along the path you want the line to take and then connect the dots with thicker paint. When I do freehand I usually keep my paint fairly thick (just a bit thinner than basecoat, thicker than my layering consistency) so that it does a nice, solid line in one or two passes.

If you're ever unsure of your paint thickness, or want to practice, try painting thin lines on a piece of paper, your thumbnail, your palette, etc; all of them will start to give you a pretty good feel of how much pressure you need with your current paint thickness in order to get a nice straight line.

 

[kathrynloch]

Depending on what you're painting, try using the edge of an index card or matchbook as a guide.

 

[freakinacage]

Have you tried using riggers? I find the length of the bristle really helps

 

[Kretcher]

Well how to explain this. The most important thing for me is to always draw the brush in the same direction --> and turning my mini instead of moving the brush around.

The breush shouldnt have more then one diretcion ---> <--- is wrong instead just do ---> (the direction that feels best for you and then turn the mini if you need lines from more then one direction.)

Also I put my elbows on the table and bottom parts of my hands togehter to get stability and have as suggested above I use a cork and don´t thin my paint too much. If it is a really thin line that is needed I might use some flow improver for it to work a little better with a very small sized brush like a 000

Good luck and out of curiosity please post results if you want.

/Kretcher