Brush Cleaner

I'm a cynic in general and especially when it comes to rave product testimonials. I always wonder if the person's a paid shill or getting a kickback. Still, late last year I was cruising the interwebs and came across a post on caring for your brushes.

Now after ruining my first few brush sets, I picked up the normal care stuff like cleaning and rinsing as I go, cleaning with a bit of soap at the end of the day, storing them so that the tips don't get smooshed... all that. But I'll admit, over the years I've mainly bought GW brushes. Their drybrushes are pretty nice and the normal ones aren't that bad. Even better, they're readily available and not too expensive. So if one died, it wasn't any big deal. While "art store" brushes might be nicer or hold a point longer, the costs never balanced out. They would be three times the price to only get twice the longevity. So I only bothered with a nicer brand for my detailing brush.

Then Thanksgiving '09 rolls around and the family is headed out of town to spend the weekend with the in-laws. Now an evil thing about Tucson is that my favorite art supply shop is right next door to my favorite coffee shop. It's a dangerous combination for my checkbook... If you're ever in town, swing by the area. It's worth the time. They get bean from Intelligentsia and have a pre-Starbucks Clover! There's also a large used bookstore about a block away. It's not Powell's, but decent and local. Also cruise across town to stop at Hat's Games and drop me an e-mail if you want to arrange a game!

Ack, back on topic! Faced with the choice of several days socializing with my in-laws or sitting on the porch painting minis, I needed a new detailing brush! We stop to get coffee for the drive and I pop into the art store. A master of swiftly grasping the obvious, the big neon orange "30% off" sign on Escoda brushes eventually catches my eye. I decide to splurge and pick up a few brushes, including a size 6 shader. (I've been VERY happy with it.) Ironically, due to an error on my part, the detailers I picked up were actually watercolor brushes. Thankfully, my wife and some friends do watercolor Illumination and can use them.

Anyways! While I was standing there in line contemplating how to tell my wife that I just spent the cost of a sushi dinner on three tiny brushes, my eye falls upon this:Yes, a jar of "The Master's" Brush Cleaner and the eventual topic of this post! I figured I was already spending too much and remembered that article I'd recently read... so I tossed in a jar to try it out.

This stuff is AWESOME.

So awesome, I was tempted to make "AWESOME" animated with sparklies...

One of the color shifts I've always hated switching between is from painting red to painting white/bone. Yes, the same colors as my Eldar army. Why do I hate this so? Because despite how transparent GW red is, the damned pigment is PERVASIVE. You can clean your brush obsessively and it will STILL creep back in and tint your clean white lines an annoying pink! I already get enough guff for being an Eldar player, I certainly don't need them PINK!

So how awesome is this cleaner? Let me tell you... no, no, let me SHOW you! I did a bunch of Mechrite Red on a Broodlord for a friend and then cleaned my brush. The brush was dipped into clean water, spun at an angle against the side of the water cup to open up the bristles, and then the head and ferrule were press wiped on a napkin. Here's what the napkin looked like after cleaning with water:I did 2 sets of wipes with 6 on each row for a total of 12 wipes. The end result looks pretty clean, right? Well, then I immediately took the "clean" brush and did the same process with brush cleaner. Here's the result:All the pink you see is what came out AFTER I'd already "cleaned" the brush with water. How about an overall shot:With the brush actually clean now, I was able to immediately switch to working with white and didn't have any pink discoloration. Even better, this stuff can help restore old brushes and helps your current brush keep it's shape longer.

So pick some up and try it out. You won't be disappointed. Just don't forget to rinse your brush before sticking it in your mouth... this stuff tastes almost as horrible as GW's Foundation paints. (You should never stick your brushes in your mouth... don't ask me why I know how these things taste. :-p )

Cheers and hope you've enjoyed my mad ramblings this afternoon! I needed something to do and knew better than to try and paint fine detail when doped up on cough medicine. Maybe I should apply that rule to blogging too...

UPDATE: It looks like I'm not the only one shilling for General Pencil this weekend... The esteemed Colonel Corbane also posted on how awesome this stuff is. Great minds think alike or simple minds seldom differ? :-p

And no, I didn't receive a dime for any of the links in this post.

***Images grabbed from this site, General Pencil and my camera.***

Sculpting 105: Fine Line Shaping

The fine Colonel Corbane has compiled and posted an excellent set of links on Sculpting and kindly included some of my posts. This drove some traffic to my Farseer on a Jetbike post where JRV stepped up with a question. (Stop reading this right now and go check out his kit bash Leviathan. It's okay, I'll wait...) He wanted to know "How you are getting those fine detail lines? Is that a press mold or something?"

The answer is no, that's not a press mold. Those lines are all hand sculpted. However, the process is really quite easy once you get the hang of it. Spinning out a thread of putty and trying to adhere it to your fig is going to be a study in frustration. You'll smoosh the detail, break the thread and generally want to give up in frustration or throw things at the wall. (Trust me, I speak from first-hand experience...) The trick is to do majority of your shaping through the REMOVAL of putty.

Step 1: Roll out a thin tube of putty and stick it to the fig. Just go for the general shape you want and make sure there's excess putty. The big thing is to have the putty where you want with a good contact surface to the model. Having the correct general thickness is nice too, but the specifics can be fixed later.In cross-section, it should look a bit like this:Step 2: Use the blade of your sculpting tool to cut away the excess putty. Be careful to cut all the way through, pull away slowly and work in sections. You don't want to pull up your contact surface.Step 3: Now that you have the correct amount of putty where you want it and a good contact surface, you can sharpen the edges and top of your line with the sculpting tool.It takes a little care and practice, but the technique itself is not that difficult. Cheers and hope this helps!

***Inset image from a biomedical site that had the look I wanted...***

Sculpting 104: Silicon Shaping Tools

Way back when I started this blog as a regular thing, I posted an article "Sculpting 101: Tools". In there I gave a brief overview of the general tools you will find on my desk during a project. Well, mchmr6677 recently dropped me an e-mail asking:
"I've read articles on BoLS and other sites about using clay shapers with greenstuff. Do you use them? And, if you do, which ones do you use? They seem a little expensive (around $8 each) and come in a myriad of sizes."

Okay, I have to sidetrack into a bit of history for a sec. Technically, almost every "sculpting tool" out there pitched for use with miniature sculpting is actually a rededicated wax/clay carving or shaping tool. Yet the term "clay shaper" has become nigh synonymous with silicon tipped tools. This is largely thanks to Royal Sovereign's "Colour Shapers", of which a sub set is specifically billed as "Clay Shapers". This is like Kleenex, Xerox, Green Stuff and several other brand/product names that have slipped into the vernacular due to great marketing and a nigh monopolistic dominance of a niche audience. You can now find several off-brand copycats marketing their silicon or rubber tip tools as "clay shapers" too. Gotta love it.

So is a silicon tipped shaping tool better than a metal? Yes and no.
Pros:
1. Extremely slick surface. Probably the best thing about these is how smooth they are. You can work with the sculpting epoxy sooner and will require less lubricant. They're also ideal for buffing out large smooth surfaces due to the reduced sliding drag.
2. Shape. Silicon and rubber tips have to be of a heavier and thicker material to resist bending, deformation, and tearing. So they have thicker head shapes than you would normally find in a metal tool. I've often found the difficulty level of a project can drastically change when you have the "right" shaped tool for the job.
3. Cleaning. Because of the ultra-smooth surface, many materials won't bond to the surface and will easily peel away. Cleaning is often little more than a water rinse and toweling.
4. Purpose of design. These are excellent tools specifically designed for artists working in this type of medium. They have decent thickness handles, good ergonomics for grip and just feel "right" for this kind of work. In comparison, most metal shaping tools are actually re-purposed dental tools. They often have a minimum thickness to the shaft to save on material and many sets have tool shapes we're unlikely to need.

Cons:
1. Flexible tips. I strongly recommend getting the "Extra Firm" model. The pliability of the softer versions seems perfect for a light medium such as fondant, marzipan or even oil paint. Combine a pliable tool and the finickiness of epoxy and you have an exercise in frustration, especially if you aren't familiar with how the sculpting epoxy handles. These tools are not "beginner friendly".
2. Shape. Again, because of the material involved, silicon tip shapers tend to be heavier and thicker than their metal counterparts. Certain shapes just aren't plausible, especially sharp points and edges. Everything on them is just a little rounded. So where they might be the perfect tool for one job, they'll be horrible for another.
3. Cleaning. Those few materials that do manage to bond to the surface can mar your tip to remove. Metal offers a small advantage in that anything that really bonds can simply be sliced away and/or buffed off with fine-grit sandpaper.
4. Tip Degradation. Not only is there the above, but many forms of silicone lubricant (such as KY Jelly) and caustic chemicals can rot your tip. Even worse is if you leave your tools out and have a cat that likes to chew on things...
5. Price. Silicon tipped shapers are cheaper than good brushes, but still kinda expensive. For the same price as one or two silicone tipped shapers, a little bit of hunting around can get you a complete 12-piece set of metal dental tools.

So if you're just starting to sculpt and want something a little more precise than your fingers, I'd suggest getting a metal tool set. But if you've got a few sculpts under your belt, these won't replace your normal tools but are an excellent item to pick up to expand your toolbox. I would particularly recommend Royal Sovereign's Size 0 Angle Chisel and Size 2 Taper Point as my "best buys" and the ones I personally use. Cheers!

***Images are undoubtedly copyright of Royal Sovereign, FOX and Universal Studios and will be removed if asked.***