How to Dry Brush Miniatures: Wargaming and Model Making Guide
Dry brushing is one of the simplest but most effective techniques you can learn when model making. This technique acts as a way to highlight, requiring you to brush minimal paint over the surface of your models, emphasising areas of light and shadow. Dry brushing is most effective when you are painting textural elements of your wargaming miniatures, helping to create more realistic depth in textures, such as fur, or developing heavy
weathering on bricks or wood.
It is an easy technique to learn and can elevate the visual impact of your miniature painting immensely, very quickly, and is perfect for beginners and experienced painters alike. This blog will guide you through why you should be using this technique and how you can achieve it, talking you through the best tools and tips to use while dry brushing.
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What is Dry Brushing?
Dry brushing is an important technique to know if you are starting to learn how to paint Warhammer models, and it is one of the first that you will learn. The basic steps involve loading up your brush with paint, wiping off any excess paint until you have almost no paint left on your brush and then applying this, lightly, over any raised areas of your model.
Textural elements of your models really benefit from using dry brushing to emphasise any areas of highlights. If you solely rely on natural light within the 3D surfaces of your model to create tonal value, you will not have a huge contrast between your darkest and lightest colours, resulting in a character that will appear flat and a little bit lifeless. Dry brushing over heavily textured areas means that the technique will almost pick out the highlights for you, with a single brush stroke. When the paint is applied to the raised aspects of the model, it appears where highlights would naturally fall, and creates a contrast that elevates your wargaming models.
Layering and edge highlighting are other highlighting techniques that you could also use while painting. They are similar but differ in ease and take longer than drybrushing, requiring more precision, selecting and building up highlights in specific areas of your model and colours are applied in stages from darkest to lightest, gradually. Which is a lot more time-consuming than a dry brush technique, even when you are applying multiple colours.
Why Dry Brushing is great for miniatures and models?
But why is dry brushing such a great technique to know as a model painter? We know that it is a key painting effect that helps to define your highlights and create texture, but what gives it that edge over any other highlighting technique?
- Fast - Dry brushing does not require you to paint with the utmost precision, to give the maximum amount of tonal impact and the layers of paint that you apply to your models are extremely thin. Your layers of dry brushing will, therefore, dry fast, allowing you to build up layers of tone and texture relatively quickly, without having to worry too much about the exact placement of your brush strokes.
- Forgiving - Since dry brushing is not a precision-based technique, you will find that it is also a very forgiving technique, especially for beginners, and you can very easily paint over or correct the direction and placement of your paint. The layers of paint will never be incredibly thick, so painting over them will never affect the shape of your model, allowing you to make mistakes without ruining your entire character.
- Results - Dry brushing has a wide variety of uses beyond solely highlighting, allowing you to weather, create texture or develop glow-like effects on your characters. For example, if you are painting a tank model that you would like to look battle-worn and weathered, you can use a dark brown across the main body to give the appearance of rust and scratches. You can also use it to add more textural qualities to the bases of your characters, elevating materials such as grass and sand, from a flat platform into a textured background that fits in with the rest of the character's theme.
The Best Brushes for Dry Brushing
Dry brushing can be very harsh on your brushes, so you will have to be careful which ones you choose to use with it. Painting over textured surfaces is rough on the brushes’ bristles, often causing them to bend and fray very quickly. Using minimal paint on a dry brush can also increase the chances of paint drying within the bristles, ruining the shape and flexibility of your brush. So, what brushes should you use while dry brushing your models?
There are specialist dry brushes available specifically made to help you create dry brushing textures. A dry brush is a brush with a rounded or sometimes flat head shape, made with short, stiff bristles. They are usually made with stiff goat hair bristles, a very durable brush hair type that is much more likely to withstand painting over rough textures and long sessions of harsh dry brushing without bending or losing their shape. The shape of the brush also helps with the application of your paint, allowing you to apply an even coverage of dry brushing across your model.
Since dry brushing can be so damaging to your brushes, many model painters also use old or cheaper brushes for painting with the technique. Usually, using synthetic flat brushes such as the flats available in our All-Media Brush Set or if you want to explore the potential of a different texture have a look at a Comb Texture Brush. This means that you don’t have to worry about replacing any of your more expensive brushes as quickly, but how does this differ from using a dry brush specific paint brush?
The advantage that dry brushes have over using an old, cheaper paint brush is precision. The range of different sizes and their rounded end allows you to have much more control over where and how intensely you are dry brushing. An old paintbrush may have damage to its shape and bristles, which will be fine to use with large areas of dry brushing, such as bricks or sand, but will not help with more intricate details in clothing or armour.
Step-by-step
Step 1 - Loading your brush with paint
First, load up your dry brush with paint, usually using a lighter colour than the base coat of your character. Dry brushing only leaves traces of paint over any areas you are working on, which makes the effect subtle, so choose a lighter paint than you would usually pick while layering, so that the effect can be seen clearly. You can also use a really light, almost white, against an extremely dark base, which will help you to create glow effects on ghost-like or magical characters.
You need to have as little paint on your brush as possible, so do not over-saturate your brush with paint and always remove any excess. You can use a paper towel, cloth or dry brush board to help you to remove as much as you can. Never use a wet paint brush with this technique, as it will make your paint ‘flow’ more off of the brush, creating solid strokes of paint rather than the random, broken texture that dry brushing can create.
Step 2 - test before applying
Always test your dry brush before you apply paint; you don’t want to paint directly onto your final model before you can ensure that you have the correct texture and volume of paint. Always make sure that you:
- Have removed enough paint from the brush so that you don’t apply a solid stroke of paint to your model.
- Test your pressure and consistency so that you can achieve an even coverage of dry brush texture on your model.
- Avoid chalky results, so that your miniature’s highlights don’t appear too dull and lose their contrast with the rest of the model.
You can use a drybrush board or textured surface to avoid all of the above. These are boards, usually wooden, plastic or MDF, that are designed with patterns engraved into them. These patterns are usually set in a couple of different textures, designed to help you to control how much excess paint you remove from your brush. Something that you can’t always achieve with a paper towel or cloth, dry brush boards allow for an extra level of precision within your dry brushing that can elevate the technique ten times more.
Dry brush boards can also help you to clearly visualise your dry brushing before you apply it, ensuring that you are using the correct pressure and are applying your strokes with the right consistency. You can also, clearly see if you have removed too much paint, avoiding a potentially chalky look on your character when the paint is applied too thinly. And if you have completely covered your dry board with colour? Simply apply a coat of primer and resume using it like normal. (link to abc dry brush board)
Step 3 - Controlling the paint
When applying the paint to your warhammer miniatures, hold the brush perpendicular to your surface and drag it lightly across it. You are essentially ‘dusting’ the model with pigment, so maintain a lightness in your painting as you work and build up layers of dry brushing. This will ensure that the brush captures all of the raised details on the model, achieving the perfect broken line with the correct pressure that won’t cover the entire area in colour. Directional brushing is also important to use as you dry brush, paint in a consistent direction, so that you can maintain an idea of where your light source is and make sure that the broken strokes are visible.
More Tips for Better Results
- Layering multiple colours - A progressive build-up of colour, with dry brushing, will always be ten times more effective than if you use a single colour for a highlight and can often emphasise it more. You can use multiple layers of different colours to determine the brightness of the hues by adding contrasting colours underneath your highlights to mute vibrancy or creating saturation by adding multiple layers of the same colour in various shades.
- Zenithal-style dry brushing - Zenithal-style dry brushing is a technique that allows you to ‘speed paint’ your miniatures, while also allowing you to maintain a high level of quality within your painting. This style of dry brushing is essentially a ‘grisaille’ underpainting that fills in shadows and highlights quickly before you add colour via glazing. You start with a black or dark grey base coat or primer, before dry brushing with a light grey paint, which will highlight the midtones, textures and overall shape of your miniature. Then use a white paint to brush over the raised areas of the character and start blocking in the highlights. This will form a perfect base for you to start applying coloured glazes over.
Common Mistakes
- Too much paint on your brush - Not removing enough excess paint or pressing too hard with your paint brush will always result in you applying too much paint to your model and not achieving that ‘dusted on’ paint look. You will fill in more than the raised areas of your model and end up applying a new layer of colour to it rather than creating a subtle highlighting effect. So always remember to paint with your brush lightly over the very top of the raised aspects of your character, and make sure that you dry brush with as little paint on your brush as possible.
- Using the wrong brush - Detailing brushes will never achieve the dry brush effect that you need. They are simply too small and are better suited to reaching into small crevices within your character to paint in details such as buckles and eyes, they won’t be able to cover enough area to achieve an even coverage of dry brushing highlights. Sable hair brushes are also very unsuitable for dry brushing with, since painting over areas of texture can be very damaging to your brushes. Sable hair bristles are delicate, and using them to dry brush will damage their shape retention and sharp point.
Want to know more about sable brushes and their characteristics? Check out our blog: Sable or Synthetic? Choosing the Right Brush for Wargaming Miniatures and Scale Modelling.
- Skipping the test step - By skipping the testing step of dry brushing and applying it directly to your model, you run the risk of applying your paint incorrectly onto your final model. Always test out your strokes on a dry brush board before painting, so you can ensure that you have removed enough paint and have an accurate consistency for the effect you would like to create.
- Colour selection for highlights - Never use pure white for the highlights when dry brushing, always select a paint colour that is a few shades lighter than the base colour of your model for the best results. The temperature of your drybrush colour can also be used to indicate multiple different lighting types; a warm orange or yellow can indicate sunlight shining onto your character while a cooler blue or grey can indicate moonlight. A higher contrast between your base and highlight colour can also show bright lighting or a glow from another aspect of the model.
- Combining dry brushing with washes - You can use washes to elevate the tonal values within your wargaming miniatures. Washes are often used on deep recesses within your models, emphasising the characters’ shadows, while dry brushing highlights the elevated structures within them. Combining the two is an excellent way to develop contrast and really exaggerate tone.
Dry brushing is a core skill that helps you to elevate your wargaming miniatures without much effort at all. However, knowing all of the intricacies of the technique will help you to fully master it and perfectly tailor your dry brushing to achieve the most realistic and impactful outcomes. Practice will always make perfect, so experiment with lots of varieties of different brushes, colours and styles to fully discover what works best for you and your practice.
Have a look through our dry brushes and dry brush accessory range to discover how to start introducing dry brushing into your miniature painting.
