I'm struggling with painting thin lines on 1/72 figures. Stuff like goggle straps, head set wires, other fine details. Even my finest brushes seem 10X to big, toothpicks seem to cause the paint to blob and not flow. Any Suggestions?

You may be using fine brushes but how small are they?

Also the thinner the paint the finer the work you can do.

Cheers,
Joe

Good question, it claims to be a 18/0, bristles are up to .112" long and less than .060" in diameter at the ferule.

Ok.... so I see you are using a very small brush that does not
hold so much paint.

Thin down your paint, this will increase the flow of the
small amount of paint this brush can hold and you will
have better control of creating thin lines. You may have to
make multiple passes but you will have thinner lines.

Cheers,
Joe

Another option is to use a fine line brush. I have a few different sizes. For 1/72, go with the finest brush you can find. They hold plenty of paint and allow for precision application.

Here's an off the wall suggestion . If you paint say the uniforms in acrylic , let that cure afterwards use enamel for the belts and straps , you can be a bit sloppy, after a little bit you can clean up the over spill with a brush dampened with paint thinner, it will not affect the acrylic just the enamel . You can use enamel on the uniforms just make sure it's fully cured before going over it again .

I use an airbrush, and masking is a must! My hands aren't steady enough to do without either. And, even well masked lines require a bit of touchup.

same thing if you use enamel over acrylic, enamel has far longer cure time . Ever consider one of those table lamps , the ones with the round magnifier inside . That might help it will free one hand , you can set the figure on the table and have the luxury of bracing the other hand to steady it .

Thanks guys. Here's my problem in living color:


I'm trying to do the goggle straps on this pair of pilots. What little strapwork I got done was with an old ruling pen. Not that you can really see much in this pic.

Mark, as others have said, it is very important to have correctly thinned paint. Too thick and you are trying to drag it into place, and you will get blobs, smears or nothing. Too thin and it will spread. Using enamels as others have suggested makes sense, but even easier to wipe off if it goes wrong is oil paint. Only downside is it will take longer to dry, though for tiny lines, not that long (24 / 48 hours?).

If the detail you are trying to paint is actually moulded as a raised line on the surface, try painting it with the brush held at right angles to the raised line, so that you are painting with the side of the bristles, rather than trying to paint along the line with the brush tip. This way the line is guiding the side of the brush and you can't slip off it, whereas by trying to brush along the line it is easy to go off course. It's a bit like doing one of those brass rubbings - only the bit that sticks up gets the paint.

It isn't always the case that a thinner brush is better - very thin brushes hold very little paint, and it can make it more awkward to get the paint on in a regular line. 18/0 sounds like it might only have about 4 hairs in it! The brush being new or in good condition will certainly help.

If you really only want to use acrylic paints, you could protect the main coat with some varnish of another type, that way you might be able to take off any mistakes with some paint thinner without damaging the main coat.

Don't be afraid to keep touching up between the two colours - so if the strap is too thick, get the paint that the helmet is painted with and touch it up to thin the strap line down. Frankly, one of the big advantages of having lots of premixed paint shades is that you can keep touching up without having to remix matching colours all the time. Retouching is a necessary part of painting, don't expect to get it right first time - unfortunately step by step photos that people show here and elsewhere tend to give the impression that people do get it right first time, but it's not really true!

Kolinkski sable brushes are what you want. The hairs hold a point extremely well and adequate amounts of paint. You can get by with a 0, 1, even 2 sized brush, the point is that fine. The downside is they are pricey and you are not likely to find them at the local Michael's, A C Moore or Hobby Lobby. Dick Blick is an excellent online source, however.

For what it's worth there a set of seven round detail red sable brushes on E bay free shipping take a look at that and see if the specs meet your needs ?

I'm into faster gratification than E-bay. There's a Dick Blick not too far away. I'll check them out this weekend.

Never thought of using the side of the brush, or acrylic over enamel. I'm a little shy on acrylic pains, so this is a great excuse to try out some of the Vallejo or Citadel stuff.....

Am I the only one who cheats?I use only acrylic and for thin lines I use 0.01 pen. well of course the color issue is a problem but at least for black and blue (haven't tried but also red I guess).... And a good magnifier:)

The finer windsor-newton brushes are sold by Blick's - excellent art store, brush restorer form windsor newton also a great item especially for small scale figure painting as it keeps brushes in "fine line" service longer. Longer handle brushes give better control, all I use now are long handled artist brushes and they go down to 000 (the finest I would use even for 1/72.

I forget the exact spellings for the lines but -
Galleria / Galeria - value brushes, but on sale
Monarch - expensive but more durable. The points don't bend like others.
For short term use the "Scholastic:" lines of Nylon (white) brushes aren't the worst and are very cheap nigh disposable.

RE your figure... I would mask that. I don't see the line is raised all that well. Maybe paint the strap, overpaint the top end of the strap and cover with the helmet color? Usually easier...
I've only painted some HO railroad figures... never had to do goggles.

Thanks guys, I actually have a set of these Prismacolor pens at Michaels But I didn't think that they'd work over enamel paint..... They may have them in other colors basides basic black and blue.

That photo is starting to look like what I see everyday, guess I need new glasses. I've got to go back in a touch up part of the helmet, I totally missed it first time.

. Did you get it ?

. They come in different colors but they are inks and alcohol based , I believe right after you apply them and they are dry must be sealed or they will run . I had tried them to do the piping on the German uniforms and they did not live up to expectations , they go on too thin and required way too many applications and the problem is the new ink would re activate the old ink , just led to a mess .