How in the heck do you drybrush with acrylics? I've always used enamels before. Also when I'm brush painting with them in general they seem to dry out fast and are difficult to work with. Any advice?

Ive had the same problems with Tamiya acrylics , i think they are too thin so normally I use enamels for dry brushing.

However i recently used Games Workshop acrylics and they work fine for dry brushing


Ian

I use Tamiya acrylics for drybrushing occassionally. Yes they are very thin especially in a freshly opened bottle. As the solvent goes off with subsequent use the bottom does get a bit more viscous.

But back to the question. You can drybrush by not adding any water/thinner for dilution. Place as little as possible on your palette. Using your brush just barely dip it in the paint. Run the brush over tissue a bit and while it may seem little have remained there's still enough paint to drybrush. Drying times tend to be faster than enamels of course so a lot of patience is required as you may need several dips and brush strokes for larger areas. Personally I kind of enjoy using acrylics.

You should try using Tamiya to drybrush in Australia!!
(For those that don't know we have just ahd a record year in regards to temp.)
They have dried before you get the brush to the model!!!
That's why I now use Vajello - and I have no problems

I'm telling you guys.....artist's oils are the way to go!
I rarely use anything else for drybrushing....mostly my metallics for gun barrels or tools. The oils are a little expensive to get started but they'll last forever and the workability ( is that a word?) is awesome.

To answer your question though, I have some Vallejo acrylics and use their thinner when drybrushing. You can also try some craft store "extender". That will slow the drying time but you can't use it with very thin paint bacause it will thin it even more.

Ditto Gred use art oils.

One exception, if you must use a silver, use the humbrol or such.

AJ

Alisdair is perfectly right except I mix a little of the silver pigment dragged from the bottom of the humbrol can and mix it in varying amounts with Raw Umber oil paint and drybrush with that. By varying the amount of silver pigment in the raw umber you can gain many differing metal effects.

Hope this helps.

John

I dry-brush with acrylics all the time. There's a secret weapon that makes this as easy as DB'ing with enamels or oils. It's called (I'm not making this up) - Acrylic Retarder. It's a thin gel available in art stores. You mix it with model acrylics, or, better yet, artist tube/high viscocity acrylics. I usually make a small mix of white artist acrylic, retarder, and the base color of the thing I'm drybrushing. With the retarder in it, you've got a lot of workable time when you can just wipe off any mistakes. But once you leave it for an hour or so, it dries as indelibly as any acrylic.

Here's a link to the retarder:

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And note that artists' acrylic tubes are MUCH cheaper for the volume than the little bottles they sell to modelers! One tube of titanium white would DB many hundreds of models, especially when mixed with the retarder!

I personally like using Oils mixed with Enamals for my dry brushing. Never had much luck drybrushing acrylics.

i had best luck drybrushing with acrylics by mixxing with alcohol, and being real fast on the paint job, lol, really it did help .....


reb

Acrylics can be just as easily drybrushed as can enamels. You can extend the open (working) time by using an extending medium, such as Jo Sonja's "Stroke and Blending Medium", available at your local art supply store. Otherwise, you can mix your own: for 8 Oz of extender, mix 2 oz matte acrylic varnish, 30 drops of acrylic flow medium, and 30 drops of acrylic retarder to 6 oz distilled water. mix a couple of drops of extender with your paint, then set up your dry brush as usual and go to town.
Hope this helps
Jim

I only use acyrlics for air brushing now. The just don't work well for dry brushing.

I use humbrols mainly for dry brushing now.




Totally agree. This is one of my favorite things to play around with.

Oils are a bit more in price but I bought some 2 years ago I have barely even put a dent in my supply. You don't need much. At this rate I will run out in 20 years!

I drybrush with acryllics all the time, I use the craft paint for doing this, it works great, no extender, retarder, etc. Just open the bottle, and dip my brush in, wipe it off with some paper towels, and I'm good to go. The artist oil method sounds interesting, I may give it a try, since I do all of my washes in oils now as it is...