Fore thought

Give someone equipment to go into battle with and the first time it saves their life, they will quickly name, paint or personalize it in some form. Symbols tend to adorn machines or war, be they tanks, helmets or Warjacks and are a great way to personalize your painting efforts. It can be a little daunting at first, but hopefully I'll be able to arm you with a few tricks and techniques that will give you enough confidence to try out yourself.

Tools of the trade

One of the first things to think about is our brush. Now I know your first instinct is to grab a 250/0 brush of micro flea hair so you can do the finest possible line without having break out a laser that doubles as an atom splitter, but honestly its not needed. What is needed is a brush that has a good point and can hold that point. The lowest I would even consider going personally would be a #1 round. Why? Because it hold more paint, and means less trips to the palette and will give you more fluid action as you paint. If I'm working with a fairly thin medium, like ink or similarly lower viscosity medium and going for some longer thin lines I will break out my liner brush, which is fairly thin, but has some longer bristles that have a good flex feel, and will also hold more paint.

Now the medium we will choose for the most part will be a good miniature acrylic paint. The two attributes we are looking for the most in our paint are opacity and low viscosity. Obviously getting both of these attributes in a single paint is hard, and we do have to give and take a little. Sometimes we can even mix in a little ink in order to get these attributes. Often with black, india ink is a great start but I do tend to mix in a medium tone paint so its not so stark black. But you will find it has the best of both worlds.

Now a little forethought on the colors is in order. Some colors like Enchanted blue cover great, but all to often yellows are no where near opaque enough to even consider. So even a simple test on a piece of primed styrene or other material may be in order. Other things to consider, may be laying doing your symbol or design in white, and then covering the area with that not so opaque yellow color that you were going for. So be smart and test when possible if your uncertain, it will not only keep you from having to redo your design, it may keep you from having to repaint the area you were laying the symbol down on.

Another thing to consider, is laying down a coat of varnish prior to painting your symbol. An advantage to doing this, after laying down your symbol, and find it not to your liking, you can take it off with a light scrubbing from a tooth brush. Now keep in mind you still have to be careful and you also want to do this within a short time after painting it, because if you wait a day or so to take it off, it will become harder and harder to take off successfully as the acrylic medium dries to a harder shell. The one down side to this, is that mediums with a lower viscosity like inks, tend to bead on a varnished surface. The tooth of the varnished surface is obviously less and normal paints with their binders can still grab ahold of this surface. Just don't thin out your paints to the point of breaking them, as you will run across the same beading effect.

One thing to think about just prior to breaking out the paint brush with any design is the placement and size of your choice design. Even the best visualizer can benefit by taking a sharp pencil and lightly lay down the basic frame work of their symbol. It can be erased with care if needed and it can also be used as a guide when the paint starts to flow.

Balancing on a tight rope

One of the things to overcome will be the tendency of a shaking hand. Some are blessed with rock steady hands, others are cursed as they drag their caffeine IV around and make the very ground they walk on vibrate from shaking hands.

Simple bracing and angles can overcome this problem. Always use your tables edge to rest your forearms for starters. Also, use both hands to hold your paintbrush. No, seriously, hold it like you would normally, and allow your other hands forefinger to rest along the feral to steady the brush. You will obviously need to have what your painting to lay down and support itself. I often will have a clean work towel bundled up to support my miniature at any angle. Which leads us to the final issue of stroke angles. If at all possible, always maneuver your miniature so that you are pulling your paint stroke towards you in a very natural and comfortable way. it may add a bit of time having to move what your painting around a bit more, but your final results will improve.

Mechanics: How to overcome a round brush

The act of painting a symbol isn't that big of a deal, but painting one small, on a mini and getting it to come out right, is a whole different ball game. We are trying to over come a brush that tend to make lines that are much larger than we need. Trick is, we can't approach a symbol the same as we may paint it full sized and all to often, we try during our first attempts. We also need to take advantage of the negative space on a symbol because this is sometimes much easier to paint.

When I first learned how to illustrate graphics, I was taught with more traditional mediums and not on a computer. We did so with india ink and several tools. Needless to say, even something as simple as a perfectly square corner becomes something to tackle.

A corner seems simple enough, and with a bit of forethought, can turn out crisp and clean. Simply paint the two lines that will form the main part of a corner, but allow the stroke to go just a touch beyond the location of the corner. After that dries, go back in and work the negative space by using the original base color found where you were painting, and work along the edge to cover up the excess for a nice smooth edge on your corner.

A dag or tooth shape, can be as simple as the corner, but will be a more extreme in angles. You may not have to goto the length of pulling your stroke past its point, but may also be able to just lay down the shape with the point of your brush and then going back to clean up the edges via your base color.

Sometimes the base color that a symbol lays on top of may be a gradating color and not as simple to clean up the overlapping strokes. I will usually find the lightest color of the gradient to use as the color that I will sharpen up the edges with as it will also help to define your symbol even more as it creeps into a darker tones.

Down to the nitty gritty

So to give you a slightly better idea on a step by step of the common faction Symbols, I've created animated pop ups of these symbols. To keep the strain down for dial up users, You will only see static image on this page, but again, the pop ups will give you a nice view point of how you may want to attack painting a symbol.

And yes, I avoided showing off the Cryxian faction symbol, as it is a bit more complex and can be attacked with similar painting methods. Now these are just how I would approach these symbols and I only demonstrate them as such so that you might start thinking just a little differently on how to attack some symbols when painting via freehand. It can take a touch of time, but overall you will fine it time well spent.

Spank ya' later!

DD