Afternoon #warmongers and #warhammercommunity I've been #paintingwarhammer on my #Tyranid Warriors. I'm up to 20 painting sessions to get to this stage, which I'm sure you're aware of because these posts appear endless, sorry. 


In my defence, I'm a slow painter, this is a significant batch job [for me] and some folk like the nid content - so enjoy it while you can, there isn't too much xenos on the To Do List lined up after this.


Once again reminded of how I could do really fine striations on my Trygon but not here. I'm using an Army Painter Insane Detail brush for this. Now I know brush size isn't always an indicator of the ability to do a fine stroke.


As Henry South covered in his blog [yes this will be part of Old Stuff Day], a size 1 brush with a fine tip can do just as fine lines as one with four hairs. But for some reason I just can't get that working either way. At the risk of sounding like a bad workman blaming his tools I think it might be the paint itself. 


The DecoArt Crafters Acrylic is awesome, but it doesn't thin well. It dries quickly and has a slightly rubbery intermediate drying stage. This means I possibly press harder than I should, which splays the bristles more. Thinning with water doesn't give me the coverage I want.


So, I'll look at alternatives and play around with some things in the future. Maybe I need to invest in a new quality brush or two as well? It's funny though, because I've done really fine lines with the cheapest of Taklon brushes.


They just lose their point eventually and then there's no hope for them. I have the Master's Brush Soap and Vallejo brush restorer liquid, but even so I never feel I'm doing a decent enough job of cleaning them, or cleaning them too much!


I'm convinced my continuous cleaning is probably doing more harm than good...


Oh, the Spore Mine too, yeah those individual plates look proper chonky with their highlights.


Not entirely sure how happy I am with this, it feel like there should be some of the dark blue on the plates, rather than just in the cracks. Honestly, what difference does it make though? It's one Spore Mine!


I didn't even want to paint it, I never use them, it was just hanging around getting in the way. As long as it's 'good enough' it'll do.