Cheat edge highlights

Edge highlights... You either love them or hate them.

Personally, I love them on some parts of miniatures and hate them on other parts. But what I really hate about them, is having to paint edge highlights. It is one of the most fiddly, time consuming parts of painting a model. Your brush tip must be near perfect, your paint should be diluted to get a nice flow but not too thin and some area's are really, really hard to reach and not paint on other parts!

That is why, dear readers, in this article I will tell you how I cheat my edge highlights.

In historical scale model you see people using graphite pencils to create metallic welds and edges. This gave me an idea and I set out to my art store to buy artists watercolor pencils.

I used a pencil sharpener to get rid of the protective coating on the tip. Now, as you would with a brush, run the side of the tip over all your edges. Its really quick and easy! You can even erase errors using an eraser or a wet brush. You won't have to mind paint drying in the tip of your brush or paint drying on your palette.

** Make sure to varnish after applying the edge highlights. The watercolor pencil is not very durable!**

Some examples of my first trial run:

Overall I think this is about four times faster then using paint. I bought a bunch of different colors so I can have several stages of edge highlights.

The watercolor pencils could also be used to draw a sketch for if you want to freehand. You can blend out the pencil drawing with a wet brush or just paint over it.

I hope this quick article helped some of you.

If it did, feel free to share your experience in the comments!

As always, thank you for reading and hobby on!

Comparing miniature skulls

Hi guys and girls! (I'm still convinced there are girls reading this blog, at least I like to think that...)

Today I bring you sort of a review.

Reason for this is that I treated myself on some Secret Weapon Miniatures goodies. I'm more then sure that most of them will be mentioned in this blog in the future.

For now I would like to talk about skulls. One of the items I bought is the famed Sack O' Skulls. The product description says it contains 2.5 grams of loose cast resin skulls selected from five different sculpts. This means you will receive about 50 small resin skulls! Joy!

In this hobby we enjoy so much we often try to recreate a setting in a grimdark future, scary caves, old battlefields or planes littered with bones. This little bag filled with little skulls helps you to make just that!

I've used quite a few skulls in my 3-4 year career being a figure builder and painter. I usually add them to bases to create a darker setting, but you could also make a necklace out of them to make a monstrous creature even more monstrous.

On with the comparison. I selected a few of the skulls currently in my possession. I took some of the different skulls from the Secret Weapon Miniatures Sack 'O Skulls but I couldn't find the five different sculpts. I also found one of my plastic skulls from a Games Workshop Vampire Counts kit, and a skull from a Chinese caster.

Lets start by talking about how to acquire these skulls.

• The Sack 'O Skulls can be bought from the Secret Weapon Miniatures website or from retailers. The Sack 'O Skulls will set you back $15 or less if they are having a sale.
• The Games Workshop skulls are by far the most expensive. They are not sold separately (which is a shame because its a beautiful sculpt!) so you will need to buy several kits to get a bunch of skulls. There are some bits sites that sell individual bits but skulls are almost always sold out. 
•  The Chinese skulls in my possession are only sold online. I won't link to the site because I honestly don't know if he sculpted them himself or just recast them. They are the cheapest in this comparison because they cost like $1.50 for ten skulls.

Picture time! 

the skulls side by side

So the Secret Weapon Miniatures skulls gives you about 50 skulls from five different designs. They are slightly bigger then the GW and China cast skulls. The Games Workshop skulls come in different shapes as well. It all depends on the kit you bought. The China skulls are all the same. It is a nice sculpt though. The resin used is very hard and a bit brittle, this makes this a major downside to this product, since it makes it harder to use for conversions. 

So that's it I guess, I don't really know what else to tell you about these skulls. If you feel I left anything out, forgot about anything of if you have a question please just leave a comment down in the comment section. 

Thank you all for reading and see ya next time.