Painting Straight Lines, What Paint And How?

[Ellen]

Let's take as an example one of the works of Peter Main that was shown on Tandy website: a lot of thin straight and curved lines, all perfectly contained within their boundaries without overflow and inaccuracies. Or Celtic patterns. What technique, dyes, paints or inks, brushes allow to do that?

I tried to dilute arts acrylics with airbrush medium, slow dry medium, still not good enough. Down to 10/0 fairly good synthetic brushes for acrylics. Flow is not good enough and hand is not rock steady. Same with F's Pro-oil dyes, they tend to overflow the borders.

At larger scale, there is no problem, but starting from 1/8" (3 mm) and down it becomes more and more difficult.

Any tips?

[cajun]

Let's take as an example one of the works of Peter Main that was shown on Tandy website: a lot of thin straight and curved lines, all perfectly contained within their boundaries without overflow and inaccuracies. Or Celtic patterns. What technique, dyes, paints or inks, brushes allow to do that?

I tried to dilute arts acrylics with airbrush medium, slow dry medium, still not good enough. Down to 10/0 fairly good synthetic brushes for acrylics. Flow is not good enough and hand is not rock steady. Same with F's Pro-oil dyes, they tend to overflow the borders.

At larger scale, there is no problem, but starting from 1/8" (3 mm) and down it becomes more and more difficult.

Any tips?

I use a ruling pen, just takes a little practice.

Regards,

Bill Parrie

[tg lucas]

i use a smaller brush, sometimes i even trim to only 10 hairs and make sure the brush is not loaded

[Ellen]

Good ideas, than you both. A little more clarification, please:

Bill,

What kind of paint do you use in the ruler pen? Do you load it by brush from the side, without interrupting line? How better to do the 1/8" (3mm) line - it's too wide for normal procedure, inks ends almost immediately, and with each recharge there is a good chance to end with poodle of paint on the leather instead of line. Draw edges and fill inside using brush?

I know how to use it on drawing paper and load it with drawing ink, but it's all.

Also, ruler sometimes leaves mark on leather. What to do to prevent this?

Lucas, the 10 hairs brush, even liner, holds so little pant that it should be recharged every half of inch (1 cm). Unless you have a rock steady hand and the eagle eye, return at the same place repeatedly could be problematic for most of the folks. What do you using, cova color, ink?

[tg lucas]

the problem with leather is it like painting on a sponge, the more you load into the brush, the wider the spread will be on the leather, sometimes you can make a small groove to "hold" the color but that depends on the application, also i try to make sure my leather is dry when i do small details due to the capillary action of the leather.

Edited February 4, 2011 by tg lucas

[pete]

Ellen, Have you tried dying/painting AFTER you oil the piece? It prevents a LOT of bleeding.

pete

[Ellen]

Thanks again! Good ideas to try.

I didn't paint on oiled leather yet, only complete dyeing by spirit dyes.

[PcCowboy]

Some projects I don't use paint. I use color fine tip markers. You can get them in almost any color now. Use the permanent ones, not the water base ones.