Is Drybrushing actually useless? or...

in this video i have decided to test the most beginner friendly technique and that is dry brushing many painters consider dry brushing to be inferior painting method and i have chosen several things that i want to paint with these new brushes that are specifically made for dry brushing to test this hypothesis the question is how well am i able to paint these miniatures is drybrushing actually useless let’s find out also just before the video begins i can see that just a fraction of my viewers are subscribed so go ahead and subscribe it’s free and you can always change your mind and unsubscribe later if you want now dry brushing gets a better rep. but soon we are gonna find out just how effective can it be when painting various things i assume that there is no doubt about how awesome dry brushing works when it comes to bases or painting terrain pieces but i have picked these several things that i want to paint before i decide just how good or useless it is when it comes to painting actual miniatures let’s start with a vehicle Drukhari venom you will hardly find as stylish and precise of a vehicle as this little gem but can it be painted by dry brushing for this i have picked this deep red color scheme that should fit this miniature i have started applying Khorne red on all of the elevated areas by dry brushing and stippling all around the surface i have paid extra attention to corners and edges the only parts that weren’t touched at all were direct shades or parts that should not be hit by the light you could notice that i am using this little dampening pad right here so even though i am dry brushing there is still some water involved so the surface will not end up super dusty which would fit way more when painting ruins bases or terrain pieces when i feel like i got a good coverage and not many brushstrokes were visible i started adding lighter and lighter reds first i got Mephiston red and focused on covering even less of the surface of course even though dry brushing is considered to be one of the faster painting methods out there i still took my time to build up a smooth gradient like this i even added ak interactive deep red focusing on less and less surface and finally i picked some fluorescent orange from vallejo and mixed it in with my deep red the lighter i got the less surface i covered keeping the brush a little bit damp is the key to achieving somewhat of a smooth finish to my surprise even though the whole venom itself is a little bit of a flat miniature i was able to dry brush it without any bigger issue now even though some edges could be very well picked out by dry brush itself it is not the case for all of the edges so i had to use my precise brush and pick them out by edge highlighting them after all Drukhari without those sharp edge highlights would not really feel that stylish the last thing that i have painted here by dry brushing it is the front glass i am way too lazy to actually paint the inside and glue on the transparent windshield so i simply spray it and paint it i covered the whole thing with a dark blue and progressively added lighter and lighter blue which i stippled towards the center of the windshield in the end i think that we got a really nice result so to conclude the drybrushing on a vehicle i think that it’s absolutely doable and actually i think that we are even close to having this sort of airbrushed look so if you don’t want to be bothered with an airbrush maybe dry brushing your vehicles is a way for you of course i didn’t test this on a vehicle that has far more edges for example like space marine rhino but you know you could for example pick out just the edges by slowly and carefully dry brushing over them now if i had to rate this result i would probably give it 7.5 out of 10 since i can do smoother result but honestly if i saw this on the table i would ask someone if he uses airbrush or not which i know is kind of a dick move but you know so overall i feel like we got really nice result really fast but it still needs some additional touch ups also weapons and some additional details are still not painted so there’s that but now let’s look at something that is far more precise and that is space marine power armor going into this i have already seen far more problems than advantages for one space marine armor is very often depicted to be very precise and clean and the second issue is that space marines that are painted by ‘eavy metal team don’t really have any volume on them so it’s basically art of stacking multiple edge highlights on top of each other now this doesn’t mean that you cannot paint volumes on space marines but if you don’t really like that you cannot really avoid it with dry brushing so i started off with dark purple paint and wanted to go for ghostly space marine once this guy was base coated i started adding scale 75 surfer orc flesh which honestly became one of my favorite colors lately you can already see the issue here the built up volume quickly becomes scratchy since brush strokes are visible and it’s just not consistent i have tried to use stippling here and there but i didn’t want to risk getting the paint into recesses another issue is that i could not hit all of the edges that i wanted to especially the ones on the helmet which is a bummer since i tried going over the helmet multiple times only to highlight the forehead area but not the face area i even added some ivory to my surfer orc flesh to build up more highlights in the end i ended up with inconsistent volume and too high contrast which definitely doesn’t fit space marine armor but i decided to persist and tried different approach this time i tried to dry brush on some white paint first before applying color that i want which is yellow in this case instead of slowly focusing on building the volume i have used the white quite heavily which unfortunately hit some of the recesses after that i simply took yellow paint and went over all of the white parts i even added a little bit of white to highlight the sharpest edges in the end it doesn’t look as bad as the first guy at least from the waist up but i still feel like space marines should be painted more precisely now sure you can go step further and highlight the edges shade the recesses maybe use oil wash for that to be really faster but you can do this same with an airbrush and get way more consistent and better results and even more quickly unfortunately i have still yet to see space marine that is dry brushed and looks good but if you like the result go for it after all it saves you a lot of time but if it was me i would use airbrush and apply some wash if i had to rate the dry brushing of a space marine power armor on a scale of 10 i would either give it three or four i mean maybe this is because i am not really that skilled when it comes to dry brushing but you know i have painted this venom and it was dry brushed as well and unlike this space marine armor i really like the result on the venom maybe it comes down to the fact that i really don’t like this messy space marine look even this so-called grim dark style but if you want something effective fast and simple this can be a way that is why i didn’t give it even less points now we are gonna paint last miniature and test both non-metallic metal and glow effect this necron here was an obvious choice for me since necrons are metallic and have many glowing orbs all over the place first i will try to paint the whole miniature so it looks metallic i am using the same recipe that i have used for my non-metallic metal explained in under 5 minutes video so basically just dark sea blue with progressively added white once i have covered the whole necron in dark sea blue i have started adding white and picked out all of the elevated areas focusing mainly on the edges of course this looks quite messy and you don’t have such a great control that you would have when glazing but this is way faster the lighter i went and the less space i wanted to cover the more i have used stippling motion instead of dry brushing in the end thanks to this i didn’t get the paint into the recesses and i built some reflections that could be considered to look metallic at least when you look at it from distance lastly i picked out the edges by rubbing the side of the brush off each edge i think that this actually looks metallic not really super reflective shiny metallic but old and dusty metallic right after that i have gone straight for the glow effect before going for any color i have covered the huge orb thing in white which will help us get a nice and vibrant green glow now with Livery green i started putting down brush strokes on the light source as opposed to glazing to achieve the glow you don’t aim your brush strokes towards the light source but from the light source out since you want to put a lot of pressure to the center and create dim light with less pressure the farther you go so i applied to the green very sparingly the further i went to make the light source itself truly pop i added vallejo ice yellow to my livery green and carefully stippled it to the center and some of the most exposed edges in this case i think that dry brushing can work for non-metallic metal and for the glow effect but the thing with non-metallic metal is that i didn’t really have to use dry brushing to paint the whole thing but instead i could go for stippling and use even other brushes that are not dedicated to dry brushing but whether you are using stippling or dry brushing the thing is that you are creating texture and it will result in this sort of used and dusty look but you will not get as dusty result when you are stippling somehow this doesn’t really bother me as much when you are painting glow effect so if you want to paint some glow effect that is very nice and very quick this is a viable option for you now if i had to rate dry brushing and non- metallic metal i would probably give it 6 out of ten not great not terrible and for the glow effect i would probably give it seven or seven point five since you can get some really nice result and really quickly so to answer the question is dry brushing actually useless it’s definitely not i mean sure you cannot really paint everything perfectly and precisely when it comes to dry brushing which is mostly obvious when you are painting something like space marine armor but if you progress slowly enough and carefully enough you can get great results for example like this venom for some things you can get really far really quickly but it is better to use it in conjunction with other painting techniques which i highly encourage you to do however my issue with painting smaller miniatures is that you actually might be better off using strictly stippling instead of dry brushing so you have better control and you are still very quick but we are going to talk about stippling next week and what do you guys think do you love dry brushing do you hate it leave a comment down in the comment section and we can talk about it and if you like what i’m doing here definitely subscribe to my channel and hit that bell so you will know when the next video comes lastly if you want to help others get better at painting miniatures give this video a thumbs up so that way youtube gods will know that they should take this video and recommend it to them and see you guys in the next one bye .