brush painting

Give this page a read and see if it helps. It's not an extensive how-to but will get you pointed in the right direction. Scroll down to the brush painting section. I state the basics for any brush painting application. Hope it helps... 

www.the-great-planes.com/Painting3.html

Andy

There are a few basic things that will help.

At the risk of overstaing the obvious, get decent brushes.  Spending a couple of bucks will alleviate some painting headaches.  Get a variety of sizes so that you can use the best size for the task at hand.

Try to paint from the "wet edge" as you you are applying paint, painting from the previous strokes while they are still wet extending onto the unpainted areas.  By so doing, you'll be creating any brush strokes in wet paint, which will give it a better chance of leveling.

Make sure that you have thin enough paint so that it flows easily.  I usually keep a little tin of thinner handy an periodically dip my brush into it as I'm painting.  There's sort of a balancing act between too thin and not thin enough which you'll get the feel of with practice.

Don't overbrush.  After an area has been painted and started to dry, resist the temptation to do any additional touch up.  This is sort of a corrolary to the rule about painting from the wet edge.  A lot of times, I find that hand brush painted surfaces start looking rather uneve as they dry, but a lot of that will go away once everything is fully cured.

I believe it was ship modeler Jim Baumann (many of whose builds can be seen in steelnavy.com's galleries) who paints using vertical strokes.  On first thought, it seems counter-intuitive, but by doing short vertical strokes, the wet edge will be short, so you can paint from it without it drying.  Another advantage is that and the any minor streaks will be running in the natural direction of weathering, which on ships is mostly vertical, so they won't be as obvious.

Here's an old FSM article you may want to read;

http://www.finescale.com/fsm/default.aspx?c=a&id=285

All good advice, I've also found flat paints brush better than gloss. In my experience you are much better off using a flat paint and then putting a clear gloss coat or Future over it when you are done if you need a gloss finish. Interesting that the poster above has found the opposite to be true, perhaps a difference in enamals vs acrylics or some other variation.

Priming does help, and I've found just laying down a very thin coat, almost a wash will help a lot with the later coats coverage.

I've found Tamiya paints are much harder to brush paint large surfaces than any other brand I've used. They are great for small areas but dry very quickly so on larger areas they give me a lot of trouble. It can be done, but I prefer to use otherbrands if possible. It's not just because the are water based either, I use Model Master Acryl, Polly S, Games Workshop and Vallejo paints regularly which are all water based. I do have a lot of Tamiya paints and it is a good brand, I just don't like them for that particular application.