"Helpful Tips for Painting Piping on 18mm" Topic

Got any?

I'm painting an 1805 French line regiment from AB, and I'm pretty disappointed with my efforts to paint the white piping on collars and cuffs.

I tried using the tiniest brush I have (10/0 Liner), but my hands are not steady enough. The piping is way too wide and a bit wavy.

I tried painting the entire cuff white, and then covering it over with red cuffs and blue coat sleeves leaving just a tiny bit of white where the piping should be. A little better, but still not very good.

At this point I'm thinking about omitting the white piping entirely. It isn't very noticeable anyway. But I was really hoping mine would be close to this good.

link

P.S. These are my first AB Napoleonic figures and they are so nice! I have a lot of 10mm ACW, but it is getting more difficult for me to paint that scale. Really liking these 18mm figures!

Don't paint it.

If you can't see it from across the table don't bother painting it.

Example:
Collar yellow piping on red.
Paint it yellow. Then inside red.
That's the way I do.

It's all about good brushes and good paint. I use Raphael's kolinsky sables and vallejo paints. Make sure you thin the paint with water(not too thin) to get a smooth consistency. Then it's practice, practice, practice… Even then, piping on 15/18mm is a waste of time imo, especially for wargaming. As you see in the photo below, I do not paint the piping on cuffs and collar.

Smallest brush you can find 18/0, I'm liking long bristles and magnifiers can be your best helper. Do what you can and at 3' away for 15-18's will be good enough for me.

Good brushes and a steady hand, if you don't have both then I would paint it solid red. I think it's better to leave the small detail and keep the painting neat and tidy rather than attempt something you cannot do and end up with something your not happy with.

A bit pricey, but try a Windsor Newton Series 7 brush size 000. Often smaller brushes, such as a 10/0, don't provide enough bristle strength to adequately control the paint. W/N brushes maintain a very sharp point with proper care.

I leave it off and have done for years. It's impossible to paint it in scale even on 28mm figures and painting it can often make the uniform look messy and bitty, unlike the real thing. It's the overall impression of the unit that counts IMHO.

If a line of piping on a real jacket is say, 4mm wide on a 28mm size figure that equates to a line thickness of 0.07mm. Then add the fact that the guy might be covered in dust and powder residue… On an 18mm figure that line drops down to about 0.04mm. I've yet to see anybody paint that convincingly and consistently.

Look at some pictures of Napoleonic re-enactors and scale the images down on your screen to give an impression of what you might actually see if a real person is at a distance to make them the size of your model and go from there.

Raphael brushes are much better than Windsor Newton. They are still hand made and have much more consistent quality. Windsor Newton is hit or miss, even the Series 7.

I only work in two eras:

7YW Prussian and Austrian in Old Glory 15mm, where I simply to NOT attempt any piping; and

Napoleonic, Peninsular War in 30MM. I like the method of painting collars and cuffs – and lapels – for the French a mass of white, often up to the elbow! Fast and sloppy! I then use scarlet for the collar and cuffs, leaving a thin line of white looking like I edged the cuffs/collars. I do some regiments with scarlet cuff flaps, so try to pain the scarlet rectangle, then close in on the white piping with dark blue for the coat sleeves.

I paint wide scarlet on the edge of the lapels, careful to not go onto the actual lapel. Then dark blue to make a narrow scarlet edging to the lapel. White turnbacks for line infantry, then red where the blue will be, then blue to make a narrow scarlet edging.

I usually do NOT attempt pocket edging!

But I am not "master painter!" Just having fun, in very limited time.

GdeP

one trick on shoulder straps I use is to paint the piping colour on the whole strap first then fill in the middle with the main colour. e.g. blue strap with red piping: paint whole strap red, then just 'dob' in enough blue in the middle of the strap. Much easier than starting with blue and then painting the red piping.

A number of good points here. Painting small things is much easier with a sharply-pointed brush that has just the right amount of paint at the right consistency. For me, that means a Kolinsky sable brush (0 or 00) because you get a nice point and the brush will carry enough paint. Yep, 10/0 is teeny, but drawing a line with'em--I can't do it. And on small figures, as noted, I think you're much better off "suggesting," with a quick dash on each side of the collar, the piping, rather than trying to plunk the whole Monty down. Piping is kind of like eyes--you really shouldn't be able to see it at this scale, and if not done really, really well, you're spending a lot of time on something that ends up subtracting from the final effect.

If your struggling to keep a straight line for it and finding it difficult to use the piping colour then fill in the field colour I'd just leave it as the main field colour. On the table nobody will really notice.
All the best
Paul

Edge it as carefully as you can with your white then go back and black out the stray marks, or to cut the width down. Do the piping first so you have room to make errors.

Same technique for eyes, blob white in the corners of each eye, then reshape the edges with black again over everything not the eyeball.

use gouache instead of acrylics, they have a better flow and don't dry up so fast on the brush.

Many good tips…thanks! I've been practicing some more since posting the question yesterday. My last batch looks a little better. Hopefully, the more I do, the better they'll turn out.

For collars, I'm finding it easier to paint the entire collar first in red, then add just a slight touch of white on the front part of the collar only. The sculpting of the collars helps a lot. I'm not painting the piping on the rest of the collar back to the ponytail. That's just not looking good, but the front of the collar is looking much better.

As for cuffs, I was trying to paint too much piping; I was trying to paint all of it just like the pictures in my Osprey and pictures found on the Internet. Here is one of my favorites:

link

On the most recent batch, I painted just one white line to separate the red cuff from the blue jacket sleeve, then I carefully painted over the white with red or blue until just a tiny sliver of white remained. That seems to be looking better, too. And it's getting easier.

If the piping on the cuffs don't look good, then I just paint over all of the white and that figure doesn't have piping on the cuffs at all. I'll use those guys in the back row.

Some new, smaller brushes are on my shopping list. I have one Kolinsky sable brush I bought probably 10 years ago from Colonial Photo & Hobby Shop when I lived in Orlando (Colonial Hobby is one of the few things I miss about Central Florida, that and Publix.)

Thanks again, appreciate all the quick replies.

I may try to post pictures at some point, but my photography skills are even worse than my painting skills.

Thanks for all the tips. I will be painting some French light infantry and needed to paint the white piping to break up the all blue uniform.

"I will be painting some French light infantry and needed to paint the white piping to break up the all blue uniform."

They are the only French troops I've painted the piping on and for just that reason. I use the approach described above of painting a wide white line and then painting the blue right up to it – it gives a much finer white line than I could ever paint on. For the lapels and turnbacks I just run the brush along the raised edge on the casting.

I don't bother with the line infantry after seeing some re-enactors at Salute and realising that you can barely see the piping at 25 yards.

I'm not too much on historical accuracy, but I have painted piping by priming white and painting the collar/cuff color as close to the edge as possible.