The Best Drybrushes for Miniatures

What drybrushing is, which explains the brush

You load the brush with paint, then wipe almost all of it off onto a paper towel until the brush feels nearly dry. Then you scrub the brush lightly across the model. Because there is so little paint and so little moisture, only the raised edges and texture pick it up, and the recesses stay untouched.

It is the inverse of a wash, and between them the two do most of the work of making a model look three-dimensional with almost no brush control required.

It is also, mechanically, abrasion. You are dragging dry bristles across a hard surface under pressure. That is why the brush requirement is stiffness rather than finesse, and why no sensible painter does it with a sable.

How we picked

• Stiffness. The bristles need to push pigment onto an edge, not fold around it.
• Blunt end. A flat or domed tip covers a whole surface evenly. A point drybrushes a line.
• Short bristles. Less flex means more control over pressure.
• Price. It is a consumable. Paying sable money for one is a mistake.

The free option, which is genuinely good

A detail brush that has lost its point is a perfect drybrush. It is short, splayed, stiffened by whatever paint it has accumulated, and already paid for. Experienced painters keep a jar of dead brushes for exactly this, and it is not a compromise — a splayed brush is the right shape.

So the honest advice is: do not buy a drybrush with your first order. Use the worst brush in your synthetic set for drybrushing from day one, and by the time it is genuinely finished you will have another retired brush to replace it with.

Buy a purpose-made one when you are drybrushing a lot — large armies, heavy texture, terrain — because the short stiff shape is more controllable and noticeably faster than a splayed detail brush.

Technique, because the brush is the easy part

1. Use a lighter version of the color underneath, not a different color. Drybrushing is a highlight, and a highlight is the same hue lighter.
2. Wipe off more paint than feels right. The brush should look almost clean. Nearly every bad drybrush job is too much paint.
3. Flick across the surface, do not scrub into it. Light, fast strokes that catch the raised edges. Pressure puts paint in the recesses, which defeats the point.
4. Build in several passes. You cannot take drybrushing off, so go light and repeat.
5. Do it after the wash, not before. Wash to darken the recesses, then drybrush to lighten the edges. Reversing them means the wash removes the drybrushing.

Fuller treatment, including what drybrushing is bad at, in drybrushing miniatures.

Do you need Dry paints?

No. Citadel’s Dry range is a very thick, low-moisture paint formulated so you can drybrush straight from the pot without wiping off. It works and it is a convenience rather than a capability — any Layer paint left on a dry palette for a minute does the same thing.

If you drybrush constantly it saves a few seconds per color. Otherwise it is an extra pot. More on the paint types in Base, Layer, Shade and Contrast explained.