The Brush: How it's Destroying Miniature Painting

It's not a surprise that the brush has been making it's way through our hobby as the next "in" tool to paint your miniatures. You are seeing it everywhere now-a-days, from youtube videos to blogs and even stores have stocked various sizes and brands of these so-called "brushes". I've decided to pick up one and try it out and after 2 weeks, I have gathered enough knowledge to tell you it's all bullshit. Here's why...


So I decided to cave and purchase a brush to give it a try and my conclusion might shock you! Why has this tool taking to our hobby like wildfire?  It's plain and simple, it's because people are fucking lazy. It takes practically no skill to use one, granted, it's easy to use and "fake" what real skills can do in just half the time.

Now before we go on, let me say that I've used the brush extensively for 2 weeks since purchasing it so I am confident to say, I know pretty much everything there is to know about brushing.

If you need a quick solution, the brush might be for you, but even at it's cheapest brand, around $1 to $2 that you have to fork out as opposed to using your fingers, it can be quite expensive for some. The big question is, is it really worth it?

Well, let's take a look at some of the examples with using a brush.  Here's my Aztecan Space Commando from my tutorial I put up a while ago called "How to Finger an Aztecan Space Commando Army You Fucking Moron":

And this is an example of some dude name James Wappel who uses a brush with his stuff.  (He won some awards or something but whatever, those competitions are lame for letting entries in that were brush painted):

As you can tell, with traditional finger painting, it adds much more realism to the work rather than the "toy-like" feel that a brush produces.  I know what some of you may say, "But Chung, the 'toy-like feel' you're talking about, it has nothing to do with the tool but rather the style of the artists work!"

Well, Fuck You is all I have to say.  If you think that, it's obvious you're just jumping on the band wagon that everyone else is.  Where are your morals? Where is your love for traditionalism?  See, it's people like that that are letting the Gays get married and destroying the fabric of what is the traditional institute of marriage!

But I digress. I apologize.  To further my point, let's take a look at another example.  A few months ago, I did a piece called "The Calvary, 50 Shade of Mountig your Horse".  It was quite popular. I got 2 likes on it on facebook:

It's art.  No cheating, no short cuts.  Just pure art.  Here's a piece by Meg Maples which I find quite fake myself:

There's no doubt that you would agree which results are superior here. As always, finger painting is still superior posing the realism of the horse.  Does it not make you feel free? As if you running naked through the wild fields of untouched american plains before the white man raped and pillage the natives as the brush is now doing so in the innocent virgin hobby of ours?

I hope that this helps you in deciding whether or not to get a brush.  I personally think that it takes less skills to use one as it would to use your finger.  In painting competitions I've judge we don't accept brush painted miniature as we believe it takes away from the purity of the hobby.  Even my fellow judge in the past competition in our local hobby shop agrees.  BTW, her name is Sapphire and she had to come fill in for one of the other judges that were out sick.  We found her at the corner and apparently an excellent commission artist as she said she does it with the finger for the right prices. She must be good! She also said she does it with her mouth too but I'm not too sure how that works.  Must be a new technique.

Anyways, stay tuned for my next article: Ancient Aliens: The Airbrush, The Warning of Impending Intergalactic War with the Human Race.