Thinning paint, loading brush, and layering woes

[Steal Your Face]

I am trying to learn how to layer for shadows/highlights and I'm having a bit of trouble with my paint consistency and brush loading. I also want to say I think I know my problem, and I apologize if the solution is really obvious, but I want to ask anyway, just to make sure.

I've watched a lot of videos on how to thin paints for layering and I believe I understand the fundamental concepts. However, my execution leaves something to be desired. My mindset during the prep stage is to thin all the paint I'll need for a session at once. I have some unexplainable aversion to continuous thinning, so I work in terms of drops. Base coat - 1 drop of paint to one drop on thinner medium. For layering - 1 drop of paint to 3-5 drops, or more, of thinner medium. What ends up happening for layering is that I wind up with a huge puddle of paint on my palette, and when I try to load my brush, it wicks all the way up to the ferrule with paint; almost an overload. I can't seem to prevent my brush from overloading from my puddle. I wipe off the excess on a dry paper towel but it seems like I'm draining quite a lot of liquid/paint out of my brush; more than I see in the videos.

Here are my questions:
Is it possible to thin too much paint at once?
Do I really need to mix in tiny little batches, as demonstrated in all of the videos I've watched?
What is causing the overloading of my brush? Such a large puddle of paint, or am I thinning it too much?

Sometimes I feel I overthink/overanalyze my painting process. Please feel free to point that out if you think it's the case. It's well within my nature to do so.

I provided a pic of last night's attempt at thinning for layering. You can see how big my puddle of paint was on my Army Painter wet palette, and how paint would drain from the brush before I applied it to my mini. Not sure if it matters, but I was using an Army Painter Regiment brush for the layering.

I really want to figure out the overloading of my brush problem because I have some W&N brushes I want to use, but I feel like I'd ruin them if I don't figure this out.

 

[MAXXxxx]

I'll try going through your post. Not only the questions but the first part:

- using thinner/flow improver is not the best for thinning as it messes with the surface tension making things flow in all directions and helps with the capillary reaction of the brush sucking paint up to the ferrule. My advice is simply use water for thinning, with maybe 5-10% flow improver to help it's flow

- your basecoat/layering is overthinned in my opinion. For basecoats I usually use like 20% water (4-5 paint: 1water), For layers maybe 1:1 or 1:2 (what you use as basecoat). Now I assume you use AP paint (based on AP wetpalette and AP brush), they are thicker, so you probably need more water, but not to the extent you wrote.
What really helped me at the beginning is "use thin coat of paints, not thin paints". Of course it also comes to techniques used.
Also do not forget: the paint also takes up water from the wet-palette, so it needs even less thinning as it slowly becomes more and more diluted anyway.

- If you paint with paint that thin, just touch the tip of the brush to the paint. Maybe not even 10% of the brush lenght AND still use the paper towel to get rid of the excess water/paint. This would also help with the paint-at-ferrule problem.

- YT (+patreon and other videos): there are a LOT of bad ones out there, where they do completely unnecessary things or do something really weirdly. The few I could really suggest: Ben Komets videos, Ghools videos (he was active here for a while and while the intro is cringe what he shows is pretty solid), funnily enough GW ones are not too bad (with some adjustments as their technique kills both paint and brush fast (helps them sell more...)), 2 channels I still follow: Angel Giraldez, Duncan (altough I don't like his painting style). Plus there are quite a few, but if you start watching everyone you won't practice.

to your questions:
- yes it is possible to prethin the colors, but in my opinion it's easier/better to thin as needed
- you don't need, but there is a reason almost everyone does it like that , you don't have to reinvent the wheel
- I think all 3 I already mentioned: less surface tension from thinner, overthinned paint, too much of the brush is thrust into the puddle.

- yep, no need to overthink. As you practice more and more it will become better and easier to do. Very few get it right on the first few tries.

- yeah, that big blue puddle in the middle is because of overthinned paint thinned even more because of the palette itself.

- use the WnN brushes, they are really better. I was against them at first, but I won a size 0 at a competition, tried it out, never used the cheaper brushes anymore. For me it made that much of a difference. (today if I paint for display I use either WnN7(normal, size1) or Raphaell 8404/8408 (again size 1) or one made by a local brush maker (a 70+ year old man who is at the flea market maybe twice a year)

 

[Steal Your Face]

Thanks for your Maxx. Typically I only use Vallejo, Reaper, and Citadel paints. The YT videos I've watched are from Vince Venurella and Lyla Mev, both of which make painting look easier than it is, at least for me. I did watch one of Ghool's videos on thinning paints in the meantime. One thing I think that will help me a lot is to have an extra sheet of paper or something to test the thinness of my paint before applying it to my mini. I've tried using the back of my hand, but it doesn't really work that well for me.

 

[MAXXxxx]

Vincent's painting is great (I don't know Lyla, just watched a video, wasn't that great imo), but this is where different styles and even different countries come from (I think both Vince and Lyla are from the US). It changes a LOT in terms of how thin the used paint is and how it is applied.

Paper to test out how thin the paint is is always a good idea. Funny about the hand thing for me it works better than the paper, but I think it is mostly because of how little paint I have in the brush and how it is not that runny.

I can suggest this old site with great videos (mostly in french and spanish style): figurine-tv.com
I think these 2 old videos that changed the most about how I get my transitions:
- Blending with JBT: (cmon doesn't let me add links, it's the Lotr painting from 2013 february, 2013... not even 480p )
- Transitions with Mathieu Lalain: (same, from march 2013)
Hmm they have quite a few new videos since I last visited... gotta collect them all