Useful Tip: (The dangers of) Pre-shading with permanent markers

[GTX]

See here.

Regards,

Greg

[Weaver]

Interesting, although his example of the salt water/fresh water is bass ackwards: it's the water that migrates through the membrane, diluting the salt solution on the other side.

I don't know if it's relevant, but there are two kinds of marker: dye and pigment. Dye is essentially the same as the aniline dyes used to colour clothes, that is to say it penetrates the material. Pigment markers work the same as paint. i.e. they have microscopic particles of colour in a volatile carrier medium, and when it evaporates, it leaves them on the surface of the material.

I've used a pigment marker for bits of detail on models (not pre-shading though) and never had a problem with it. I would seriously endorse his advice to try it on a test piece first though, because there are a zillion different variations on the chemstry of these things.

[The Rat]

I only pre-shade with clear varnish, the effect is much more subtle.

[sotoolslinger]

I don't get the problem( probably cause I only use enamel paints) the first time I ever tried this the marker immediately ran and I had to strip( the project ,I was already naked) Are they talking about using arcrylics over Sharpies?

[PR19_Kit]

I never have been convinced by the current fad of pre-shading.

To me the result always makes the end product look more like a model than it would if the pre-shading hadn't been done in the first place.

[rickshaw]

I never have been convinced by the current fad of pre-shading.

To me the result always makes the result look more like a model than it would if the pre-shading hadn't been done in the first place.

Agreed 

[matrixone]

There is no way a marker pin should ever be used for attempting pre-shading!

Pre-shading can be a very useful tool for weathering models but it MUST be kept very subtle or the model will look more like a toy.
Paint chipping, paint fading, post shading, adding exhaust stains, etc, etc, all are also very important weathering tools but if overdone they will ruin a model instead of making it look more realistic. Too much of anything is not good!
The models that you see that have the heavy pre-shading done to them are more than likely built by modelers that try to copy the ''neato'' looking weathering they see on other models instead of looking at photographs of the real thing to see what machines actually look like when weathered. A copy of a copy is never good.

Matrixone