Brush painting and faint/fine panel lines

[gweller]

I'm in the middle of building the Hasegawa 1/72 Eurofighter Typhoon. It's a wonderful kit, engineered to perfection and is going together really well. But the panel lines are very fine and faint. I'm brush painting the model and am worried that the shallow panel lines will loose some depth when painted and won't be deep enough to highlight with a wash.
Has anyone got a solution? Re-engraving the panel lines seems a mega job, so do I just accept it how it is, and panel line wash where I can??

Thanks and best regards
Gary

[HAWKERHUNTER]

Re scribing the panel lines would be an option but if you dont want to attempt that then the only other thing I can suggest is to make sure you pre shade the model well before applying your paint. This involves painting dark lines, usually black but can be any colour, over your panel lines.Then thin your paint down and apply very light coats so that at the end you can just see your pre shading through the paint. This will highlight your panel line areas even if you dont apply the wash. If you just search the web for pre shading models you will see many examples. Here are a couple of examples I did on a recent build. (I hope Ron (Spanner) picks up on this post because he is a top brush painter and will know what to do)

[flyjoe180]

Use thin coats Gary. You won’t need trenches for your washes, even a slight recess will attract panel line washes. As Steve said, you can use a pre-shade technique to help highlight the panel lines. Ron did a thread on brush painting a while ago.

[gweller]

Ok, thanks for all the advice! Will do my best and see what happens!