Tiny lettering on prints - how do you all handle it?

Dry brush person here, and I'd say your gloves are actually the ideal case for it. Lettering that's raised from the print almost does the work for you. I load a small flat brush with Vallejo white, wipe most of it off on a paper towel til it barely leaves a mark, then drag it across the text at an angle. Two or three super light passes beats one heavy one every time. If you goof, it's usally fixable with a damp brush while it's still wet, no glove redo needed.

I tried hand painting tiny letters on a wrestler figure a couple years back and botched two gloves myself, so I get the hesitation. The trick I landed on was thinning way past what feels comfortable, almost a wash consistency, and building it up. Straight from the pot at that scale is asking for a wobble to become permanent. For the belt logo I actually printed my own water slide decals on clear paper and used Micro Sol to pull them down over the curves. Worked well on a flat-ish logo area, but anything with strong curvature or undercuts will fight you. If your belt logo sits on a fairly flat plaque, decals are worth a shot. Masking feels like overkill for something that small, agreed there. One tip either way: seal the gloves with matte varnish before you start, since fresh resin and bare primer can make paint behave wierd and bead up.

I fought the same battle on a pair of boxing gloves last year and honestly the decals saved my sanity. I printed the lettering as decals on clear waterslide paper from a cheap laser toner setup at a print shop, sealed them with a gloss coat first because otherwise the film silvered badly on matte surfaces. Slid them on, blotted with a cotton bud, hit them with a matte varnish and they basically disappeared into the glove. No wobble risk at all, and if one goes crooked you just slide it off and try again. The dry brush method works if the text is genuinely raised and chunky, but on my sculpt the letters were shallow enought that the highlight bled into the surrounding skin texture and looked like frost. Took two rounds of IPA scrubbing to fix that mistake, which I would not wish on anyone mid-project.

The one thing with decals is getting the placement right before you commit. I dip them, wait about ten seconds, then position with wet tweezers. Setting solution settles them down over the curve of the knuckles nicely. For the belt logo I would still freehand it since that surface is bigger and flatter, a 0.1 needle with paint thinned until it flows like milk handles that fine.

I'd push back on the damp brush fix from the first reply. On a dark glove with white lettering, all I've ever managed with a damp brush is a grey smear across the leather texture, which looks worse than the original wobble. Once that white touches the recesses it's in there for good and you're touching up the whole panel. My own take is that the 'raised lettering paints itself' thing only holds if the text actually printed deep enough. On my last figure the letters were so shallow the dry brush just glazed over everything and I had to fall back on a fine liner anyway. Worth checking how crisp your relief is under a loupe before committing either way.

Picking your battles is real. I've got a rule from doing a run of mini busts last year: if the lettering is shallower than half a millimetre, primer alone can almost swallow it, so I either deepen it in the slicer or leave it blank. Anything deeper takes paint fine with a brush. Print yourself a quick test coupon with the glove text at a couple different depths before you commit, costs you ten minutes and saves the redo.

One thing I'd check before committing to any method is which side of the lettering faced the build plate, because raised text printed against the plate picks up support scars and layer squish that dry brushing will happily highlight rather than hide. I learned this on a nameplate a while back where the last three letters were noticeably mushier than the rest and no amount of light passes evened it out. If yours all printed in the same orientation you're probaly fine, but if the text wraps around the glove it may be a mixed bag. Also, is the lettering raised or recessed on your sculpt? People tend to assume one or the other and the advice flips completly depending on which.