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Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: King Tiger on 26 June 2013, 09:18:07 PM
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Although I love MP paints I'm getting sick of the screw lids being very brittle and easy to break and not being completely sealed and easily clogged so I'm wanting some advice on a new paint range
GW is a no no, I am not paying those prices for an average paint range consisting of 50 shades of Brown where all 50 are actually the same.
Vallejo is another no no, I used them for six weeks when at a friends painting his stuff, the coverage is terrible, the quality poor and the time spent shaking tedious and the bottles are evil.
In fact all dropper bottles are a no no.
I am interested in tamiya, but I hear they can be a pain to use
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I am interested in tamiya, but I hear they can be a pain to use
Dunno if they have changed over the years, but when I started modelling some 30 years ago, tamiya acrylics smelled awfull. o_o
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P3? Reaper?
Don't have experience with those myself, but those are other big lines that folks have used,
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I'm using Vallejo myself and not come across any issues .....yet.
I do hear a lot of praise for P3 paints too.
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I had heard bad things about P3 metallics, what are they like?, also what are they like generally for price, quality and UK availability, as I don't see them sold anywhere locally or otherwise (probably because warmachine is rightfully dead)
Same for reaper, what are they like quality wise,,and where to get them?
What are the humbrol acrylics like?
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Doesn't sound like you'll like any of them!
Give Coat d'Arms a go though. They're the paints GW used to use waaaaay back in the 90s (and I still have old pots on the go!)
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Well nobody's tried to sell me on the other paints, no opinions or reviews or info, so its hard to like things nobody bothers telling you about
I assume the coat d arms shaders are washes or inks?, if they are washes what are they like compared to GW washes (the only paint from them I use)
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Tamiya acrylics can smell odd. Gunge Sangyo is a better option IMO if going the generic modelling paint route. Never had any problems with Vallejo, which I use almost exclusively these days. The Master painter bottles I have tried have all been rather thin. I did buy a pot of Humbrol acrylic DBG the other week. Can't say I was overly impressed.
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P3? Reaper?
Don't have experience with those myself, but those are other big lines that folks have used,
Reaper are great. Vallejo is good, they have an incredible variety. Fantastic metallics, high saturation ranges, airbrush paint which are stonking shades.
I mourn IWM/RalPartha, though.
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Persnally i like Coat D'arms, but a few of their range doesn't have that great coverage. Though that said if your painting over black under coat, thats just something you'll have to live with. Coat D'arms yellows are amongst the best I've tried (though Humbrol yellow is my favourite)
Vallejo I've found a reasoably good. Generally though I'm not a fan of the dropper bottles, but they do seem to have an advantage that they don't seem to dry out as quickly as others though. The yellows I've tried are ok, but not great.
GW are fairly good actually, and price wish I don't think their that bad. Not as cheap as Coat D'arms, but not bad. Plus they have hald decent yellows.
Humbrol Acrylics actually have some very decent shades and good coverage - Their yellow is my favourite. The only problem I have is that some of the Humbrols paints I've bought have been half dried up, though whether thats the shop or generally Humbrol I don't know, so check them first if you buy any.
Alof of people say the P# paints are good too, but not really tried them yet. Though a friend quite likes them.
(You might have noticed yellows for me are the benchmark, I've been on a quest to find a good pigment strong yellow. So I tend to rate the rest of the range through the quality of their yellow)
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I've changed to artist's acrylics... you know, the ones that come in litre bottles...
I only use Vallejo and Reaper model ones for special colours like olive drab, flesh tones, signal colours and the like...
The local gaming community starts hating me because of this (me achieving better results than them despite using those "cheap" paints)
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I've changed to artist's acrylics... you know, the ones that come in litre bottles...
I only use Vallejo and Reaper model ones for special colours like olive drab, flesh tones, signal colours and the like...
The local gaming community starts hating me because of this (me achieving better results than them despite using those "cheap" paints)
How easy are they to water down, because aren't they normally quite thick compared to models acrylics?
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Tamiya acrylics can smell odd.
If I can stand the smell of devlan mud I'm sure I can survive, what are they like to use?, what's the coverage like?, is there a specific way to work with them?, I'm interested in them the most because they have allot of gorgeous natural shades which I like.
Coat d arms sound tempting, and the starter set is a bargain to try out, and I only paint from an acrylic Brown army painter undercoat, never from black, so that should help with any iffy colours I assume.
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Never had any real problems with Tamiya acrylics, though not bought any recently - latge bottles last a good while -Humbrol are ok too.
Not had any real problems with Vallejo.
Maybe it depends on the undercoat you use?
We tend to use car primer (red oxide or grey) or occasionally Humbrol sprays (sand or green) and avoid black.
We also use "Anita's All Purpose" acrylic craft paint - tall plastic bottles from craft shops, 59ml (Vallejo are only 17ml) but usually about the same price as Vallejo.
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OK, I use:
Vallejo acrylics. These cover well, flow well and dilute out nicely. However I find them a paint in the backside to mix sometimes. Maybe a glass bead or two in the pot would help. There's a wide range of colours and you can get away without using your own mixes most of the time if you so wish.
Artists' acrylics (Daler, Winsor and Newton, Liquitex) Fantastic pigment quality and flow well. Downside is that most are very thick by modellers standards because they are intended to be applied in thickish layers where there's no moulded detail to obscure! lol A more limited palette, but you expect to mix your own. Note many colours are transparent. This is by design. These make wonderful glazes and washes but these colours DO NOT cover well.
Craft paints. Cheap and cheerful, quality varies a lot even within ranges. Great for terrain etc where you need a lot. Plenty of different shades.
Match pot emulsion. Base coats on terrain. Nice and gutsy, cheap.
I used to use oils on miniatures - you cannot beat wet blended oils for graduated tones in my opinion. The downside is painfully slow drying, even if you use something like copal oil or mix with white enamel.
I used Tamiya acrylics on model armoured vehicles. They spray very well and brush tolerably well, but some of the colours were a bit weird and the smell was horrible (this by the standards of Humbrol / Compucolour enamels and oil paint).
Short answer: one size doesn't fit all. Even within a range some colours work a lot better than others and you have to be prepared to live and learn.
This opinion is bought to you all for free, baksheesh and gratis, and please remember what you payed for it when you determine its value! ;)
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I've just this week bought Coat d'Arms for the first time, with a small discount from Wayland Games. They are exactly the same colour and formulation paints that I used to buy from GW way back in the mid-90s. Really good, and pretty cheap - certainly scratched that nostalgia itch too :-)
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How easy are they to water down, because aren't they normally quite thick compared to models acrylics?
They behave exactly like my other acrylics, you can thin them with water or clear acrylic varnish, you can mix them with inks or other acrylics. But I usually do not thin them. I like my colours with a high opacity.
So far I've only used Goya by Kreul, I have no idea how other paints behave though.
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I mourn IWM/RalPartha, though.
Oh man, I used to use the old Ral Partha paints and man were they ever great! They had a whole bunch f unique metallic colours I miss. :'(
I've never found a replacement for their slightly green bronze colour either.
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Regarding "proper" artist's acrylics, this link (http://kingsminis.blogspot.com/2011/02/tutorial-making-mini-paints-from-artist.html) may help, although I've never tried the technique myself.
Personally, it's 99% Vallejo these days, with the occasional gw, Andrea or foundry pot involved.
Foundry supply most of their paints with base, shade and highlight, so that can save a bit of time (although there are some of the sets where I can't tell the difference).
I use the Andrea flesh and black sets. You get base + two or 3 highlights/shades in each, so they're quite flexible.
I have used Tamiya for airbrushing and once (and only once) for brush brushing. They're great in the airbrush but incredibly thin when brushing. The lids are also a pain to remove if any paint hardens in the thread.
I use Humbrol spray black for undercoating and find it gives a smooth matt coat. Their bottle black, however, tends to be thin and satin/semi gloss.
I still prefer gw's old washes, although the Vallejo ones aren't too bad. I had a very bad experience with gw's nuln oil recently, which left a lot of white residue when it dried. I'm hoping that's just because I didn't shake it long enough, but it was very annoying >:(
I prefer the dropper bottles to the open top ones, mainly because it's much easier to dispense paint onto the wet palette from the dropper bottle, as opposed to scooping paint out of the open top bottle ;D
Not sure how much/if any of that helps o_o
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Echo the issue with Tamiya lids - a real pain when they get stuck. On the other hand, I find some of the paints quite useful - mostly the darker shades though, as it seems to be a bit hit & miss as to which are good and which are just plain odd.
I tend to use Tamiya's Hull Red as an undercoat when I'm painting red, and that works very nicely, also as a shading colour. Green is fine for the darker shades too, the lighter are just too bright and plastic looking though. Metal colours are much of a muchness with other ranges.
As for brushing, they can be a bit thin and smeary at times, needing a couple of coats to give proper coverage, so I wouldn't use them for the main job, and only tend to use the dark reds and greens as an undercolour, but for that they can be quite useful.
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Based on your criteria, I would recommend the P3 line from Privateer Press. They are flip-top pots, bigger than GW by several mL, but the same price or cheaper. Very nice flow and excellent coverage. The only issue I have with the range is that their colours are different from almost all the other lines. They mix great though, so if you don't mind mixing paints these are probably the right ones for you.
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I think I'll go either tamiya or Coat d arms, P3 paints I know of no stockists near me and online they average £2.50, that's more expensive than the above two.
So since I know nothing of the coat d range what would people suggest as 10 colours I should get to start, and what do I get to highlight them?.
So for example I would need names for:
White (in this case I'd need the shade since white is the highlight)
The darkest grey they do (i don't like straight black)
Medium flesh tone
Red
Yellow
Blue
Green
Medium silver/gunmetal
Medium bronze
Medium Brown
And then what colours would highlight them as I would shade with a wash
Tamiya colours I can access by hand, so I can do them myself if needed.
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What a bunch of delicate maidens, complaining about Tamaiya odours. It smells a little like window cleaner, so what? >:D
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I've been using Vallejo for a long time now, and find their coverage on most colors to be fairly good. P3 paints are pretty good, as well, but I find that they don't cover as well as Vallejo.
I do like the Foundry paints - they (mostly) cover well, and they have a great array of triad colors to choose from. The funny thing with their triads are, though, that I find that the highlight color usually throws off the other two, and gives me a color that I don't like (hence I use a different color than the one recommended, usually).
I also base everything in black. I have found that if I want to paint a light color, I simply paint Vallejo's light grey, let it dry, and paint on the light color. It works every time.
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I would love to use foundry, but I cannot afford them unfortunately, £8 a triple pack is good, but if I want 10 new colours to start that's £80, and even if I use two colours and a wash that's still £70, I'm looking to only spend about £50
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I don't have any brand loyalty and like to use of loads of different paints (Foundry, GW, Vallejo, Reaper etc) but, Vallejo Model Air Metallics are the best 'metals' I've used (you won't like the bottles though).
I think I've a few pots of unopened P3 (I'll have to check they're still liquid) if you want to do a deal ;)
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I think I'll go either tamiya or Coat d arms, P3 paints I know of no stockists near me and online they average £2.50, that's more expensive than the above two.
So since I know nothing of the coat d range what would people suggest as 10 colours I should get to start, and what do I get to highlight them?.
So for example I would need names for:
White (in this case I'd need the shade since white is the highlight)
The darkest grey they do (i don't like straight black)
Medium flesh tone
Red
Yellow
Blue
Green
Medium silver/gunmetal
Medium bronze
Medium Brown
And then what colours would highlight them as I would shade with a wash
Tamiya colours I can access by hand, so I can do them myself if needed.
No suggestions at all?
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No suggestions at all?
It depends on what you're painting really. If it's various historicals, then it's good to get colours that match the uniforms of what you're painting. It also depends on whether you're to strong colours or muted colours. Theoretically you can get away with:
Black
White
Red (Prime)
Yellow (Prime)
Blue (Prime)
Silver
But that makes for a lot of mixing.
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It depends on what you're painting really. If it's various historicals, then it's good to get colours that match the uniforms of what you're painting. It also depends on whether you're to strong colours or muted colours. Theoretically you can get away with:
Black
White
Red (Prime)
Yellow (Prime)
Blue (Prime)
Silver
But that makes for a lot of mixing.
Remember you need purplish red and an orangey red, a greenish yellow and an orangey yellow, a purplish blue and a greenish blue. Oh, and burnt sienna and burnt umber. But it still takes a lot of mixing lol
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I paint anything, so 10 mid colours and 10 highlights from my list are fine, I just don't know what the names compare to
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Not having much money, I'd probably split that paint renewal shopping into two orders.
For testing the paints I'd probably buy some of their triad sets (most likely the Mid-Blue and the Yellow Triad, as that would mean I'd also have some green paint without having to buy some and the Dark Red Triad) plus probably 115 - Tanned Flesh + 214 - Suntanned Flesh as those look like they'd be good as base colour + highlight.
Triads:http://www.blackhat.co.uk/online_shop/index.php?cPath=21_168&osCsid=b05ff1605cf4565c9bd18cca1183962f
Not sure if that helps you, but that's what I'd do. That way you'd get quite a few paints to test, the investment is not that big all at once.
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I forgot about the triad stuff, thanks for the reminder.