Giving Foundry Paints Another Chance

[Corso]

As the title says, I decided to give foundry paints another go. This came about after communication with Aetheling and Burnin Coal which made me think.

I bought the first foundry sets 3 years ago. I used to paint exclusively with citadel paints because they were the only range of paints supplied by my local gaming store. Back then I used to live in an uppermost flat with an average temperature of 39C in Summer. Citadel paints dry quickly, at that place they dried tremendously quickly. I needed a new range so I opted for foundry. Got a few triads, some were ok others less so. Kept doing it, but it was annoying that about a quarter of the order was unusable. Once I got a paint resent but that’s it. The cherry on the cake came when I ordered some ww2 paints, and they were ultra terrible with hardly any coverage. Kept using foundry paints for a while, but not looking good, with minis sometimes having a satin/glossy finish. I had packed them all and called it a day.

Three years later, and now living in a different place with normal temperature, and having watched some pretty good work by Burnin Coal, Aetheling and others, made me pause and think. Maybe I had been doing it wrong so I brainstormed myself and after a couple of days experimenting found some use for these paints.
1)   Light undercoat – I found it easier to paint miniatures primed in white when using these paints.
2)   Shaking – they need much shaking, usually using an old brush but have found it better to transfer them to dropper bottles.
3)   Thin coats – multiple thin coats better than one thick coat, no painting straight from the pot.
4)   Triad mixing – some triads have too stark a contrast, others are very similar. Aetheling has shown me what Steve Dean had done to mitigate this.

Obviously a number of paints are still unusable, mostly due to lack of coverage like many ww2 paints and others because they hardly resemble the paint swatches so I have no use for them, like Cadaverous Green (a cool light jade Green in the website but a yellowish light green zombie-like flesh in reality – ok the name should have ringed a bell, but was deceived by the swatch).
 
That makes about half my current foundry paints unusable  but I still have the other half usable. And they are very good with certain colours not found in other ranges. The Flesh triads among them are my favourite, right now using mediterranean flesh for some hoplites. Others, like conker brown and bay brown are very good for horseflesh.

I use Reaper paints and occasionally Citadel, but Foundry have some use too. I find it difficult to stick to a single range. In my opinion the best red is Evil Sunz Scarlet by Citadel, the best horse colours and natural flesh colours are Foundry, the best plums and grey-purples are Army Painter and the best for clothing, leather and more are Reaper.

There are many painters better than me, but maybe this will help others which have had the same issues I had with foundry paints.

[Codsticker]

I am interested in following your trials Corso. I love trying out new paints, I use several different manufacturers but have never tried Foundry. I just made a big commitment to Scale75 though; I have 3 of their sets coming in the post.

[Corso]

Thanks Codsticker 

I've tried Scale 75 Scalecolor about 3 years ago. Just a small selection though. The paint is ultra-matte and is gel-based, similar to army painter paint. It has good coverage and requires thinning - ideally use a wet-palette.

Never tried their other ranges like their fantasy range.

Many painters in my area who dabble in historical busts, dioramas and large scale miniatures consider scale75 one of the best.

[Codsticker]

I bought a couple of bottles already so I have an idea about them; I used Scale75's Grey Brown for the dark patches on the weathered wood on my buildings and for black I use Scale75's Eclipse grey followed by a black wash. I am looking forward to using their reds and yellows (always problematic colours...).

[Ray Rivers]

Hi!

Well, I'm not a great painter but have been doing it for a long time. At the present I have paints from GW, Citadel, Vallejo, Foundry, Miniature Paints, Ral Partha, Army Painter, Andrea Color, Coat d'arms and quite a few craft paints. I guess you would say I am a collector of paints... 

You have an interesting summary here concerning Foundry and I would like to comment if you don't mind. I think it might be worth some contrast as I only paint directly from the bottle.

1)   Light undercoat – I found it easier to paint miniatures primed in white when using these paints.
2)   Shaking – they need much shaking, usually using an old brush but have found it better to transfer them to dropper bottles.
3)   Thin coats – multiple thin coats better than one thick coat, no painting straight from the pot.
4)   Triad mixing – some triads have too stark a contrast, others are very similar. Aetheling has shown me what Steve Dean had done to mitigate this.

My first observation about paint in general is that it has too much pigment. When I open a new pot of paint what I am looking for is not pigment content but flow consistency. If it flows rapidly, it lacks pigment and that one goes in the garbage. The majority, however, including Foundry, flow very slowly. You can see this the moment you open the pot and watch the paint flow over the lip. Because I almost always use at least 2 coats of paint the first thing I do is start adding water until I get the flow that serves my needs. For Foundry paints, after I have done this, it just needs a bit of shake to get it ready. If I haven't used the pot in some time, I approach it like I would a new pot. I give it a few hard shakes and then open it and check the flow. If required, I add water.

When I approach a project, I make a decision which primer color will help me get the coloring I need. For some it is black. For some it is white. For some it is silver. Depends on what you are painting. But in general, as far as Foundry is concerned I don't find anything which requires me to do anything different then I would with do with say Vallejo or GW. For example, if you have a black primer and want to paint a light color, this almost always requires a coat of paint a bit darker than the color you want to end up with in the end. A yellow, for example, will require a white coat first, and that applies to every brand I own. The reason of course is that although I paint directly from the bottle, all of my paints are watered down from the time they are opened.

As far as Foundry Triads go, well... I tried that at first and found it didn't work very well for me. Two colors are normally fairly good, but one normally just doesn't fit. Personally I construct my own triads and that could mean 3 different brands of paint. What I do is I develop the triad on the miniature and then I write it down in a text document. This serves as a reference for me and when I begin a new project, I will look at my painting guide text document and pull out a bunch of paints to see what will serve and what won't.

Overall, I like Foundry a lot (especially their blues, browns and greens), but I can say that for lots of different brands, though to be quite honest I don't think I will be buying any Coat d'arms in the future. Because I paint directly from the pot, GW and Foundry are my go to paints. Little by little I am also gaining lots of respect for arts store 60ml bottles which are not only a great buy financially, but can be used to create your own triad of 3 colors with a single bottle.

I know I am probably an outlier when it comes to painting, but I thought you might find it interesting in hearing how a guy who paints directly from the pot approaches his hobby.

Ah... and here is an example of the last minis I painted... some Spanish guys from the Spanish American War (like I say, not the greatest):

[Corso]

@ Codstricker - I found Reaper Hearthfire a good base for 'orangey' yellow and NMM for 'browney' yellow. Red I prefer GW.

@Ray Rivers - Interesting about thinning in the bottle to paint directly from the pot - never thought about that! I agree with you about the blues and browns, though the only proper green I had bought from foundry was the bright bottle triad which wasn't that good at all. About triads, some of them work well together like Bay Brown and Butterfudge, and also the flesh triads. Others not so but that is even for Reaper from which recently got the Royal Purples and all 3 colours were nearly the same.

Craft paints can be helpful, agree on that also. Best black primer for me (the few times I use such primer) is Maimeri Polycolour 530 Black, applied with brush.

Oh, and nice spaniards!

[Ray Rivers]

@Ray Rivers - Interesting about thinning in the bottle to paint directly from the pot - never thought about that! I agree with you about the blues and browns, though the only proper green I had bought from foundry was the bright bottle triad which wasn't that good at all. About triads, some of them work well together like Bay Brown and Butterfudge, and also the flesh triads. Others not so but that is even for Reaper from which recently got the Royal Purples and all 3 colours were nearly the same.

Yep, the flesh triads are quite useful. As for the green, the French Gun Olive Green works very nicely for lots of stuff. I also like their Sand and Boneyard colors and their Royal Purple works pretty well.

I stay away from the yellow, a lot of their greys (just can't seem to match them up), and reds.

If nothing else the Craft Paints are great for basing. You can buy tons of it for cheap...

[Mindenbrush]

I use a lot of Foundry paints - bought the complete range in 2003 and still using the majority of the original pots - but I am finding that the odd one in a triad is turning into a gooey lump. They do not appear to be drying up as it is still useable if thinned and I have replaced caps if they crack, it is just annoying ☹️

[Ray Rivers]

Well, you know there is another thread with folks who stay that in recent years the quality has gone down quite a bit. What I make out of it is that they have reduced their pigment levels.

I must say, I haven't ordered from them in quite awhile, but they are my go to paints. Soon, I will be making a generous order and we shall see what is going on.

[Nordic1980s]

"Foundry" paints are the exact same line of paints as that of the "P3 Formula", "Coat D'arms" and 1990s "Citadel" (hexagonal paint pots). One offline source has the 1990s Miniature Paints (glass bottles) as being the same too, not sure about the current ones available in 2020. All made by one and same company, with the exact colours depending on brand.

I have painted a ton with the old 1990s Citadel, MP, Coat D' arms and P3 Formula paints. 9 times out of 10 the paints is as is should, but there are (were) some few weak batches out there: some Coat D'arms metal colours look lackluster and dull, some pots of colorised metals are too silvery with little colour in them; some P3 Formula paints either have wrong labels in them or were of imprecise mixing e.g. 3 skin colours that should be different from each other as per the labels but look exactly the same to the eye. Couple of years back hardcore P3 fans noticed that something had changed with several invidual paint codes despite the label being the same and no comment from the company behind them. Select olive-ish green P3 colours cover horribly and require great many layers to work out. And so on.

All of these paint lines from one and same British manufacturing factory do require a good mixing before painting, preferably (but not absolutely necessarily) some water added*, cover well and have medium level tendency to leave brushmarks or granular paint artifacts if not careful (e.g. slottabase edges). White paint tends to dry to the brush tip the very same moment you take the brush out of the palette or paint pot, making painting of fine teeth and eyes a very special kind of ordeal. Overall good paint, but not the godlike 11+ out of 10 experience we all wish for. (Do plan to purchase more in the future.)

*Of course, sometimes the water needs to be added to the old paint pots themselves to revitalise paint in them. As open top bottles dry up a little bit everytime they are opened, unlike the closed top bottles (Vallejo et al).

[Eoin OCnaimhsi]

Interesting topic.

Maybe this topic could end up becoming a list of the best of each range of colours by manufacturer. I for one would love to have a resource which I could refer to if I needed a metallic, a red, a green etc and avoid horrible vallejo reds or discover Army painter soft tone ink earlier than I did to give just two examples.

Possibly a list of those to be avoided could be useful too.

I use mostly Vallejo game colour, model colour, panzer aces, a good smattering of citadel, a handful of army painter, the odd Green stuff world and secret weapon for specific technical colours.

[Corso]

Interesting comments guys 

After more trial and error using them, I have kept the following in my 'most used paint shelves':
African Flesh A,B,C
North African Flesh A,B,C
Near Eastern Flesh A,B,C
Dusky Flesh A,B,C
Mediterranean Flesh A,B,C + Expert Flesh 127 D
Fair Skin (Expert Flesh 127 E, Flesh 5C, Expert Flesh 127 F)
Spearshaft A,B,C
Sand B & C
Gold 36 A,B,C
Silver 35 C

With the exception of metallics, I placed them all in dropper bottles.

Some are slightly handy, like Conker Brown, Bay and Butterfudge which I kept in a box near.

The rest (about 100 or so paints) I stored away for the moment, since I found Reaper much better, and have some Citadel useful ones like the reds. The main problem I found is that Foundry are generally not matte. Reaper are, and they are a winner for me in this. Though matt varnish exists, I get frustrated painting something non-mettalic that keeps shining. Flesh is not much of an issue since I don't mind skin being a bit satin (which in fact is).

[Nordic1980s]

Paints I can fully recommend:
all P3 Formula metallics
all P3 Formula inks
Tamiya Fine Surface Primer sprays
Stynylrez/Badger primers
Vallejo Matt Acrylic Varnish 26.518
Winsor & Newton Artists Acrylic series of varnishes, glaze mediums etc.
Tamiya Diorama Texture Paint Soil Effect series of texture paints

Avoid these:
P3 Formula Ordic Olive (horrible coverage and needs endless coats, other P3 colours are just fine)
Vallejo Polyurethane primers (absolutely horrible smell, use Stynylrez instead)
Coat d'arms gold colours (lackluster shine, P3 ones outshine them yet come from the same paint factory)
all non-acrylic artist inks, including Winsor & Newton drawing inks (not waterproof and varnish re-activates them).

[Blackwolf]

Anyone having issues with shiny paint should get a few pots of Tamiya flat base or if you can get it talc;  mix a little into your paint on the pallet,perfectly flat.

[syrinx0]

I have never been able to buy a reasonable small amount of pure talc. Tamiya flat base though is wonderful stuff. It can kill any shine.