Hey /tg/, can we talk paints for a second? I've always been

I'm not a pro painter, but I can tell you what I like.

I'm a large paint set guy. it means less mixing of paints and no struggling to recall mix ratios when painting units in a game like warhammer or warmachine.

Paints can last a while, so if you think your going to use them, the large collection isn't a bad idea. Personally paint wise i like vallejo (some of these need to be shaken alot), and reaper master series. P3 and citadel are decent to good, but the containers are shit. the P3 tops will break, while the citadel paints with the pop tops just go to shit after a much shorter time period than other brands in my experience. but it's still worth the cash if it's a color you can't find from your preferred company.

Invest in several brushes of various sizes. Think about mixing medium of your using washes. invest in a paint palette where you can thin your paints appropriately. it doesn't have to be an honest to god palette, one bro of mine just uses a piece of white tile.

>>51725107
Thanks for your advice. Brushes and pallets aren't a problem. I've got some decent brushes that I've gotten the hang of already, and I've got the supplies to make a wet pallet just lying around.

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>>51724931
I just got back into painting and bought pic related.
Get reviews and look through the sets (there's multiple variations of pic related but that is exactly the version I bought.

I only got it last week and needed to get primer seperately so I havent used it yet but the colour range included is excellent - I hope the quality is too.

I've started to put all my paints in dropper bottles I've found on Amazon.

They hold all the paint, are easier to mix with and don't dry out as easily. They're still GW/P3 paints but they've been moved over to a better bottle system and are much easier to work with.

I tend to use an airbrush for most of my stuff so vallejo game air has been pretty good to me.

>>51726346

I've been thinking of that. How do you transfer from the GW pots to the little droppers without mess?

>>51727161
I wish I had a better statement than "very carefully"

I used a small funnel from dollarama.

First I poured in the paint that came willingly. I put a small amount of water, windex WITH AMONIA and airbrush medium into the pot and gave it a good shake (I have a table that vibrates, you may have to shake-weight it yourself). The remaining paint that came out was still a decent consistency and went into the dropper.

Cleaning the funnel is pretty straight forward but seriously, clean the goddamn funnel.

>>51727248
>clean the goddamn funnel.
Ah, simple wisdom on par with "thin your paints."

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>>51727248
>windex

Ayyyy lmao

I thought I was the only one who used Windex as a thinner. /tg/ thought I was crazy the last time I mentioned it and tried to explain about surfactants.

Buy Ammonia Free though.

>I wish I had a better statement than "very carefully"
To be honest, I think it would be better to just buy a brand that comes in droppers. Citadel is overrated, and P3 pots are actually well designed enough I'd leave them in the pot

>>51724931
Buy paints as you need them, unless you have no FLGS within short distance.

Bulk paint packs are only like a 20% discount at best, but the actual cost is more like 2-3x what you'll actually use.

>>51724931
Paints general since there is none right now?

Anybody else use plastic sample vials as a wet-pallet? I mean, you make a mixture of additives and color and thinning to where it's just right, then when you're done you can cap it and it can keep for upwards of a month if you didn't buy crap vials.

Get a little rack to hold them. Works great if you're not getting a lot done per-session and a regular wet-pallet doesn't keep long enough, but you don't want to keep wasting half your paint onto the palette each time you start again.

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>>51729532
"Microtube" that's the word.

Forgot image.

>>51725887
Get a bunch of paperclips so that you can stir the dropper bottles, you'll find that shaking often isn't enough to get them properly mixed.

>>51727161

You don't need a funnel.

t. Guy who just poured all his GW paint into droppers

I tried making a funnel out of paper but the droppers are just too small. Just carefully tilt the pot slowly and let the paint pour in. Didn't spill once.

You only need to buy the paints you will actually use. Buying entire sets usually has a lot of paint you won't use. Look at scale75 scale color paints. They are top quality paints and come in more manageable sets, like a box of different blues if you will paint a lot of blue, or a box of browns and yellows if you will paint NMM gold. Less useless paints included in the bundle

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>>51730644
>mixing droppers
You can fit a dropper bottle in a standard 3/8" electric drill. Make sure it's spinning in the direction to tighten the cap. You can mix a bottle to factory-new condition in like 5 seconds each.

are tamiya model paints any good? I have a bunch of them lying around, and I don't want them to go to waste

>>51725107
>the citadel paints with the pop tops just go to shit

Curious, what do you mean by that? Cause I just found mine after a while (tried to get into painting a little in... 2014?) and mine seems to have... well, for lack of a better word, liquified, I guess? I trade to use some of it but it was super watery, even after shaking

OP just dive the fuck in. I bought the Reaper starter kit and ended up painting like 30 miniatures from it. Still ahve the paints, havent' even run out in a single bottle yet.

Anyone use ball bearings or the like as agitators? I figured stainless steel ball bearings would work, but I read even they can rust out in paint.

I bought some cheap plastic beads but they smell like shit/acetone like they've been painted, and I'm not sure I want to drop them in yet.

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>>51734008
Not him but I've been noticing that the new GW paint pots get dirty really quick. The little tab thing inside the cap that's used to get paint without having to dip into the pot has a tendency to spill over to the back of the cap along the seam and eventually you'll end up losing paint because a lot of it will just slop off to the rim of the lid and dry there.

This is a perfect example. Literally google'd "new GW paint pots" and this was on the first page.

>>51734253
I've never had this issue with my GW paints and it makes me wonder what it is that so many people get wrong

>>51724931
If you can afford it and plan on getting into the hobby then I'd say a paint set would be a good purchase. However there is nothing wrong with buying a small choice few paints and starting from there. Maybe pick a color scheme with minimal colors and get some experience under your belt. As with everything painting comes with experience, the more you do it the better you'll get. You'll learn what colors you like, which ones you hate, how best to use x color here or y color there.

To second this Anon - >>51725107 I use primarily Reaper and Vallejo. I'm also a fan of the Citadel shades, they work really well. I am not familiar with Army Painter paints(I've had terrible experiences with their brushes though) or P3 paints, although I have heard great things about P3 quality.

Either way you choose to go, good luck to you and I hope you enjoy painting as much as I do!

>>51733426
I think this is a brilliant idea but I also think that I will fuck up eventually and paint the living room with it.

>>51734008
I just find that citadel doesn't have the shelf life of other paints. The old black pop tops seemed to have a much longer shelf life, I still have some of the old black top washes, but the new mixture seems to dry out super quick, and it's not just the washes that go quick but also the paints. They seem to dry out super fast, so I really only by citadel for colors that I'm going to use a ton like black or white.

I'm anal about keeping about my pop tops clean so they don't get crusty, but I find that I do seem to have to clean the tops more.

>>51734253
Don't leave them open. Don't give paint a chance to run all the way back there.

>>51725887
Experienced painter here who got that set recently too.

Shake the shit out of a pot before you use it and then when you think you've shaken it enough treat it like the red haired step child and shake it again. They split constantly but are super thick when mixed properly. Thin is properly and it should work well for you though.

>>51733583
Their spray primer is kind of nice.

>>51724931

I use a spanish range of colors called "game colors" (pretty generic, I know).

They are basically pre-tinned, and are much more fluid than the regualr GW-equivalent colors (which led to various errors and tinkering to get it right).

You can almost paint with them right off the pot

When I picked up some paints recently to paint my minis I got some of the Vallejo game paints, but the red blue and yellow are the ink variant while my black and white are normal. How fucked am I?

>>51730892
Vallejo and P3 also have small sets based around certain colours or factions. I've never bought from them but I think Reaper sell small sets too.

I'm more in favour of just buying colours you want piecemeal though. When I'm thinking about buying a colour I like to just google that specific paint and look through the images to see what people have done with it. There are so many paints around that sometimes it's difficult to find some examples of it being used, but usually there's something.

I mostly use a mix of Vallejo, P3, Army Painter and Badger Minitaire. I also have a couple of Secret Weapon washes, Scale75 metallics and a bit of leftover Citadel stuff from before I started trying out other brands. Oh and some Tamiya clear paints.

>>51733426
I've been wondering about them agitators we used to use in Chemistry classes, but man, this is sheer genius!

Semi-unrelated, but since there's already a paint thread here.

I ordered a model plane kit recently. I'm reasonably confident in my ability to put the thing together but the only thing I've painted before is a wall.

I know the sacred wisdom of /tg/ "THINK YOUR PAINTS!" (But I don't actually know how to do that...)

>>51729435
>>51727248
Why ammonia vs non-ammonia?

>>51739561
What paints are you using?

>>51739561
The advice is "thin your paints"

You do this by combining your bought paints with their base medium. Most paints for models are water based now and can be thinned with water but some have different bases like oil and need different thinners.

If you've only painted a fence I'd also remind you to prime your model.
Primer is a paint specifically made to layer plastic/metal/wood to then be painted on to.
If you're painting something that uses primarily 1 colour like a tank or plane, try to get a primer close to that colour or go with black/white/grey.

>>51739561
>I ordered a model plane kit recently.
What plane? There are often paint sets available for historical periods, for example Luftwaffe colors.

>>51724931

What are you painting and how detailed do you want to be with it?

If you're just starting out, I'd recommend grabbing a unit of the same type of model and paint those in the same color scheme. This will mean that, A.) You'll only need to buy a few paints to fit your color scheme (probably between 5-7 paints; 1 base, 2-3 layer paints, 1 trim paint, 1-2 washes, and 1 detail paint) and B.) you'll be getting plenty of practice on the same model, meaning you'll be able to improve as you paint more of them.

If you just want to paint and paint whatever interests you, then you can invest in a paint set with a whole color range. Otherwise, just go with a couple of paints to get you started and paint a unit.

Hell if you're even half-way decent and have no interest in the gaming aspect you could paint up a unit and sell them on ebay for a pretty penny.

>>51733426
How will this not just centrifuge the paint?

>>51744076

Because the paint bottle is more or less aligned to the center point of rotation, not offset like a centrifuge. In effect you are rolling the bottle at high speed. Imagine rolling it across a floor.

>>51744076
>>51738321
>>51734706
>>51733426
>How...

!!! Important step I forgot to mention:

Put lead-shot or a BB in the bottle. This will fix even clumpy paint if you add a little solvent/water.

>paint everywhere
I spin an empty bottle w/ a weight in it beforehand just as a foolproof check it's spinning the right way.

So far I haven't fucked up, so...

>>51734173
Yep. I've been using zinc-plated BB's in mine w/ the electric drill. It's been about a year, no rust yet.

If you're worried about rust, use lead. Not enough is going to leech to be dangerous, and it will be buried under a layer of varnish on the model anyway.

>>51740378
>>51740378
>Windex, ammonia
No major effects I've seen, it's pretty low concentration and used in a TINY quantity (a little does a lot, it's different from adding water since it alters surface tension)

But the ammonia isn't what you want as a thinner. You're after the surfactants/alcohol premix in a water base. Fortunately surfactants are super powerful at what they do.

There's little cost difference between ammonia free and regular, so basically there's no reason NOT to get the ammonia free.

>>51743378
>water based.
This is incorrect. They are water soluble, meaning that the they dissolve in water, but the medium is slightly different from water.
It's why if you use water you'll see the pigment clump rather than spreading evenly through the mix. It will also have a slightly different texture.

I tiny bit of dish washing soap does some to solve this.

Now personally I like mixing paints, but I've got more experiance in mixing paint and I like a fitting tone rather than an exact match.
That said, sometimes you cannot get a good mix. Yellows, orange and purple are the most likely to give you problems there.
Purple only with model paints, but yellow and orange or always fucking divas.

>>51747498
>dish washing soap
Not to be the crazy guy repeating the same thing over and over-
-but I told you /tg/, I told you about the surfactants!

>>51743378
>>51747498
>base medium. Most paints for models are water based
>Water soluble, different medium than water.

***Acrylic based medium. Since neither person clarified. Miniature paints we use are typically Acrylic.

>>51734253
I have a theory that it only happens to left handed people. Might you be left handed?

How do I know if I thinned my paints enough? I never thin my reaper paints because they turn out sort of watery when I add one drop of water to one drop of paint.

>>51748763
I'm right and so is my friend. This happens constantly.

>>51724931
Vallejo is so much better than citadel it isn't even funny.

>>51750946
you want much less than that, about one drop to three.
It should look like skim milk.
and as has been said, water alone will not give you that as a consistent texture.

>>51750946
Pro-tip: There's two dimensions to "thinned".

Water yes is one way to literally water it down in that you are reducing the pigment density and the amount of the gloopy acryllic medium which is going on the model. The second dimension is Surface Tension and Adhesion. That's everything from thinner, flow-aid, alchohol, soap, windex, to glaze or even adding more acrylic medium. The 3rd dimension would be getting into wet-blending for which extenders and such are used.

It should go on the model without significant pooling in recesses (see 2nd dimension above), such that it goes in a very even coating regardless of the surface, and dry such that it takes multiple coats to get a solid color.

If you're using "too much" water, due to the surface tension and specific gravity of water, it will pool in recesses like a fat kid that won't get off the couch and want to draw itself into droplets (google "liquid meniscus", if you can see it doing that in recesses, you've definitely got too much water or not enough of the thinner additives)

As long as it takes 2-3 coats, that's good enough. To speed things up, I recommend assembly-line painting, or painting 2-3 models at a time such that you're always doing more even while a coat is drying.

This
>>51756070
>It should look like skim milk.
has always been too vague.
and this
>water alone will not give you that as a consistent texture.
is exactly what I was talking about above.

You've probably got isopropyl alchohol, dish soap, and/or windex around the house to experiment with. A little goes a long way. Try experimenting. EG, I find using alcohol makes it dry much much faster and the surface tension is better behaved than water. Some brands, like Reaper, come with a fuckton of flow-aid and extenders mixed in out of the bottle. So it will depend on brand as well.

I ended up making a mixtures specific to my AP paints and bottled it in a high-quality miniature-sample liquor bottle w/ a rubberized cap. Works pretty good.

>>51756258
Meant entirely for
>>51750946
not
>>51756070
despite my mid-post quotation.

since we are on the subject of paints, any one have a chart of the colours that gw repeats and the shades that most closely correspond to their base/layer colours?

>>51734253

This is the reason I transferred all my GW colors into droppers and buy dropper brands from now on. The only GW paints I'll buy are the ones that can stay in pots like washes or technicals, and if I see a GW color I really like such as Stormhost Silver, I'll pour it in a dropper.

Too late to save my dirty pots, but the trick to keeping GW pots absolutely clean is to open them tilted at a 45 degree angle towards you. This causes the paint that is in the lid after shaking to drip straight down into the pot. If you open the pot and stand it on the table normally, the paint in the lid oozes into the hinges and other places of the pot where you don't want it to go, which causes unsightly smears and coloration on the lid, paint on your fingers, gunked up paint inside the lid edge, pots that don't close properly near the hinge. and dried out paint if it gets bad enough.

>>51729435

/tg/ is fucking stupid, that's why. Here's some other shit /tg/ hasn't believed over the years:

- Buying expensive kolinsky sable brushes
- Thinning with special thinners rather than water
- Painting components individually, off the sprue
- Using brush soap

>>51736743

That's Vallejo Game Color by Acrylicos Vallejo, arguably the most well known and one of the best brands of modelling acrylic paints.

>>51724931
I'm an average tier model painter, my fine motor skills need work, more practice I guess.
but I know about painting, pay for decent brushes always and look after them.
get the best quality paints you can too.

>>51756258
>Pro-tip: There's two dimensions to "thinned".

I've got a problem I can't seem to figure out, particularly when it comes to painting eyes.

Specifically - I can lay down the whites of the eyes without too much of a problem, but when it comes time to paint in the iris, the paint dries on my brush by the time the brush hits the model. I also have this problem when I try painting super fine lines.

Funny thing is I did not have this problem back in the day when I used the original Citadel paints and water for thinner.

I can pretty much paint most things to an average tabletop standard, and have been painting for years, but not as often as I'd like to.

For brushes I'm using an Army Painter Insane detail brush.
I use a wet palette, and primarily use Vallejo model color and Citadel. I also use vallejo matte medium and glaze medium, vallejo thinner, and water, in many combinations.

I even tried getting Vallejo model air since I heard it flows very well and is good for miniscule details. This seems to work better, but I still have problems dotting my eyes.

Any ideas?

The only thing I can think of is that I have very hard tap water with extremely high calcium content, and somehow this is messing up the drying time on my paints.

>>51761734
Do you paint under a warm/heated light?

>>51761734
Ambient temperature/humidity, whatever lamp you might be using and try using a larger brush if you can as long as it has a good tip (which is the important bit).

>>51761964
>>51762060

I have a desk lamp with an LED bulb which is warm rather than hot. There's a slight warmth to the air underneath it, but I think that's because my apartment is cold and the air is very dry.

I should try a larger brush, as the Insane Detail Brush hardly carries any paint.

>>51734253
I hate this part of gw pots. I've found that opening the pot a little and angling it so that most of the paint on the "dish" runs into the pot. The issue is all the paint on the underside of the dish. If you just pull the cap back, it falls into the lid or starts running backwards.

If found it is less of an issue with shades. And dry paints of course. The issue with the shades though is they are really tall and easy to tip over. I lost my entire fresh pot of coelia greenshade because of a sudden movement.

>>51762288
>The issue with the shades though is they are really tall and easy to tip over.

To avoid spills I put my tall pots in egg cartons or candy/cookie trays with deep compartments.

>>51762288
>>51762363
The solution is to not paint from the pot like an animal.

>>51751480
well there goes my theory.

>>51759657
>- Buying expensive kolinsky sable brushes
KEK. Am anon you replied to.

Never use them, despite buying W&N Sable brushes since /tg/ pushed them so hard, as well as a set of the AP ones (best handles).

I pretty much always just use high end (still inexpensive) Takylon. It's basically treated nylon. The liquid capacity is lower than the sable, but they're way more consistent and get a better snap when moving across a mini.

Both are indestructable, contrary to what /tg/ says. Natural hair is easily cleaned and revived and pretty simple to care for, and nylon can be made-new w/ boiling water.

>>51762110
>>51761734
>dries out too soon!
3rd dimension I mentioned above: Extenders. These make it dry out slower.

Also, 1) a high quality larger round brush will still have a very fine tip to use if your hands are steady. 2) Paint the iris (blot it), THEN put the whites around it { a "(" and a ")" }. These "Lizard" eyes aren't noticeable on most miniatures since they're so fucking small.

>>51762775
>yfw he paints from the pot
>and doesn't even thin
>or use a palette

>>51764198

Just replace sable with taklon to see why /tg/ is still retarded.

>hur dur why can't I just use $1 synthetic brushes

Don't try to pretend like the best brushes don't cost more money, regardless of their bristle material.

>>51761734
You're using shitty, small size brushes. Buy good, larger size brushes to prevent paint from drying on the brush. If your brush size is smaller than 0, and if it looks extremely weedy and thin, it's a low quality brush. It should look robust and fluffy, even if it's a very small size.

>>51762110
I used to have a 5/0 for painting eyes and i know what you're on about. It just doesn't carry enough water.

I've read this a few times around here and it's true : the size of the brush doesn't _really_ matter, as long as the _tip_ is fine.
Hence the importance of picking a good brand.
The famous Windsor and Newton 7 is famous for a reason. It's not just hype. I've been painting with X brand paintbrushes for over twenty years and I only recently got one totally by chance and the difference was obvious straight away.

A normal size 0 is enough to do anything, now. No problem. The paint doesn't have time to dry on my brush's hair because there is enough water in the reserve.

Give it a try. With the amount of brushes you'll fuck up because paint dried in the brush hairs, you'll end up saving money if you buy a good quality one instead.

What are the different types of brushes and what do you recommend?

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In my experience, it depends on how I plan on going about painting my minis.

If, for example, I'm planning on making a particular army, I wouldn't start out by buying a giant damned paint-kit unless it was at a very big discount... like... half the price of what the pots would cost individually. Instead, I plan what colors I'm going to need to make the given army.

For example, using my main army as an example, the army called for an "Ash-grey paint scheme without highlights"... I knew I was going to need primer, and that White and Black are both must-haves. I didn't have confidence in my painting skills so I wanted to use mostly drybrushing between several layers of grey, (I started with four shades, cut it down to three) So far, that's seven paints. I used two or three tones of metallic silvers for the gun barrels, and I knew I would need two gun-barrel colors. PPCs in blue, and lasers in red. I'd also use red for making hazard striping for any missile ports. (Green jewelled lasers came much later). Lastly, I needed clearcoat as both matte/flat, and in gloss for cockpits and lenses.

So altogether, that's what... 12 paints maybe? I didn't need orange, or purple, or pink, or any of that. In the event that I planned on using every color in the rainbow, yeah, I figure it would be a good idea to go for a full kit like that, but if you plan out the colors you want to use, you'll save yourself a lot more money than buying kits with paints you never plan on using.

Also, it depends on your patience, too. Some guys want to really get into their painting. All power to you. There are some guys who just want to get it over with, slather on their paint in fifteen minutes in a single coat with a 1-inch craft brush, and don't care. In that case honestly, I wouldn't bother even going with the model paints. If your "Don't give a fuck" levels are only slightly higher than "Not even primered", wasting close to $5 per pot is pearls before swine.

>>51768279

Is that you, Fritz?

>>51768353
Who's Fritz?

>>51762288
>The issue with the shades though is they are really tall and easy to tip over
Just Blu-Tac the fuckers down