Recently, over twitter and in IM I've had a few conversations about paints and tools, so I decided to do a little post on it, or my opinions anyway. This is going to be a multi-part post that I'm going to try and do on a sunday, as I take a break from the brushes.
Paint
Most people coming into this hobby start at the same place, Games Workshop. I'm not going to spend this article extolling the virtues/evils of Games Workshop, you can find that on just about any forum.
GW paints come in quite a good range of colours and the paints hold up reasonably well, I believe most of the issue they had with drying out prematurely have now been solved. After a little research, I see that GW paints are now retailing at £2.30 a pot.
Pros:-
- Easily available just about anywhere
- Reasonable range of colours, metallics and washes.
- Fliptop lid for ease of use.
Cons:-
- Can dry out/poor bottle seals.
- Smallest quantity in bottle.
- Colours can be poor coverage.
GW paints have gone through a lot of changes since I started, 4 different bottles and various paint manufacturers, the irony is that the original paints in most cases are still viable for use. This brings us to a second range, Coat D'arms.
Coat D'arms come in all the colours that the old range of GW paints came in, albeit with different names, for copyright reasons, but you can find a comparison chart here. Coat D'arms are probably the most economical of the paint ranges, 18ml for £2.00
Pros:-
- Familiar range of colours
- Economical
- Quite good coverage/ opacity
- Fliptop lids/good seals
Cons:-
- Harder to find, usually limited to mail order companies.
- Can be confusing getting right colour
- No company support
P3 are the range produced for and supported by Privateer Press, most likely one of the best out there, and I say this with bias, definitely my favourite range. While initially a rather limited ranged, it has grown into a fairly comprehensive range, geared towards people painting Warmachine and Hordes miniatures.
Pros:-
- Good range of colours
- Excellent coverage
- 18ml pots
- Fliptop lids/good seals
Cons:-
- Most expensive ( at £2.50 a pot, but18ml, rather then 12ml)
- Some problem with plastic rot on the lids (but that may just be my bad luck)
And now onto the granddaddy of paint ranges, this time from a spanish company.
Vallejo, are quite possibly, the range with the greatest range, at last count they had over 200 different colours and shaded in the Model Paint range alone. Infamous for their squeeze bottles, Vallejo have been upsetting the apple cart for several years now, the range is incredible, but it's aimed at traditional military modelers, so it's understandable. They are heavily pigmented, so you can not use them straight out of the bottle,they must be thinned.
Pros:-
- Incredible range of colours
- Squirt bottle for precise amounts
- 17ml bottle For £2.00
- Densely pigmented
- Highly opaque
Cons:-
- Tend to separate when stored, require lots of shaking
- Squirt nozzle gets clogged, can lead to paint waste
- Must be thinned for use, no quick touch ups.
- Range perhaps too large and confusing.
So, that's it for paints at the moment, there are other ranges available. Vallejo also has a game range, which is less densely pigmented and aimed at wargamers, an Air range, for use in air brushes and an extra Opaque range (which I will cover at some point) and some alcohol based metallics which are.. interesting to use.
There's also the Foundry paint range, which you can only buy in triads, which makes it rather expensive to experiment with, if you can find them, there is a range of paints from Rackham, which are now discontinued and I believe Reaper has a couple of paint ranged, of which I have very little experience.
That's it, this article is done, part two will come next week, Let me know what you'd like to see? More paint? Brushes? General tools?
Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment