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I am in the process of moving house so am taking loads of things out of storage at the moment, and I came across my old paint box. This has not been opened in 10-15 years and is a neat little time capsule of painting from the mid 1990s so I thought I'd share some pictures so those who were not gaming then can see some of the things we talk about from time to time.

First off, here is the inside of the box:


The two paint pot styles of the time were the flip top lid (moreorless as used by coat d'arms today), and then a hexagonal pot which had slightly larger capacity and was a little bit easier to open. The black top, small twisty pot replaced the hexagonal pot.


Next we have the old citadel inks. These were pretty awful but had great names - shadow black, plasma red, rust brown, vortex blue and waaargh! green:


Here are some of the discontinued colours from the first range. I have fond memories of painting sprues of epic marines blood angels orange then washing them with red ink to quickly put together 8mm scale space marine armies. It is very very orange though! Worm purple was a sore spot for me when it got discontinued as that was the colour of my main space marine chapter, which I was suddenly unable to continue painting... grrr. Some of these paints simply had name changes - Ork Flesh is pretty much exactly Dark Angels Green for instance.


Open up the brazen bronze for this lovely mixture. Great for verdigris though, but it stinks really badly now so I'd prefer to never open it ever again. It is basically a chunk of metal suspended in dirty water now. This paint faired the worst, the rest of them are all in very good condition considering their age and are all usable with a good mixing.


To show that these paints are still available in some form, here is polished blue next to the coat d'arms reissue enchanted blue (available from many online stores):



When the paints were switched over to the larger hexagonal pots, mike mcvey had a large hand in redesigning the range, so the crappy old inks went away and instead we got glazes and washes. The washes were like the old inks but had a slightly better finish, and the glazes were like the washes that you can buy from citadel today. Not the most inspired names (blue glaze, etc) and some very odd colours but they made a massive difference to painting techniques and ushered in a whole new era of blending.



Finally, here are some more discontinued paints from the large hexagonal era. The paint on top is a pot of sunburst yellow that has not been touched in over a decade. After this photo I gave it a shake and it was as good as ever - very impressive, no wonder the 'eavy metal photo from the last issue of WD showed them still using paints from this era! Putrid green is a slightly more yellow version of scorpion green but is almost the same. I still remember the dark day when I spilt some of that on the carpet :S


I hope you found this interesting enough to make it worth me taking and uploading the photos. I'm no kid kyoto but I have a bunch of old things sitting around for retro review at some point in the future! For reference, all these images are viewable in the Dakka gallery as well: http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-4786-1063_Old%20Citadel%20Paints.html

Hah, fun post Lego! I've still got a few blue cap washes and red cap glazes in my paint kit!

/strolls down memory lane...

Nice collection.

Quite the messy painter, huh legoburner? All of my stuff looks like it's never even been opened. I guess I'm just OCD like that though.

I can't say that I'm not glad they changed the paint pots to their current form.

To show the quality of the oldest style paint pots, note the bite marks on the tab in a desperate attempt to get the damn things open in my youth. More than once I walked away with a mouth full of paint :S

I'll have to post some of mine. I still have the inks when they first came in squeeze bottles and the metallics.

Mmmm.

That kind of reminds me of every time I forget to wash the paint off my brushes and then try to form the tip with my mouth.

Definetly not the best taste in the world.

EDIT: I'm very curious as to why your red glaze has blue paint all over it.

Chrysaor686 wrote:Nice collection.

Quite the messy painter, huh legoburner? All of my stuff looks like it's never even been opened. I guess I'm just OCD like that though.

I can't say that I'm not glad they changed the paint pots to their current form.

Didnt have a huge choice in those days. The newer pots are cleaner. Here's a picture of my paint area as of 5 minutes ago so you can see I've got better now

Nice, I'm jealous.

What did you do, rob the FLGS? I want at least one of those paint wheels.

See you're a stickler for Vallejo. Never really did it for me (even though I wish so badly that GW paints came in those dropper pots, as the current lid is pretty useless unless you like to pre-mix and water down your paints).

The blue ink is on everything dating back to an... incident in which the lid not close properly. I opened it up to find a lot of blue ink on a lot of pots of paint.

The paint carousels are very useful but I only got my first one a year ago. As for the paint range, it comes from being one of those people that never needs anything, then having 2 years of birthdays and xmases where I ask for paints from relatives desperate for ideas. The paint carousels can be found here: http://www.thewarstore.com/product44011.html
They say 80 paints, but if you double up you can get way more. I have about 180 vallejo paints on one, and about 100 GW paints and washes on the other.

Ifurita, I'd love to see some pics and descriptions of the ink dropper bottles as I have no memory of them whatsoever.

I Games-Workshopped from 1989-1994 and only started again a month ago. I went up in my parent's loft and got my old Eldar army and a few other bits and pieces out. Oddly enough, it was stumbing across the paints that brought the most memories back for me too.

These are some fun pictures to look at if you're ancient like me. I remember colors such as Shadow Black and Blood Angels......Orange? Aren't they supposed to be red?

There was also an old primer that came in a pot called "Smelly Primer," which indeed lived up to its name.

Anyway, I've always gotten a kick out of the names GW gives to their paints. It seems like they're a bit more serious and less fun now. It's always like "Iyanden Darksun" instead of "Disgusting Bile and Chunky Barf Yellow."

Snot Green didn't go out of production too long ago, but still one of my favorite colors.

Humorisk wrote:There was also an old primer that came in a pot called "Smelly Primer," which indeed lived up to its name.

I clearly remember that one ! Talk about ammonia, it smelled worse than an East London public toilet .

legoburner : Thanks for the wander down memory lane, I too am afflicted by fond memories seeing the older generation of our working medium, including several cases of Polished Blue tongue from opening the sucker with my teeth

I have plenty of old school paints, I am still using them.

Uh-oh. I didn't know Hideous blue was discontinued. I'm using it on my Cadians, and I'm disturbed to know that I won't be able to buy more.

I'm still using mine... though I recently ran out of Armor Wash I used that on everything from marines to tanks!

captain.gordino wrote:Uh-oh. I didn't know Hideous blue was discontinued. I'm using it on my Cadians, and I'm disturbed to know that I won't be able to buy more.

Hideous blue from the coat d'arms range is a colour match for it, so when you run out just pick up a bottle of that.

Le Grognard wrote:Snot Green didn't go out of production too long ago, but still one of my favorite colors.

What! Snot Green went out of production!?! I haven't even bought it yet!

I still use quite a few. I love the black top-hexagonal bottle of Shining Gold. Best gold EVER.

Reaper makes a good Polished Blue called Blue Steel. It is in the Pro Series.

I still have a bottle of Amethyst Purple I pull out on very rare occasions.

I miss the old paints.

Used to love the paintsets, Ork and Eldar and Monster especially.

Here are some of my faves!
Bilious Green, Electric Blue, Worm Purple and Titilating Pink.

Pics to come!

Those old pots were pretty good, I've still got some and they're ok. Sometimes paint goes off but not in those.

Later they went over to the pots they have now, but with screw lids. Must have been the worst paint pots I've ever come across. Even if you tightened the lid up gently, they always used to seize up even when clean of paint. Paint used to dry out in them so even when jammed shut they weren't airtight. They were ghastly, and some jammed shut so bad they had to be thown out.

Thank god they went back to the flip lid style of year ago, the screw lids were a disaster.

Some pics of my faves!

I don't miss the old pots!!!!

That was fond trip down memory lane. Thank you.

I like posts like these. It shows how far things have come and how much things have changed.

Now that I think about it, I might still have some of those stored away myself.

legoburner wrote:When the paints were switched over to the larger hexagonal pots...

The Hexagonal pots are smaller not larger, otherwise nice post. I'm still using my old round pots too, I've got less than half a dozen left though.

George Spiggott wrote:
The Hexagonal pots are smaller not larger, otherwise nice post. I'm still using my old round pots too, I've got less than half a dozen left though.

Good catch, I just double checked and the round pots are 20ml and the hexagonal pots are 17.5ml. They take up fractionally more space in my old paint box though

edit: And Alex, I would guess liche purple (or was it called warlock purple then), worm purple and another purple that I never owned so cant remember

@ Legoburner.....

I'm very jealous of your paint station!

Imperial purple was the other purple, I still have my pot. I also have Glistening Green, Titillating Pink, Hawk Turquoise, Hobgoblin Orange and a weird greenish silver colour that I was given about fifteen years ago.

randomfrog wrote:

Le Grognard wrote:Snot Green didn't go out of production too long ago, but still one of my favorite colors.

What! Snot Green went out of production!?! I haven't even bought it yet!

Whoops, my bad; still around. I thought it dissapeared a year or two ago.

OMG do you have any amethyst purple I'll give you 10 USD + shipping for it. I L O V E D that color.

You can still buy amethyst purple new for about $2.50:
http://blackhat.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21_39&products_id=87