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Having only got back into painting about 3 months ago, i've built up my paint collection to 17 paints and 7 washes (not tried the foundation paints yet). This made me wonder how many paints most people have in their collection and what is considered to be a good minimum?

22 different paints, 2 different glazes, one ink, and one glaze medium.

AND I USE EVERY ONE OF THEM!

...well... except for snot green. I only ever used that once.

Green, green , green, GREEN and uh.... green! Hurray for Orks!

When it comes to painting armies, I'd consider the minumum to be one full range of paints. You want to avoid mixing whenever possible, as that leads to consistency in an army. For single models, a smaller selection will work.

Personally I have all the paints/washes/foundation GW makes, plus the Vallejo Game Color suitcase thing, plus some Tamiya stuff I mixed up for airbrushing.

I got from Tamiya:
Flat Blue
Blue, which is a little glossy (don't hurt me!)
Flat Red
Flat Yellow (Crap)
Flat Black
Flat White
Flat Brown
Flat Green (it's shocking green, a bad choice in retrospect)
Aluminium (It's SO awesome)
Flat Flesh

and I've got a pot of Citadel Snot Green

So I've got 11 colors that I use about 9 regularly for my Deathskulls army. But if I'm gonna do something else I'll get more colours. The Tamiya's great, but trying to mix some colours like purple (red and blue) ends up with a color very similar to the original grey the GW plastic sprues come in...

45 Paints and all the Citadel washes plus some glaze media, flow aids and acrylic thinner.

Yes, I've used them all though not all in the same army (currently have SM, a small but growing Witch Hunters force and Dark Elves).

I paint much more than I play.

i own all of the foundations, all of the washes and almost every other citadel paint, all i dont own is 3 of the blues and skull white.

I reckon the blues are the easiest to mix up from other paints. The reds and the flesh tones being the hardest.

I have 3 shades of red. All Vallejo. And they all look completely different.

I have every colour from the current range (normal paints, inks, washes and foundation paints), as well as some from the REALLY old range (ie when Dark Angels green looked awesome ) as well as some glazes from that same range. Lots of selection... I should paint some Harlequins are something

Full GW line, select PP3 and Vellajo paints.

I've got a lot, but I use up my Vallejo glaze medium and inks the most.

In fact, the colors I seem to use the most of are:

-Bonewhite
-Beasty Brown
-Leather
-Dark Skin (Reaper)

hm.....about 15 or 20 reaper paints/ink/weird metalic colors i've rarely needed but got on sale
probably about another 25 or so citadel paints/inks

I've got almost the full set of citadel paints. I have only two washes ATM but am planning on getting more.

I've also got a few hundred dollars worth of oil paint, acrylics, mediums and colored inks, but that's not wargaming related.

I have and use 20 or so of the cheaper paints from A.C Moore of the "Ceramcoat" brand

I have some citadel pots I picked up

Scab Red for the opacity of the paint, it has tremendous coverage. (picked this up before the citadel foundations came around I hear they are good)
Sunburst yellow - I figured that maybe I couldn't paint yellow because my paints were sub-par... not the case.
Warlock purple - This one for the color
Space wolf gray - Another for the color and also love what it does as a highlight on some stuff.

I have also picked up some of the washes after hearing so many good things about them

Ogryn flesh wash
Leviathan purple wash
Armor wash

I haven't really found that the difference between the $3.50 pot and the $.89 larger container warrants the price difference. But I am not painting to a professional standard, others may disagree.

Phloop wrote:I got from Tamiya:
Flat Blue
Blue, which is a little glossy (don't hurt me!)
Flat Red
Flat Yellow (Crap)
Flat Black
Flat White
Flat Brown
Flat Green (it's shocking green, a bad choice in retrospect)
Aluminium (It's SO awesome)
Flat Flesh

and I've got a pot of Citadel Snot Green

So I've got 11 colors that I use about 9 regularly for my Deathskulls army. But if I'm gonna do something else I'll get more colours. The Tamiya's great, but trying to mix some colours like purple (red and blue) ends up with a color very similar to the original grey the GW plastic sprues come in...

Phloop, I do the same thing. Honestly, Tamiya's puts out a very high quality paint, even if their color selection isn't the greatest. One of these days, I'm hoping to put out a make a paint mixing tutorial that'll show how to mix paints to exactly where you want them. For your purple, try dabbing extra white and red in there, maybe it'll help.

Just counted them... paint/inks/washes pots = 197.

Oldest 5 are from the original space marine paint set that I bought in the early 90's, and they still work fine.

i have about 30 paints and 1 wash, 3inks and about 4foundations. foundations are realy good get some

tuatha1337 wrote:
Phloop, I do the same thing. Honestly, Tamiya's puts out a very high quality paint, even if their color selection isn't the greatest. One of these days, I'm hoping to put out a make a paint mixing tutorial that'll show how to mix paints to exactly where you want them. For your purple, try dabbing extra white and red in there, maybe it'll help.

Thanks for the tip!