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Now i wouldn't say i was a bad painter but i have never diluted my paints and not had problems. But i hear people say it is alot better to do it. Can someone tell me what the advantages are, and the best times to actually do it or link me to a guide?

Most of the time i use a black basecoat and prefer the thicker, undiluted paint to so i get a better finish, but i'm giving a white basecoat a shot so i want to give it a shot and see if it improves my mini's.

So, thanks for any help

The diluted paint allows you to paint without smothering the finer details. Also in painting large flat areas like tanks you will get patchy appearance if you don't dilute your paints.

Finally advanced techniques like blending and layering need the paint to be diluted to achieve nice results. It also gives longer drying time to the paint so you have more time to work with the paint.

Even a mild dilution with a wet brush on a plate or palette would be a good idea because it removes any glugginess or differences in consistency between various pots of paint. But I'd still use properly thinned paints. I am biased though.

As a newbie painter, I'm still working towards becoming more consistent at finding that perfect consistency for paints. I find that the problem with thicker paints isn't the obscuring of detail (perhaps since I'm cautious enough not slop a big glob of pigmented paste all over my ork's face) but the flow. If overly thinned, however, you get coverage issues. If insufficiently mixed, you get streaks, some of paint and others of pigmented water.

My experience may, however, be quite different based on the paints I use. I use a few GW foundation paints which require a bit of thinning to go on smoothly, I have an ancient pot of Skull White and a pair of metallics that most certainly need thinning. The rest of my paints (washes excluded) are Vallejo Model Color, which I've found to be a thinner consistency from the get-go. Thinning is finicky, as it's not a uniform "thin this much per brush load" process, but a means to counteract the drying that takes place on the palette.

As to whether or not thinning your paints is important, I'd have to look at your figures to tell you if I thought you needed it. None of the other painters I know do so (a very small sampling, so not necessarily indicative of common practice), and some have decent minis, others... well, it looks rather like they rubbed the minis hard against a few differently colored crayons until enough gunk had built up to cover what needed to be and a whole lot more. Is your finish smooth? Colors even? Then keep doing things as you currently are. If not, seriously consider it.

Check out this tute.

Diluting your paints results in a smoother, crisper finish with visible details. Additives can be quite expensive, but since the bottles are sized with canvas painters in mind, it's generally a one-time investment that you shouldn't have to make again unless you run a painting service or are a mad brushmaster. The quality of your paint jobs can improve dramatically once you start using paint the way it's made to be used.

more diluted colors + lots of layers = smooth transitions, sharp details. I am mostly painting with STRONLY dilluted colors - can say it's just colored water....