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Hello again,

I am fed up with Citadel pots. Every time I leave them for a week or so without opening the post I get a solid bit of plastic when I open the cap wasting huge amount of paint. I have been buying vallejo game colour but haven't picked the metallic colours one because read somewhere the Citadel were still better on metallic, washes and foundation. So is this really true and if so is there any better alternative than just keeping buying GW?

Once upon a time GW had the best non-alchol based metalics, thats been changing steadily, now all of the major paint brands metalics are pretty much the same.

From what I read the Vellejo metallics are a lot better. The Model Air metallics don't have the glittery effect of most metallics.

Haven't used Vellejo as yet but I plan to use anything but GW paints.

I've tried both vallejo game color and model air metallics, as well as GW's, and I have to say for straight brushing on, GW's still take the cake for me. I've yet to try the golds for vallejo however, this is just for the boltgun/mithril type of range. I found the vallejo equivalent to boltgun (game color gun metal) to be slightly grainy when painted, and not smooth enough for my taste.

My current progression is a bit odd, but I typically paint in boltgun (or base in thinned game color gunmetal if airbruishing) then highlight with model air steel, which I'll brush on. It's a bit thin, but I prefer it to mithril.

One solution is to reload the gw paint into an old vallejo eye dropper you've finished and cleaned out the bottle.

+1 for what targetawg said, there isn't anything wrong with GW paints, its just the containers suck../.

I really like these Vallejo Model Colour metals:
Gunmetal grey, silver, old gold, bronze

These Vallejo Model Air colours:
Silver, Gold

And GW boltgun metal, tin bitz (rarely) and chainmail.

The VMA silver in particular is lovely stuff. In fact, every VMA colour I've used has been really nice and smooth to paint with, both in the airbrush and on the paintbrush.

Try a few bottles of the Vallejo Model Air metallics. Even for brushing on, they are some of the best. The Gun, Steel, Rust, etc are super smooth, the pigment is ground really tiny and go on smooth.

If you are looking for various shades of Gold, White Gold, Silver or Copper Vallejo's Liquid Gold series is amazing.

Instant solution to terrible Citadel paint pots:

http://www.thewarstore.com/product61545.html

I prefer Reaper metallics over Citadel; far more variety = far less mixing.

Outside that, I don't find any noticeable difference in quality of pigment, etc.

Catyrpelius wrote:+1 for what targetawg said, there isn't anything wrong with GW paints, its just the containers suck../.

I would agree with that except for the price

I only use a brush at the moment since I don't have the budget to spend on a airbrush. I am really tempted to get one though but this will not be before the end of the year for sure.
I didn't know you could use the VAM with a brush will give it a try.

targetawg wrote:One solution is to reload the gw paint into an old vallejo eye dropper you've finished and cleaned out the bottle.

How do you transfer the paint between pots? I did buy a few empty dropper bottles but yesterday I was trying to do one of 50/50 undercoat black/gunmetal and took me ages with loads of waste by using a plastic dropper that came with a boots kit for travelling.

I mainly use Boltgun metal and tin bitz and basecoats and chainmail and dwarf bronze drybrushed on top

Bacms wrote:

Catyrpelius wrote:+1 for what targetawg said, there isn't anything wrong with GW paints, its just the containers suck../.

I would agree with that except for the price

I only use a brush at the moment since I don't have the budget to spend on a airbrush. I am really tempted to get one though but this will not be before the end of the year for sure.
I didn't know you could use the VAM with a brush will give it a try.

targetawg wrote:One solution is to reload the gw paint into an old vallejo eye dropper you've finished and cleaned out the bottle.

How do you transfer the paint between pots? I did buy a few empty dropper bottles but yesterday I was trying to do one of 50/50 undercoat black/gunmetal and took me ages with loads of waste by using a plastic dropper that came with a boots kit for travelling.

I mainly use Boltgun metal and tin bitz and basecoats and chainmail and dwarf bronze drybrushed on top

For transfer I typically just pour carefully, if the paint isn't thick/gloopy then it should be no harder then pouring any liquid. If it is, add some water (distilled is best) and thin it so it works to pour. (Just in case you didn't notice, the eye dropper tip on vallejo bottles pulls out)

Also the link posted above by another poster to the warstore is an excellent one. I've just been reusing bottles which is fine, but I've also got a ton of vallejo paints and have some running out. If you don't, buying a dozen empty bottle's is a good way to go. To clean my old ones I just take some extremely hot (but not boiling) water and some soap and soak/rinse/scrub. They clean up very easily. I imagine you could also use paint stripping methods like simple green to clean them up as well.

As for airbrush cost, you can get one relatively inexpensively, I bought a setup for 100 shipped (USD) from amazon and have had no problems and a great fun time with it (the learning curve is steep though). It's definitely not for everyone and you need a place to do it, but it's something to consider in the future. But regardless, the model air paints can be nice to paint on, they're very smooth and essentially super thinned, and work very well for layering with a brush.

In my experience, the Vallejo model color metallics are really terrible. I still prefer the GW ones. Also, when you open a crusty GW pot, DO NOT pull out the ring of dried paint on the lip! The paint gathers in the lip and dries there, but that forms a seal, preventing any more paint from getting up there. If you pull out the crusty ring you only make another gap for paint to collect in, thereby wasting even more....

Agreed on the Vallejo Model Color ones. If I did historic modeling, they might be of use there, but overall, the 2 bottles I have of it sit there lonely.

Vallejo liquid gold paints are apparently really good.

http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/gb/liquid-gold-gb.html

Tho there alcohol based but they look really good and really smooth. Buy painted uses them on his Grey Knights for there gold. Going to get myself a bottle and try it on a dread or something.

Need to use alcohol with them cant wash your brush with water either have to use alcohol on them as water will actually rust the metalic pigments in the paint

^ I'm interested in those liquid gold paints, are there any pictures online of models that have been painted with them?