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I know in normal circumstances you want to thin your paints but I am having a real ballache painting a sentinel at the minute. I'm painting it desert yellow, and painting it properly i.e. not drybrushing it, up from a base coat of graveyard earth followed by a devlan mud wash. I've just finished the 3rd coat of desert yellow and am reasonably confident the 4th should do it, but it's not fun putting on and I still have 2 more sentinels and 3 chimeras (chimerae) to do...

Any thoughts on thickening the paint? Or doing something else completely?

Cheers

spray paint it yellow, or airbrush it yellow.

I would NEVER attempt to paint large surfaces yellow or white by hand.

The issue with that (I reckon) is that you can't get the same shading that you would doing it by hand.

Jamumools wrote:The issue with that (I reckon) is that you can't get the same shading that you would doing it by hand.

By shading, do you mean the level of detail in the model, or matching the color to what you already have painted?

Odds are you can get close enough. With an airbrush, you can match exact.

Shading as in the detail on the model.

Never used an airbrush, and not likely to get one at this stage...

Jamumools wrote:Shading as in the detail on the model.

Never used an airbrush, and not likely to get one at this stage...

Spray yellow. Shade with darker color. Done.

It is definatly a pain without an airbrush (you get just as good of shading however), but using thicker paints would be a mistake. You will end up with obvious brush strokes and a generally uneven appearance.

Try and find a good yellow foundation paint, it could drastically cut down on your work.

try lyanden darksun or astronomican grey as basecoats. foudation paints are great!

+1 foundation paints

and

+1 spray basecoat yellow, shade darker yellow

Jamumools wrote:I know in normal circumstances you want to thin your paints but I am having a real ballache painting a sentinel at the minute. I'm painting it desert yellow, and painting it properly i.e. not drybrushing it, up from a base coat of graveyard earth followed by a devlan mud wash. I've just finished the 3rd coat of desert yellow and am reasonably confident the 4th should do it, but it's not fun putting on and I still have 2 more sentinels and 3 chimeras (chimerae) to do...

Any thoughts on thickening the paint? Or doing something else completely?

Cheers

The problem with yellow is what it is made of.....the primary ingredient in yellow paints is Cadmium, a very expensive mineral, the other problem is that "game" paints like Vallejo, GW, Reaper, ect dont develop and sell their paints in a traditional fashion. For Example; if I was to go to the art store and buy a tube of oil paint, lets say Ultramarine Blue, in a typical brand it would cost me about $7 to $12 per tube, whereas the Cadmium Yellow would cost closer to $24 to $36 a tube, they are basing the price of the paint on the amount of pigment/mineral that is in the tube...an 8oz tube of Ultramarine Blue uses far less pigment/mineral than an 8oz tube of Cadmium Yellow, so there is a price difference...this type of pricing would never fly in the model/gamer world as people would all be painting their armies the same color, because the color you chose you effectively double your investment.

To help offset this the gaming/model companies offer shades of various colors, thus minimizing the amounts of pigments that are used and reducing manufacturing cost. The best acrylic based, true flat yellow that I have found is by Vallejo, GW I dont even think produces a flat yellow.....

So what does all this jabbering mean? It means that it takes multiple thin coats of yellow to achieve a nice effect...it is not that the paint needs to be thicker, it is that the pigment/carrier/binder ratios are skewed and that results in a blotchy finish.

My personal recipe for yellow is as follows;
1. Lite Primer coat of white, and by light I mean that you can still see the gray plastic of the armor....
2. A lite coat of Army Painter Demonic Yellow Primer
3. Vallejo Golden Yellow is the base
4.Windsor and Newton Cadmium Yellow Artist Oil Paint
5. Vallejo Flat Yellow

Wala...



now you can compare the above image to this image which was simply Vallejo Flat Yellow over white primer;



You can see in the first image compared to the 2nd how the oil paint adds a richer and deeper feel to the yellow, the 2nd picture almost looks neon as the first looks more like a true yellow.

Good luck, I hope you figure it all out.

Ashton