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Can you use acrylic paints to paint 40k figures?

Incase there are different kinds of acrylic paints, these are the ones i would use;



and



thanks for help!

All games workshop paints are acrylic.

Unless i'm much mistaken, there are a couple of different types of paints...

Acrylic, which is what GW and Vallejo Paints are. Its water based.

Oil, which is like what artists and gak use.

Enamel, which needs paint thinner to clean off.

Cool, so their fine?

Basically any paint you'll be using for wargame modeling is going to be acrylic. Oil paints are kinda a specialist thing you only see a few guys do. Unless you have a surplus of those fine arts acrylics I would most definitely not get them because they are much thicker and harder to dilute/mix and get a smooth coat with.

Artist acrylics are sometimes thicker or have different pigment size/densities than modelling acrylics, but if you experiment with them a bit and thin them properly you might be able to get away with it.

Of course, but try to find some that are a decent quality otherwise it may not see worth it in the end.

ok cool, so would I be better of just using GW paints? (I already own both)

 JohnnoM wrote:
ok cool, so would I be better of just using GW paints? (I already own both)

Yeah, gw paints (and even moreso PP and Vallejo IMHO) are much better suited to modeling. I do occasionally stumble across a tube on my shelf that's already the perfect color I've wanted without having to mix it, but in general it's not worth the trouble.

Ok thanks for the help.

Although I replaced my white with this a while back.


Haven't had any issues, but their red and green left much to be desired.

Almost any acrylic will do, just check the consistency, for some needs more thinning than others, but that's all.

Yep. Acrylic is the most common medium used for our happy little hobby.

But on a side note, since you mention artists acrylics...
I switched from GW Chaos Black over to an acrylic Airbrush paint. So freakin' black...

Got a tube of Galeria Cobalt Blue:


It's the bluest blue my blue eyes have ever layed blue on. Thinned properly works wonderfully. 5 star coverage as well.
I'll do the same for yellow and red soon, so I can just mix whatever I want. I got a few 2oz empty paint bottles from AC Moore for these (whole tube + appropriate thinner = perfect size)

IF you're on the cheap (kids, college students, have a mortgage, etc...) I've been moving slowly over to Americana Acrylic Craft paint. Needs thinning, and the lesser coverage means multiple layers, but it's color selection is rockin'. I thought the pigment size would be an issue, but no such issue. So much paint for so little cash...

As mentioned by everyone else (though figured I might as well pile on) - tube/artists acrylics will work well enough for painting miniatures as they do for painting canvas. Quite often they will even work better, because many tube paint manufacturers use very good pigments which the "hobby" paint manufacturers won't use in order to keep their "Safe for kids and brush lickers" rating. Reds, blues and yellows have a much stronger pigmentation generally speaking when they are sold to artists versus when they are sold to 13 year olds and guys who play with toy soldiers.

Thinning will be the big thing to watch out for. When I thin them, I will usually use an acrylic glaze medium as opposed to just water. Keeps the paint nice and smooth whereas sometimes if you thin with just water it can get a bit gritty (has less to do with the size of the pigment particles and more the way things react when in an aqueous solution).

You should be able to find the medium in art stores near the tube paints - though if you can't...Future Floor Polish is basically the same thing...just found in your grocery store's cleaning aisle.

Oh, yah - and be sure you look to see if it is a transparent of opaque pigment. Hobby paints don't really distinguish between the two very much - but with art paints you have transparent pigments and opaque pigments. Normally they will be marked as such on the tube...though sometimes it is something you are just supposed to know.

Everyone seems right on the money here.

Artists acrylics generally speaking will be much higher quality than what citadel make. Brands will vary.
The main 3 artists acrylic brands that i consider to be of the highest quality are Windsor and Newton, Daler Rowney and Liquitex. Liquitex being the USA one (I have to order Liquitex products in because of the not being many stockists here in the UK)

I believe Liquitex are the industry leaders for acrylics, they were sposedly one of the first (if not THE first) company to produce a heavy body acrylic that behaves like thick oils on a canvas without the methylated spirits that oil painters need to use. This is pretty much the artists standard nowadays.
And since they have produced 'Soft body' acrylics which are the more gloopy ones that you have been talking about.

Citadel paints, Im not sure on the current manufacturer, but it is in the UK I hear. So it might well be W&N or Daler Rowney?? does anyone know who makes them?
They have their own formula of medium that gives the matt finish that we're always so fond of. This should be able to bve replicated with a combination of acrylic mediums and additives untill appropriate flow and sheen is achieved.
Artists do this for themselves and do not need to pay citadel to make 12ml pots for £2.30 each!! omg so pricy!!! The only reason to be using a premixed citadel colour is when you need consistency in mixed colours, do them yourself and it will surely vary from batch to batch.

As for tranparent and opaque paints, for a lot of brands you have to go look at the colour availability chart to determine which pigments are tranparent or opaque. Most are actually Transparent because thats how you achieve many of the nice effects painters can do, while most of the citadel ones are opaque, because theyre made for kids and kids will mostly struggle to grasp tranparent colour mixing and layering. Airbrushing takes a huge advantage from transparent paints and layering techniques with them. Youtube has a lot of custom car work airbrushing vid's that can help demonstrate this.

if i were to use one as undecoat (of white) should i thin it lots and do lots of thin coats, or thin it to GW consistency and do one coat?

Even GW consistency is a tad thick. Experiment a tad with the thinning, but in general, it's ALWAYS better to do multiple thinner coats, thus preserving the details of your miniature.

thanks!

There's not much you can do to avoid having to do multiple thin coats for some colours like yellow and white.

ok, so paint imperial fists, hard?

Not really hard...just figures with that type of a color scheme can be a PITA.

Luckily, I have never felt the need to punish myself with an army of primarily yellow figures. However, a friend of mine did - they were a home-brew Eldar CW. As opposed to doing the whole painting yellow in a hundred thin layers and cursing the entire time, I had him bring them over in batches and we sprayed the yellow in groups with the airbrush. Nice and even yellow coats without too much fuss.

After the yellow was down, other colors could be dealt with using regular painting methods.

It also is a lot less painful if you can work with white primer as opposed to the black that a lot of people favor.