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Greetings, over the past yr I have been painting mini's by just applying paint from bottle to model, after priming of course. I have heard more then once on words of advice to thin out my paints. Well I finally gave it a shot, with my first set of Knights of Blood, but again I got feedback to thin out my paints. How does one do that?! What I attempted last time was taking some paint out of the bottle and applying it to some wax paper, then I added a couple drops of water and mixed together. Is that not the proper way, or is there a more efficient way to do so? Please, if you have the time enlighten me on this endeavor. Thanks!

That's pretty much exactly how its done.

I guess the only more "efficient" way would be to transfer your paint into a dropper bottle and thin the whole thing with water. I've heard of people doing that.

Also, for what's it worth, I think my paint with 90% distilled water and 10% Liquitex Flow Aid. I have a giant bottle of it premixed, and keep a dropper bottle of it on hand. Very useful stuff. When doing tiny detail work, I cut my paint with pure drying retarder. I think what I use is called Liquitex Slow-Dry, or something. It makes it much easier to get thin lines without the paint clumping or running.

I use a bathroom tile as a palette, as it is non-porous ant won't soak up water (I used to mix my paints on a piece of newspaper). You can get a single tile from any home-improvement store. You can use water, a little rubbing alcohol, or what is called flow improver (available at most art supply shops) to thin and help apply your paints. These will usually work for most water based paints, if you are using enamels you will need an enamel thinner.

Super helpful thread so far, going to try the bathroom tile and dropper bottle.

Oh and off topic but, yay, another Knights of Blood player.

Raatcharch wrote:
I guess the only more "efficient" way would be to transfer your paint into a dropper bottle and thin the whole thing with water. I've heard of people doing that.

Don't do this.

Never add water to the paint while its still in its bottle. If you use to much water by accident then you will have messed up the whole bottle. It's always better to thin the paint when its on your palette.

 Snrub wrote:

Raatcharch wrote:
I guess the only more "efficient" way would be to transfer your paint into a dropper bottle and thin the whole thing with water. I've heard of people doing that.

Don't do this.

Never add water to the paint while its still in its bottle. If you use to much water by accident then you will have messed up the whole bottle. It's always better to thin the paint when its on your palette.

That's fine if you assume you might add too much. If you don't add too much it can be a great time saver. If you're sure you won't over-thin it (which can be fixed anyway) there's no problem. So get good at thinning first before doing it this way ; )

I drip a bit of paint into a waterbottle cap then add water.

When I'm done I just pitch it.

I will give these techniques a try. Thanks a lot!

 Yonan wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

Raatcharch wrote:
I guess the only more "efficient" way would be to transfer your paint into a dropper bottle and thin the whole thing with water. I've heard of people doing that.

Don't do this.

Never add water to the paint while its still in its bottle. If you use to much water by accident then you will have messed up the whole bottle. It's always better to thin the paint when its on your palette.

That's fine if you assume you might add too much. If you don't add too much it can be a great time saver. If you're sure you won't over-thin it (which can be fixed anyway) there's no problem. So get good at thinning first before doing it this way ; )

Alright then..... but its a surefire way to lose a bottle paint.

i use future floor wax, it works great.

 Snrub wrote:
Alright then..... but its a surefire way to lose a bottle paint.

Not a single one yet here so surefire seems somewhat inaccurate to say the least.

 Snrub wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

Raatcharch wrote:
I guess the only more "efficient" way would be to transfer your paint into a dropper bottle and thin the whole thing with water. I've heard of people doing that.

Don't do this.

Never add water to the paint while its still in its bottle. If you use to much water by accident then you will have messed up the whole bottle. It's always better to thin the paint when its on your palette.

That's fine if you assume you might add too much. If you don't add too much it can be a great time saver. If you're sure you won't over-thin it (which can be fixed anyway) there's no problem. So get good at thinning first before doing it this way ; )

Alright then..... but its a surefire way to lose a bottle paint.

The reason I don't think you should try and thin the paint in the bottle is simply because you don't necessarily want the same consistency all the time anyway. I'll add a few drops of water to the bottle if it starts to thicken up too much simply to save it from getting clogged up and losing the whole tin, but otherwise I prefer to thin on my palette. If I'm laying down a base coat I probably want the paint a touch thicker than if I'm gradually layering it for highlights and I want it a lot thicker/dryer if I intend to use it to drybrush something. Then you have the fact that after the paint has been sitting on your palette for a few minutes you'll need to thin it again to keep the right consistency. It just seems like a bit of a waste of time to try and get it the right consistency in the bottle as you're never going to get the right consistency for all situations anyway.

I use a 1:4 water:future floor finish & typically apply it directly to the paints directly but I've been doing for quite awhile so I've gotten my mixing down pretty good.

For the correct viscosity for painting details the best thinning agent is actually human blood. White blood cells in your blood align the paint molecules to have enhanced gripping properties with both other acrylic molecules as well as the underlaying surface.

 Johnno wrote:
For the correct viscosity for painting details the best thinning agent is actually human blood. White blood cells in your blood align the paint molecules to have enhanced gripping properties with both other acrylic molecules as well as the underlaying surface.

Blood for the Blood God, neh?

I dip the tip of my brush in the paint pot, just enough to barely load the appropriate amount of paint on, then I give the tip a quick dunk or two into a cup of water. I touch the upper part of the brush (towards the handle) to my paper towel to remove excess water and any overly thinned paint that moved too far up the brush (sometimes I do a practice pass on the towel to see if it's thinned too little or too much, then play with it trying to get a good paint-water balance) and then the brush is ready to go to the mini. It's quick and you don't waste the paint that you don't use. The only downside is having to replace the water semi-frequently but it's not terribly often and I work beside a sink anyways.

I use an eyedropper with water.

If you put too much water the paint will not dry fast enough and will not hold to the primer.

 AntomanElven wrote:


If you put too much water the paint will not dry fast enough and will not hold to the primer.

Needs more white bloodcells.

 Greyguy13 wrote:
I have heard more then once on words of advice to thin out my paints. Well I finally gave it a shot, with my first set of Knights of Blood, but again I got feedback to thin out my paints

"Thin your paints" is a rather generic response for a number of potentially unrelated issues - visible brush strokes, rough texture, obscured detail, etc. If you were told to thin your paints even after you did so, it's possible that the issue wasn't actually related to dilution, at all. Immaculate layers of perfectly thinned paint over thick, rough primer, for example, may be indistinguishable from thick, roughly applied paint over smooth primer. No idea whether there actually is another culprit, in your case, but it's worth thinking about.

Regarding thinning, more generally, it can be as simple as dipping your brush in water before paint or it can be as complex as dividing your pots into separate dropper bottles, each mixed to a particular consistency and opacity, using various additives to manipulate their working and cured properties. Personally, I think either extreme is a poor choice, but to each their own. Most generally, the goal of thinning is to establish good flow from brush to model and reduce visible brush strokes (by making making the paint liquid enough to be self-leveling). As some people have already mentioned, though, the ideal consistency varies from task to task. For basecoating and simple layering (as for tabletop schemes), one usually dilutes as little as is necessary to achieve smooth coats, since less diluting=greater opacity=fewer coats for even coverage=less time spent painting each model. For more advanced layering, glazing, etc. much thinner paints are desired. When in doubt, err on the thin side - you can always add another layer, but it's hard to strip paint selectively.

My greatest hurdle, when I first started, was consistency (in the "similar results" sense). I could tell when I had hit the dilution sweet spot - suddenly, my paints went exactly where I wanted them to, flowing effortlessly off the brush, without running everywhere, while actually depositing a decent amount of pigment - but most mixes ended up thicker or thinner than that. There were two main culprits: evaporation and clumsy transfer methods. The first is rather simple - my paint was drying on the plastic palette I was using, so even if I did hit that "sweet spot," it only lasted for a moment. That issue was solved by switching to using a wet palette (very simple and cheap to DIY - highly recommended), so that my paints stayed at the consistency to which I mixed them for longer. The second issue was more about method than equipment - I was taking a blob of paint from pot to palette using my brush, then adding brushloads (one could easily substitute "drops" here) of water and hoping it would magically work out. Being rather imprecise methods of measurement, it made figuring out the proper ratios nigh impossible and following recipes never turned out exactly the same. I began instead transferring a blob of paint and small pool of water onto my palette separately (but near to each other). By pulling from each into a central pool of "working" paint, I was able to adjust my mixes on the fly. At first, this served to make countering evaporation easier (started using the method before moving to the wet palette), but ultimately forced me to learn to "read" the paint's consistency, working by sight and feel instead of practiced (or, worse yet, assumed) ratios. Even after a few hours of using this method, there were noticeable improvements. After a while, I developed a good enough feel for it that the two-pool method was no longer necessary - I could actually thin by brushloads with a level of accuracy and consistency I could never have imagined, mere months earlier.

I heartily recommend playing around with your paints, a bit, even just on some scrap card, and really trying to develop a feel for their behavior at various dilutions. Hearing other people's methods/favorite ratio is all well and good, but nothing beats firsthand experience.

A plastic art store palete can be a real friend when working with paint whether thinning or mixing. you can have paint in one pocket water in another and then mix the 2 in a third so that you always have it just the way you want it.

Oadie is quite right. you have to be sure everything is right from not over gluing to the final seal coat.

Use a dropper to add distilled water to your paint. I add small amounts directly to my paints. I also mix my own paints and colors in seperate pots. You will also want to add liquitex flow aid. Add small amounts of flow aid and distilled water until you reach the consistency you desire.

Speaking of dropper bottles, I've tried a few and these have been my favourite - especially for larger quantities of stuff like water, matt medium, flow aid etc but not too large that it's annoying to use or screws up how much you add. Linkied to the store I got them from. Squared sides for nicer storage, good quantity markings, fine control drops etc. Cheap too.



edit: spoilered to save space.

I use some asian eye drop bottles, for my GW paints that I still want. I normally go, 3Parts paint, 1 thinner. When I need the paint again, i drop a bitmore in to thin it more... I did this for airbrushing, but dont gw paints are awful for them lol reason ive got all vallejo paints now.

 Greyguy13 wrote:
Greetings, over the past yr I have been painting mini's by just applying paint from bottle to model, after priming of course. I have heard more then once on words of advice to thin out my paints. Well I finally gave it a shot, with my first set of Knights of Blood, but again I got feedback to thin out my paints. How does one do that?! What I attempted last time was taking some paint out of the bottle and applying it to some wax paper, then I added a couple drops of water and mixed together. Is that not the proper way, or is there a more efficient way to do so? Please, if you have the time enlighten me on this endeavor. Thanks!

I use a plastic pencil case with a lid. I put some paper towels at the bottom, get them wet, then put wax paper on top. When I'm done painting, I close the lid and the paint will last a couple of days. Its a wet pallete and you can get all you need at the Dollar Store/Dollar General/Walmart for a couple of bucks if you're in the US.

You should be able to tell if your paints are too thick or thin. If you can apply a layer of paint and the paint is visibly distorting the details of the model, its too thick. You may also want to make sure you're using the right primer for your models - if you go for a neutral grey you'll find that it goes a long way with the end color and is the easiest to work with. If you're trying to paint dark colors, you're going to want to paint on black primer. The black will darken whatever color you paint over it so if you want a yellow army, its not the best color to paint over. If you want a bright army, go for white - it will brighten whatever color you paint on it. If you want a dark army, this isn't the best color choice then. If you are looking for something else try army painter primers. They work well when you want to get an entire army one specific color.

I use this

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this is a plastic pallet that I like covered with aluminum foil. Then I usually I add with eyedropper water.
The nice thing is that when your painting is done you through it away and instantly you have a clear pallet

I wouldn't bother getting an expensive palette. A sheet of plastic or wax paper is just fine. Probably preferable because a strip of wax paper costs like $0.01 or less for each usage. All you are really after is something that won't absorb the paint before you'd had a chance to work with it.

The reality is that without a retarder the paint is more likely to dry on the palette before you use it if you put too much out there anyway.

If you do get a cheap plastic palette, don't waste time covering it with tinfoil. First, it's hard to tell what your color is when mixing various shades. Second, it's not like the $1.00 plastic palette is really that expensive and you can certainly get a lot of use out of it before deciding to toss it.

When thinning, don't do it in the bottle unless you intend to use that entire bottle soon. The reason is that the water will evaporate over time and you'll end up with very different consistency from one paint session to another. You might think that simply adding more water is the way to go, however that will just continue degrading it.

I typically just put a bit of paint on the palette and then use a dropper to put some water in it and mix. However, if I'm only painting something relatively small, like the wax part of a purity seal, then I'll likely just put a little paint on the brush, lightly dip the brush in a pot of water and swirl a bit on the palette to make sure the brush has a good point and is properly mixed.

Which brings up the question: why bother thinning at all?

One answer is that you are after a bit of flow control in order to even out the paint. Once you start down this path be prepared to do multiple passes, letting it dry between each pass, in order to get a solid color. Another answer is that you actually want some of the underlying color to bleed through; which makes for a better looking model.

I use the lid of a plastic take-away tub.
Bits get stored in the tubs, and the lids just go to waste, so palette it is.
I did use a kitchen plate, but that means cleaning.

As for thinning, get paint on the brush and spread it on the lid.
Then dip the brush in a water pot and spread it out a bit.
Make sure yoou change the water when changing colours, or it'll mix in.