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Has anyone else had problems with red going thin/splotchy? My paints are thinned, but I feel like they don't stick as well as my other paints do.

Red can be a finicky color. What brand are you using and what are you using to thin it?

I have run the gambit on most of the "Hobby" paint ranges and my favorite to use is Vallejo Game Color Gory Red. It coats pretty well (which is awesome for red).

Also for reds priming black tends to put you at a disadvantage, most red paints are really translucent requiring quite a few thinner coats to cover.

I tend to prime models that will be primarily red with a grey primer and then bring down the brightnes of the reds with a wash.

I hope that helps.

Basic acryllic paint and water. It's worked great for everything else but the red. Even orange has stuck like a charm. I was gonna prime em red, but the guy I bought em from red had already primed em red and it was super flaky, rubbing off on my fingers. I ended up using a bronze color to simulate the Khorne berzerker look I'm going for.

Side note: I use bb's as shakers in my paint pots and sometimes it turns colors like silver and white kind of brown, almost like rust. It doesn't seem to affect the paint other than where the bb's are, but is it something I should worry about?

What exactly are you painting? If it's something like Blood Angels then you'd be better off just priming in red. Spraying black just to try and go over it in red is pointless, and does nothing but fill details with unnecessary layers of paint. Army painter do a selection of red primers, you can find them on ebay too.

Edit: I don't know much about flaky paint. But not all sprays are primers. Model air will often flake and rub off metal minis that aren't primed. But finishing stuff with varnish should cure a lot of those kinds of issues.

I'm trying to do some Khorne berzerkers I bought off a guy. 4 of em were done really well, but the others are primed in red. I don't know why, but if flakes and rubs off really easily

Flaky paint, funky metallics and splotchy reds? Probably best to just strip the models and start again.

1. Strip the models and wash them to make sure there's no residue interfering.
2. Prime red, or prime white and basecoat red. Painting red over black is annoying. Do you use rattle can primers, airbrush or brush? I prime and basecoat with airbrush and find it much better than the other options for a variety of reasons.

Your agitators shouldn't interfere with the colour of your paint. If they are... I'd probably throw the paint and triple check the agitators. I use lava or hematite beads cheap off ebay and haven't had discoloured paint in over two years iirc of using them.

Over-thinning can cause splotchy red coverage. You might need to thin less or add some matte medium to increase the binder which will keep the paint "whole". Un-mixed paints can be splotchy too. No matter how much you shake some colours - such as some Vallejo Game Colour reds - they will need stirring as they settle into a thick sludge that won't budge any other way. Finger oils, mould release and random grot can cause splotchiness, which is why I recommend stripping and starting again.

Awesome, thanks! I use rattle can, I find it cheap, easy, and suits my purposes. I probably will strip them once I get the time and motivation up to do it, I just found it so odd that the primed models flaked. I've bought lots of used models via eBay and never had this issue

The other thing you can do is basecoat brown, as it is a lot more forgiving when covered with reds, especially when you're going for a dark red. Or start from black with a really dark red then layer up to the brighter color.

Basecoat of red on black primer is not difficult. The trick is to put down a thin coat of yellow (GW Averland Sunset) before applying the red (GW Mephiston). This will give you a brilliant, jewel-like red with just 2 thin coats of Mephiston.

The yellow doesn't have to be painted to opaque. just 1-2 thin layers does the trick. With your thinned paint, don't overload the brush (to prevent pooling), and just like painting a wall, applying a coat of paint onto wet paint is not helpful, since your brush just picks bits of the previous coat right back up -- so make sure each coat is dry before starting the next.

As others have mentioned, priming it red makes it all a lot easier; remember that AP has 3 red primers -- pure red, dragon red, and chaos red, so pick the red that's closest!

Talys wrote:
With your thinned paint, don't overload the brush (to prevent pooling),

I'm sure a lot of painters will laugh at me for saying this, but learning to take care and not overload my brush was a huge step in avoiding frustration in a lot of situations. It's not as easy when you're dealing with brushes that tend to slurp up paint, and it gets even harder to do when you start using flow-aid. But once you do, it's a huge step in the right direction.

50:50 mix of Mephiston Red and Abaddon Black or other bran equivilents. Visit me gallery or blog (banner in sig) for examples. Covers well and can easily be built up.

 Smacks wrote:
What exactly are you painting? If it's something like Blood Angels then you'd be better off just priming in red. Spraying black just to try and go over it in red is pointless, and does nothing but fill details with unnecessary layers of paint.

for me, it is far from pointless, it is a stylistic choice...
i don't like the way my colors look over white, and prefer to start over black when i spray...
right now i am painting a Blood Angels Marine and i started over grey, because that is the brush-on primer i have (spraying in the tropics is a crap shoot)...
even the grey did not give me a dark enough base for my style so i washed my burgandy basecoat with a near black red, and built up from there...
as you can see in the step-by-step, no details were filled in, and the finished red has a very rich tone...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/599549.page

the final red is about ten layers of paint, and doesn't obscure any detail, and i hardly thin my paint at all!!!
it's all about applying paint with control, instead of slathering it on, wether you are using spray cans, brush, or airbrush...

cheers
jah

It's not so much that red on black is bad, as it's just bad for beginners imo. It's time consuming to make look good, but yes can do give a certain effect - I like yours btw.

My avatar is my recent Blood Ravens, airbrushed red over airbrushed white primer, with some airbrush shading and washing and what not (I've been told to increase the shading and highlighting). Brighter, but so very easy that it's a much better route for less experienced painters or those without the patience to do 10 layers hehe. *raises hand*

Do you have an airbrush? Easy way to get red to work is to use black primer, then hit the highlights with grey from above and a final highlight with white. Then spray the whole mini with red candy, transparent or ghost paint.

 tinker wrote:
Do you have an airbrush? Easy way to get red to work is to use black primer, then hit the highlights with grey from above and a final highlight with white. Then spray the whole mini with red candy, transparent or ghost paint.

Awesomepaintjob doing just this. Well worth a watch if you haven't seen the technique. I chose not to go this way, but I'm not a huge fan of the Minitaire candies - I probably just can't use them that well yet hehe.

It's best to start over grey, but if you do start over black you've just got to use the right paint to get you going.

GW Scab Red (now sadly OOP), P3 Sanguine Base, GW Khorne Red and Vallejo Game Colour Heavy Red will all get you decent cover after a few coats in my experience and you can do what you want from there. Even if you want a completely different type of red (Sanguine Base is a burgundy) they're still a good start point.

 jah-joshua wrote:
for me, it is far from pointless, it is a stylistic choice...

I always love looking at your stuff.

I think it's different if you start dark and then like to build upwards, and that is how you do your shading and highlighting. That's certainly a viable way to paint. But I've seen a lot of people on here who spray black as a matter habit, and then try to do another 'basecoat' in something like yellow. Sometimes resorting to a foundation paint or respray to get the 2nd basecoat 100% opaque. That's just a waste of time and paint, and I think stems from people not really understanding what the basecoat is for, and what the difference is between basecoating and priming.