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I have some of the Reaper blue-greys. I got them because they're slightly different to the blue-greys I've gotten from other companies and I like that.

But honestly... these days... I just buy from whatever company has the colour I want. I can mix most of the tones I want from the colours I already have, but when painting an army it's good to have them consistent and I may not finish an army for several years, so I like to use paints that I can buy off the shelf. The differences between the standard acrylics available from Vallejo, GW, P3, Reaper, they're all rather small to me and I can make all of them do what I want.

The only exceptions...

1) If I want a solid coat of paint and I'm brush painting (rather than airbrush) I do like more opaque paints like GW's base range.

2) Tamiya and Gunze alcohol based paints are the only ones I find genuinely behave very differently. They give an awesome finish when airbrushed, but are tricky to use when hairy brush painting. The alcohol base is a strong solvent and will actually soften the paint layers below the one you're working on... this can be both good and bad! Actually they can be tricky to use when airbrushing as well, a slight change in how you paint them can totally change the finish. I was using an old Stuka to test paint schemes, I painted one wing one day to test one scheme and the next day I painted the other wing with the exact same base colour over the exact same undercoat and it looked very different for some reason, I think because I did thicker layers the first day. Was really weird, but the finish was awesome either way.

3) VMA is the only airbrush specific paint I've used, and yeah, it does give the best airbrushed finish of the standard acrylics (minus the alcohol based paints). Reaper gives me the worst finish of the standard acrylics, it seems to splatter the easiest and even when you get rid of the splatter the finish still looks rough. BUT, at the end of the day, I varnish whenever I airbrush anyway, as VMA paint is really quite delicate and needs to be protected... so the difference is kind of irrelevant because after a coat of varnish they all look the same.

So yeah... now I just buy from whatever company offers the colour closest to what I want.

Talys wrote:
I love GW paints, and I even prefer pots over bottles. I like wet palettes, and with dropper bottles, 90% of the time, 1 drop is way too much paint, and overnight, whatever is left diffuses and kills the wet palette.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but just because you use a dropper bottle doesn't mean you HAVE to use a whole drop of paint. Instead of hovering the bottle over the palette and squeezing out a drop, just smear the tip of the bottle over your palette while gently squeezing and you'll be able to control the amount of paint you take out to increments far smaller than 1 drop. You can even squeeze it on to a brush first if you really want.

Yeah I just use a drying retarder regardless of what paint I'm using whenever I'm doing any sort of blending and/or fine detail work.

When I discovered drying retarder it made painting eyes so much easier because I was no longer fighting against time while the tiny drop of paint on the end of my brush dried out

The drying retarder is one of the pots that doesn't need a spot in my painting rack because it's always on my desk

I'm sure some people get by fine without drying retarder and I'm by no means a pro painter, I bought it a while back to use for blending but then when I was painting my Orc Warboss I found it was much easier while painting fine detail to control the paint consistently from one stroke to the next if it wasn't drying on my brush all the time Now whenever I'm painting faces or doing some fine lining I keep a dab of retarder on my palette to mix in with the paint, I really notice how much smoother it goes on.

After reading how you paint, I can understand why you prefer P3 paints. I know a couple of guys who paint similar to that and they like P3 paints too.

I think painting the way you paint and the results you produce are evidence that you do have a lot of artistic talent that I utterly lack

I don't necessarily think mediums and retarders are necessary for painting 28mm miniatures, they just make it easier to achieve certain effects and some effects you can't achieve at all without them. For me, it blew my mind how much easier it was to paint fine detail when I started using drying retarder. Not that I couldn't before, but before I felt like I was performing delicate surgery and often the result wasn't nearly as smooth as it could have been.