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Hey I'm not a newcomer when it comes to 40k and model painting in general, but I have little experience in painting, I usually paid old friends who played to paint since they were better at it.
But I did experiment a bit with different types of paint since you know the prices of paint from GW and Citadel were a bit expensive, I wasn't sure though what types of paint would work well though.
I used acrylic and some kind of water based paint, though the latter didn't work too well, and it ended up a white mess, but the red magenta acrylic paint I used seemed fine.
Are there many other alternatives like that kind of paint available for use in place of GW and Citadel paints?

Also can someone direct me to any of them if you happen to find the company names?
Another thing to note is that I don't have pictures of my old models, and even then, they're such a mess now that you'd probably gouge out your own eyes.

Reaper Master Series Paints, Vallejo Game and Model Color, and Privateer Press Formula P3 are the big names in acrylic paints for miniatures.

Army Painter is another good brand.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Army Painter is another good brand.

Particularly if you're used to GW's washes. Army Painter's washes are a really good substitute.

Welcome to the boards and the hobby!

First, do a search - this topic literally comes up quite often.

To echo what some of the others have said;

reaper master series, vallejo game color & model color.

p3 is also quite good.

Time for me to promote Reaper again. I'll keep it short: cheaper than GW, dropper bottles are better, $0.30 more than Vallejo but made in Texas, USA. Buy 11 paints and they ship free. During Christmas you'll even get a free mini. They also regularly send a new (free) paint with your order for you to try out.

Also Reaper has this awesome tool called the Power Palette:

http://www.reapermini.com/PowerPalette/

I use it to figure out what paints work for a scheme I like or to match the colors I see in an image.

I prefer Citadel metallics and washes though, and the Vallejo PU primer is great. A lot of people use Vallejo Model Air but I haven't really given them their chance. So if you're going to go on to youtube and type "how to paint a la di da" then you'll want to use either Vallejo or Citadel because that's what they will use. I'm happy with Reaper so that's that. For basing or terrain I use cheapo acrylic paint from wherever.

Alright guys thanks for all the replies and brands, I'm currently going through Army Painter as suggested, I'm used to GW paints.

Vallejo and Coat d'Arms would be my top picks for alternative paints. In terms of paint volume they're about half the price of GW. Coat d'Arms actually manufactured paints for GW during the 80s and 90s before GW switched to a cheaper supplier, you can still get a lot of the old GW range from them. Vallejo are probably the most common alternative, they have a huge range, and a lot of people are fond of the dropper style bottles. They also sell paint in big 60ml bottles if you want to buy in bulk and mix your colours.

Next would be P3, Tamiya and Reaper. P3 is also made by Coat d'Arms so you're probably paying for privateer press name a bit, but the range has some great unique colours. Tamiya and Reaper are expensive but really nice quality.

I've seen a few more recently on Dakka. I think one was called Poison. I haven't tried them but they were very reasonably priced.

You can also use cheapo artists acrylic for some stuff. It takes a bit of experimenting to find good alternatives, but you can save a ton of money when you do. Black is almost always a safe colour to switch out. A litre bottle of black acrylic from the dollar store will probably cover just as well as any of the expensive brand-name blacks. Then the colours seem to get exponentially worse at covering as they get lighter.

Almost 90% of my paint collection now came from Vallejo, because they're amazing and they're convenient for me to buy. Try them out. I have some P3 washes as well.

Okay thanks for the heads up guys, though I have already gone to check online for stores near my home. I live in Australia, some of these companies might not be available locally so yeah, gotta be careful. Also our economy isn't as strong as it used to be so buying things overseas is a bit tricky for people. Anyway thank you for the suggestions they are all appreciated.

Army Painter, P3 and Vallejo are all available locally.

Not sure about Reaper, and the only importer of Coat D'arms that I knew of disappeared a while back (I generally just get them from the UK now instead).

Alright thanks mate.

I buy my vallejo via ebay. the price is very reasonable. check it out. especially the ones sold in lots of 6 or 10.