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I recently bought 3 good Army Painter brushesh, but I am using for base coating atm Cobalt Blue by Mr Hobby/Mr Color. They reek of dead and I've heard that some painters avoid using quiality brushesh with such paints. Unfortunately I am unable to find any real acrilic color that is the same color. I just bought revell Lufthansa Blue, because I followed a paint chart in internet, but it seems its totaly different color. Can someone help me here with equavilent or let me know how safe it is to use my good brushesh.

Sorry if you found this thread a waste.

It'll wreck natural brushes, such as sable or squirrel.

Artificial brushes are totally fine.

The damage is usually from two factors:

1) The paint drying in the brush. Alcohol based paint dry REALLY FAST. They'll clog up your brush like you wouldn't believe, especially if you don't thin them properly - I'd always suggest using the same-brand thinner, but Tamiya X-20A works with pretty much anything alcohol based. If you're brush painting YOU MUST THIN THESE. Don't be tempted to paint neat 'to cover in one go' as all you'll do is get a horrid brushstroked mess, or worse pull up paint you're trying to keep down. Many thin coats are the order of the day, with sufficient drying time between them.

2) The alcohol drying the bristle. Alcohol eats oils and grease, including the ones that keep your brush supple. Clean the brush thoroughly after use, and then apply a good brush conditioner (Master's Brush Soap is great). You can also use a little hair conditioner to keep the brush in shape.

Damn, my Army Painter brushesh i think are natural. I will buy me some artificial then. Thanks

You'll be alright with those; they're not super brushes like S7's or Rosemary or WAMP.

Don't use your best Kolinsky's and it'll be fine, so long as you look after them properly.

I use Tamiya and Mr Color paints quite a lot, but mostly for airbrushing.

I occasionally use them for hairy brush detail painting because they have good coverage so work well for picking out small details that you don't want to have to pick out twice if the first coat didn't cover properly. But for that I have only ever used water as a thinner (at least when hairy brush painting, I use lacquer thinners when spraying it). I don't notice them doing anything particularly bad to my Kolinsky brushes, I always finish a painting session with washing my brush out in soap, which not only cleans the paint out but conditions the brush as well.

But yeah, I don't know how you'd go painting large areas with Mr Color paints. I have hairy brush painted some Necrons with Mr Color's acrylic metallics, but honestly I can't remember what brush I used to do it, it was so long ago.

I'm coating a large army of Crimson Fists. For now I do it with synthetic brush that is almost falling apart. It's kind of hard to use hairbrush with alcoholic paints. Coating and detailing is a bit painful even with the Tamiya thinner i bought...

Im slowly siwtching to Citadel paints, but unfortunately I am unable to find a substitute for my base coat color. There is no alternative of any brand.

They're not tremendously well suited to hairy brush painting because they are solvents which will strip underlying layers if you're not careful and also they dry fast.

You can buy a drying retarder for them that might help, but again, I mostly use them for airbrushing and detail work rather than covering large areas so I'm mostly guessing! They are gorgeous paints for airbrushing though and the ones I've used have a really good opacity for doing detail work. The Tamiya Flat Yellow has surprisingly good coverage given how vibrant it is.

Alcohol will screw up any brush.

 womprat49 wrote:
Alcohol will screw up any brush.

There's not THAT much alcohol in the paints themselves, it depends largely what you use to thin them.