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Hi folks!

Seriously, do scale 75 paints mix / blend well with paints from other manufacturers? Or does their "gel medium" make the concept a total no go?
I am wanting to start painting again after a long break, and back when I was doing this my only brand options were Citadel paints or Citadel inks. The other brands were simply not available where I lived and I had not heard of them up until about a week ago. Can Scale 75 / Vallejo Game be thinned with water or do I have to buy something special? Are Vallejo Game Air basically just Vallejo Game but runnier? Or do they use a different solvent?

I am just after information because it is all different now. Citadel don't produce the paints I knew any more. What even is layer paint?! When and why did they stop making Hobgoblin Orange?!?

GW base paints have a high pigment content and cover black primer coats well. They're often more earthy tones.
GW layer are slightly more runny and have a variety of colours & tones.
GW shade are ink washes.
GW dry are specially formatted for drybrushing. not used them myself.

If a paint is acrylic then it can be thinned & the brush washed out with water (for the most part. Tamiya can be a bit tricky). All acrylics that I know of can be mixed without issue. Most of the time the different mediums they sell are all versions of the same thing. Don't worry about that just yet. I've been painting for over 30 years now & rarely use them.

If you want hobgoblin orange then Coat D'Arms paints are the way to go as they made the original GW paints:
https://www.blackhat.co.uk/product-category/coat-darms-paints/coat-darms-paints-fantasy-range/
not sure which one it is though (they had to use different names), sorry.

Honestly I haven't tried Scale 75 but I do watch videos a lot by Marcofrisoni on youtube and he uses water to solve them so I doubt the world will implode if you wetblend them with Vallejo. Water based gak should all just blend the same if they're the same consistency but only one way to find out for sure!

And totally get the break thing dude. Came back after like 4 years so yeet!

Vallejo game air is just designed to go straight into an airbrush so you don't have to mix. That's it. If you only airbrush it's good. If you hate mixing paints to get the right consistency for your airbrush it's great. If you love making your roommates mad by pouring into their toothbrush container at night it's fantastic. I still add flow improver. Pretty sure it's just a different type of medium.

If you wanna do hardcore painting, the thing these days is water based acrylics as a base, and oil paints over them. Yep. That's a thing now. But really go look at MarcoFrisoni on youtube cuz feth yea

I regularly mix P3, Citadel, and Vallejo. Universe hasn't ended just yet, but it looks like it's getting close.

Scale 75 Scalecolor paints mix with vallejo (model/game color/air) just fine. The gel medium does behave differently though, so you can't just use them in the GW style.

If you want a deep-dive into some of the different paints available, you might want to have a look at Vince Venturella's guide: https://youtu.be/et6VmcFJpXU

Arcanis161 wrote:
I regularly mix P3, Citadel, and Vallejo. Universe hasn't ended just yet, but it looks like it's getting close.

IT WAS YOU!!!

David with the blind eye wrote:
Hi folks!

Seriously, do scale 75 paints mix / blend well with paints from other manufacturers? Or does their "gel medium" make the concept a total no go?
I am wanting to start painting again after a long break, and back when I was doing this my only brand options were Citadel paints or Citadel inks. The other brands were simply not available where I lived and I had not heard of them up until about a week ago. Can Scale 75 / Vallejo Game be thinned with water or do I have to buy something special? Are Vallejo Game Air basically just Vallejo Game but runnier? Or do they use a different solvent?

I am just after information because it is all different now. Citadel don't produce the paints I knew any more. What even is layer paint?! When and why did they stop making Hobgoblin Orange?!?

To answer the questions I can:

Yes you can thin Scale 75 and Vallejo with water.

Vallejo's Air paints are basically thinner versions of the normal ones, although there seems to be something slightly more complicated going on with the pigment density - they are thinner, but certainly not more watery, if you get what I mean. If you're wondering whether you can use them with a brush, yes, I do all the time. The Vallejo Model Air Chrome is my favorite metallic colour ever, and I use that exclusively with a brush.

Citadel Layer paint is paint that is slightly thinner than Citadel Base paint, and that dries a bit more transparent. You can use either however you want to, they're the same stuff. The reason for the names are that Citadel Paints are organised around the Citadel painting system. So the idea is that you use a Base paint as the basecoat, then wash with a Shade, then highlight up with the Layer paint. The idea is to give a set selection of paints and a consistent simple method to use while painting an army, to ensure uniformity. It takes mixing colours and blending out of the equation. It's a good idea, to be honest, and coupled with the Citadel app and the Warhammer TV youtube channel, is great for painting armies. It's not my style of painting personally, but I can see the value in it. If you're not using that method (and if you're wet-blending you're most likely not) you can just use all the Base and Layer paints (and the Edge ones if your local GW still sells them) as just paints.

I have a bunch of Scale 75 paints, but I haven't tried mixing them with Citadel or Vallejo a great deal. I'm not sure how they will blend together. You'd certainly be able to do it, I'm just not sure how easy it would be to control, or how it would look. It would probably be fine, but Scalecolor is weird. It dries really matte, and as it dries it becomes quite a bit more transparent than it looks when going on the model. It's great for layering, as you use the transparency and the colour underneath to blend through the repeated use of layers.

No idea about the Hobgoblin Orange. They've changed the whole range at least twice since Hobgoblin Orange was available, I think.