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As the topic asks i wonder what do you mix your paints with? more than just water? ratio?

Um... if its with use of an airbrush then flow improver.

Some people use paint retarder if they are blending.

I mix my paints with Liquitex Matte Medium. Generally 3:1 paint to medium. I just add it right into the pots (I mainly use Citadel and P3 paints, so the flip tops make it easy to do so). Shake, shake, shake, and they're ready. I thin a bit with water on the palette, as well.

I paint exclusively by brush - so I can't comment on airbrushes. However, I use Winsor & Newton Flow Improver to thin my paints. Basically, get a 20ml dropper bottle, like the ones Reaper or Vallejo paints come in, and some disposable pipettes. Then you want 2ml or Flow Improver and 18ml of Water (ie. fill the rest of the bottle up). From there, it's just a drop or two of water to thin your paints out. Some people say 'Milk consistency' - which is rather ambiguous. Essentially, you want your paint just thin enough that it covers your model with a solid colour after 2-3 coats.

Water

air brush or hair brush

iv tried all those fancy mediums and thinners but i find water is just easier

also alcohol or other solvents depending on the type of paint.

some times slow dry and glazing medium mix when im failing hard at blending

Water.

I use Lahmian Medium to thin inks.

My default is 1 part Flow Aid to 10 parts water that's premixed in a dropper bottle. Generic acrylic airbrush thinner is also great for paints that are already pretty thin (like yellows) because it thins them without causing them to break apart. I routinely use both for brush and airbrush work.

I use drying retarder in the airbrush to combat tip dry. I'm in Colorado where the climate is high and dry (low atmospheric pressure and low humidity), so tip dry is almost always a problem.

For thick paints, water.
For thin paints, Lahmium medium.

I find using water on runny paint can make it split.

Water.

A little drop of detergent (ordinary dish soap) if I'm doing anything fancy.


I played around with retarder some time ago, but didn't really get much of a result out of it, so there's most of a bottle still sitting in the depths of my painting box somewhere...

For airbrushing and brush painting water-based acrylics (Vallejo, Reaper, P3, etc.) I use Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. I find it thin more consistently than just plain tap water.

For airbrushing alcohol-based acrylics (like Tamiya), I used lacquer thinner (which I also use for airbrushing lacquer-based paints, obviously).

For center pieces I use colorless acrylic medium.

For everything else, water.

Thank you for replies, i was thinking about brushpaints, what ypu folks use to thin them down

Vallejo glaze medium

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
For airbrushing and brush painting water-based acrylics (Vallejo, Reaper, P3, etc.) I use Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. I find it thin more consistently than just plain tap water.

For airbrushing alcohol-based acrylics (like Tamiya), I used lacquer thinner (which I also use for airbrushing lacquer-based paints, obviously).

I've tried using Vallejo Airbrush Thinner when hairy brush painting but I found it to be a bit too harsh.

I usually just alternate between a dab of water and a dab of Vallejo Flow Improver until I get the right consistency.

water, drop of flow improver (from a syringe I keep handy)

only use medium if its for something like final highlights, or some metallics (since water just tends to suspend the metal bits in a funny way)

Just good, old fashioned tap water. Hasn't failed me yet.

Flancen wrote:
As the topic asks i wonder what do you mix your paints with? more than just water? ratio?

Mostly I use tap water to thin paints for brush painting. If I'm making my own wash I'll use water mixed with a bit of Future floor polish (I think they may have changed the name, but I bought a bottle years ago and since I only use a few drops at a time it will probably last for years yet).

I've just started experimenting with GW's "Lamia Media" when doing glazes or when I want to thin a premixed wash.

For metallic paints I use Lahmian Medium. For others water

Blood

...I mean water, just regular water.

Seriously though, sometimes I add a little glaze medium. I just eyeball it, no real set ratio.

Tap water, for probably 90% of 'hairy stick' painting. Particularly difficult paints or special effects that call for more... I wing it. Additives used include Liquitex Flow-Aid, Slow-Dri, and matte medium, plus PFC (Pledge Floor Care, i.e. Future/Klear), Golden Airbrush Medium, and Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. Whatever the paint needs, I add one or more of those until it feels right, usually with some of the aforementioned tap water.

I don't have an airbrush, but I thin with Tap Water, sometimes distilled, by using empty dropper bottle. It's really hot here and I don't need any retarders or anything of sort. Acrylic paint dries up as fast as alcohol based.

I think I have just about every medium that you can buy, but for a normal brush, 99.9% of the time, I use tap water, from my brush cleaning pot (but I do change that very frequently). For white and yellow, Liquitex Flo-Aid.

To thin black, I often use black wash (nuhln oil).

For glazing, feathering, and all sorts of neato stuff, I use Lahmian Medium.

For the airbrush, when using non-airbrush paints, Vallejo airbrush thinner. The Flow enhancer is good stuff too, but I just don't find that it's necessary.

I use distilled water. (My tap water comes from a well and is really hard!) I will look into the Liquitex Flo Aid. (Is it named after the woman from the Progressive commercials?) I don't like the way the metallic paints look when they get thinned too much with water. It's okay for base coats, but the final coat needs some type of medium to work well.

Water is my personal choice, but some paints require a bit of medium. Mine is the GW Lahmian Medium, but I don't think it matters all to much.

Premixed washes (Army Painter, Secret Weapon Miniatures) or water. I paint mostly generic fantasy miniatures, so the "flat" color of the paint mixed with a similarly colored wash causes an "uneven" distribution of opacity, resulting in color in its natural state. Also, washes allow me to keep the wash-paint mixture intense, while having a more controllable water-like consistency.

Also, a wet palette can help keep your paints wet, preventing them from thickening through evaporation.

I also use Reaper paints, which includes flow improver. I rarely thin them.

With metals, I hear airbrush medium works. I've used Reaper metallics, straight from the bottle. Also, I use SWM Armor Wash on the metallics to shade them and automagically make them shiny.

ced1106 wrote:
I also use Reaper paints, which includes flow improver. I rarely thin them.

That's curious, I own a handful of Reaper paints and they are probably the thickest hobby paints I own and require the most thinning. Maybe mine had been sitting on the store shelf too long before I bought them.

The blood of the fallen

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

ced1106 wrote:
I also use Reaper paints, which includes flow improver. I rarely thin them.

That's curious, I own a handful of Reaper paints and they are probably the thickest hobby paints I own and require the most thinning. Maybe mine had been sitting on the store shelf too long before I bought them.

I have noticed differences in consistency between the regular Reaper paints, the MSP line and the High Density and Bones paints. I thin them to my working consistency with distilled water, and sometimes I should use water with a very small amount of retarder in it. (When I am using very small brushes for fine details, I find that both Reaper and Citadel paints can dry just enough to make the brush skip instead of flow) One note. if you are painting Bones plastic miniatures, don't thin the first coat at all. If it has gotten too thick, just use a drop of water. If you wet and dip the brush and thin the paint to a nice painting consistency, you will never get it to stick to the bare plastic. I learned this the hard way. I have had my best results with the bones plastic when I started right out with an unthinned coat of color. After the first coat, I can thin, wash, blend and do pretty much anything I want to the paint, but the first coat will not stick to the bare plastic if it has been thinned much. I cant get the Citadel paint to stick to Bones plastic at all. (It works really well after the first coat is down, but it beads right off of the bare plastic. Primer doesn't seem to agree with bones either. Reaper's suggested method is to start right out with an unthinned color coat, and that works really well for me. (Wash the heck out of the figure with Dawn regular dish soap before doing anything and don't touch the washed plastic with your fingers until you get a coat of paint on it.)

Yeah mine are all Reaper MSP, I only have 6 of them. They're really thick and the dropper bottles clog all the time.

I haven't tried Bones, but when I have something that paint won't stick to I whip out the Tamiya Surface Primer, it has really good bite. If it's something paint REALLY doesn't want to stick to, I whip out the Gunze Metal Primer.