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We need to talk. Our relationship needs to change. I want you, I need you, but there is no way Im ever going to love your paint pots.

I've felt this way a long time and I just didnt know what to do about it. I felt trapped. But to be honest, Ive been seeing someone else. Vallejo made me feel good about myself as a painter. I never felt like I was wasting my paint. I never felt like I was in danger of knocking Vallejo's washes over and wasting an entire expensive pot.

Vallejo made me feel stable, like I knew I could count on it, and to be honest thats what I need in my life right now. I need to be independent and try new things, and I feel like your paint pots are holding me back. Plus, all those times I found dried out paint that was unworkable? We both know it was because of your paint pots.

I've already made moves to keep my paint and Im taking it with me when I leave. You can keep your pots. To make this transition easier on both of us, I have clipped your pot lids and drilled a quarter inch hole in the bottom of each pot. I have added a few drops of flow improver and water to each pot, so now I am just waiting on all of the paint to be 'milked' out.

You're a great paint maker. You really are. I can see that you tried to make things better between us with your airbrush line, but as long as youre not willing to change the pot issue, we cant be together. At least not like we used to be. Love,

-Baphominiatures

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00975PXHE/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1472995056&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=pipette&dpPl=1&dpID=31%2B90JVQ5HL&ref=plSrch

Stop moaning

Just a bandaid.

Ha ha. I get on alright with the pipettes. Makes it easier to get the excess back in the pot.

 Zach wrote:
We need to talk. Our relationship needs to change. I want you, I need you, but there is no way Im ever going to love your paint pots.

lol
But I approve of this message.

When brush painting, I (99% of the time) use a wet pallet, so pots don't bother me like they used to. When using the large 24mL washes, I blu-tack the pot to my table and well out of the line of fire (away from my arms, elbows, drink, keyboard, mouse, etc).

But seriously, I've had to remove so many strips/clumps of dried paint from the back edge of the inside of GW flip tops in order for the lid to properly close...perhaps that's why my GW pots have been shifting their way to the rack on the edge of my desk.

Nicely poetic post.

I am quite the lazy painter and prefer the GW pots because it require less effort on my part to start painting.

 JamesY wrote:
Ha ha. I get on alright with the pipettes. Makes it easier to get the excess back in the pot.

Both that and transferring paint to dropper bottles are unnecessary faff when there are at least 7 other companies out there who all make top notch paints in better pots (that generally hold more and are cheaper to boot).

Welcome to the Church of Dropper, Zach. I think you'll like it here.

I can't go back to that kind of pot after coming from Vallejo.

Cheap $0.50 tiles from a hardware store = pallet...soooo much easier to add water, mix colours etc.

Sounds like this isn't an easy breakup.

I'm sure plenty of people here remember the glass pots GW used to push since the beginning up until 6 or 7 years ago, where your paints would stay usable for about a month or two before they were completely unusable, and the slow progression of drying gave way to different stages of consistency -- from liquid paint to Elmer's-glue-y paint, to concrete. Boy I hated those glass pots, especially as a child that was pretty messy and not careful about getting paint into the threading where the cap screwed on, which just further destroyed the paint inside, and as an adult about 7-ish?(?) years ago, using the exact same old pots. A demon-child friend of mine found use in the empty pots (and sometimes not empty ones) as a projectile weapon, and from being on the bad-luck end of a paint pot attack, I can tell you they are quite effective.

Yes, these new pots are obnoxious. Very obnoxious. The first "new pot" paint I received, I didn't realize the perforated rubber/plastic seal, and used excessive force to open the lid, effectively spraying an arc of Yriel Yellow across my wall, ceiling and PC monitor once the lid gave way. Closing these new pots requires the action, then the audit, to ensure it is fully closed. Some lids stay open at a 90 degree angle, some lids flop closed and you need to jam a brush cover tube between the bottle and the lid to force it to stay open. But with all of the headache and obnoxiousness accounted for, these new pots keep the paint as consistent as the day I bought them for I'm sure at least a century. Hyperbole aside, tried, true and tested for at least 2 years, as I just recently came back to my lifelong hobby after a 2-year hiatus, and much to my surprise, almost all of my paints were completely intact, save for my ceramite white and mephiston red, which seemed to have that chunky, oatmealy effect. But 2 down out of, gosh, damn near the whole entire line of GW paints is a pretty solid ratio.

Coming from the glass pots, these new pots are a godsend, and while I agree wholeheartedly that the struggle is real with these things, I certainly prefer them over their previous iteration. What I don't understand is why EVERY model paint isn't in a dropper format -- it's not a terribly good idea to paint directly from the pot anyway, and if you're using Citadel, you're guaranteed to have to run a few brush strokes on a palette to check consistency, so why not cut out the middle man and get rid of the lid pots altogether?

Not too fond of the new pots, but compared to the glass ones, wow. Night and day.

 sockwithaticket wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
Ha ha. I get on alright with the pipettes. Makes it easier to get the excess back in the pot.

Both that and transferring paint to dropper bottles are unnecessary faff when there are at least 7 other companies out there who all make top notch paints in better pots (that generally hold more and are cheaper to boot).

Welcome to the Church of Dropper, Zach. I think you'll like it here.

I think you are mistaking my making the best of a poor decision from gw with ignorance of the market place for miniature paints...

I hate dropplet bottle things so bad sooo bad such a waste of paint. Cant get half of the crap out of the pot and the parts that do are like rubber.

I am not sure why everyone likes vanjello stuff I put some on a pallet and it all pealed off like a thin piece of plastic.... very bad.

@Ogrechubbs - For hairy brush paint, I'm TOTALLY with you. I love my fliptop pots for regular painting, because it's impossible to use just the amount of paint I want out of a dropper. Quite often, all I want is a tiny dot of paint on the tip of a brush. For example, to paint a jewel, I need 4-5 colors, but less than a brush-tip of each color, even if I'm doing 4 jewels at the same time. It's much harder to tell on a dropper bottle whether the paint is sufficiently homogenized (much easier on a pot because you can look down it).

If you use a wet palette, too much paint is bad, because it bleeds all over the place and wrecks it all. When I use a dry palette, I usually add my medium/flow aid/thinner/special sauce by a dropper first, and then gradually add paint, one brush tip at a time, with a mixing brush, from the pot, to get just the right blend. Incidentally, I often really like Lahmian Medium in a dropper bottle, and keep both the dropper version and the pot version nearby, for just that reason.

On the other hand, for airbrush, pots drive me bonkers -- for the same reason. I can't get 3 drops of paint from a pot into an airbrush. With a pipette, I lose more paint in the pipette than I use. But it's all good, airbrush paints are easy to pour into dropper bottles, because they are much thinner. Also, because you go through them way faster, I often combine 2 GW pots and just make a 25ml dropper bottle.

I am in no way making fun of anyone, but I am sometimes amazed by the paint horror stories that I hear on these forums. It's like the paints in question are from some bizarro world were they are pigments mixed with demon urine.

I was told on my facebook wall that Vallejo paints are horrible and have weak pigments and dry too slow...but they seemed to work fine on the hundreds of miniatures that Ive painted just this past year.

Same, I don't paint for a living but my Vallejo has been fine for the last 400 minis I've painted (shrug).

Having experimented with both Vallejo and Citadel paints, I will say there is one definite difference between the two.

Both paint lines, given all manners, tend to Dry quickly. This is not entirely the final note on this however. What I have noticed is that there is a small difference between Drying paint, and Curing, especially with Acrylics. Acrylic paints in general, compared to other media, dry quickly. This is, however, not the final point, as the paint does need to Cure.

Now what I refer to, is that the paints have some degree of malleability after they have Dried. You can scratch them off easily, you can peel them sometimes. This is a paint that has dried but not cured, where it has completely set and to a degree hardened. Acrylics, compared to, say, Enamels, take a bit longer to cure, and this is potentially their weakness. If you're doing complex work with them, layers and the like, it's a wise idea to let them sit for a day or two, Especially if you're working with things like adhesive stencils perhaps, that's an important stage.

Enamels dry a little slower, but cure rapidly, which is why you have to be so aggressive in cleaning your brushes - they'll brick up if left any length of time, and most who've played with enamels know it.

Now this is also part of why we have our complications with our paints in their various containers - the enamels aren't homogeneous, they do separate into layers, and their containers have their problems.

Citadel pots love to collect on the cap, and those collections dry, around the lip in the lid and the inner rim of the paints, creating that little rubber paint catch we all hate so furiously.

Vallejo bottles also have their weakness, and that is that unless you are extremely furious with your shaking the bottle, they'll collect sediment in the bottom over time, the layers will separate, and they can come out an impure colour when you drop them on the pallet. It can happen the day you buy it - if it's been sitting idle on the rack at the shop, it's probably separated over time. It can happen two years from now, especially if it's been sitting for too long.

I'm not by any means attempting to disarm your open letter to Citadel, but I am intending to point that Vallejo's system isn't spectacular either. The pigments are good, the bottles are nice, but they do have their flaws just the same, and some of them are in the basic chemical nature of our medium of choice.

Cool post Sauragnmon, good points as well

Personally I've given up on worrying about my paints, GW, Vallejo Reaper or others.

There are a ton of colours available, in various lines now, compared to when it was (in my area) basically just testors enamels. Which I still use, just not for wargaming miniatures.

My rule of thumb is: if I like the paint, I use it. That includes how it handles how much/little it dries and all the other little things that make it important to me personally, and not someone else.

Oh yeah and I've learned unfortunately not to store (opened) dropper bottles on their sides. Sadly I've a rack, so it's moot. They're going to be on their sides. But it does seem to be ok until they're opened. Once they're opened, they tend to gunk up at the top, rather like the citadel paint pots can do.

So, yeah, to each their own.

While I prefer dropper bottles, I simply choose Vallejo based primarily on:

A) a more comprehensive/better paint range
B) cheaper (at around $2.50 ordered online per bottle)

I dislike flip-top bottles but I have no issue with GW paint in itself, in fact it was always quite good back when I did use it. However, given a cheaper alternative in a dispenser I prefer I can safely say there is zero reason for me to ever purchase another GW paint, short of desperately needing to match some kind of GW paint scheme (none of which I use).

I will say, firmly, my biggest disappointment in paints has been the Army Painter bottles which are supposed to match their sprays (which I adore). They are the most worthless paints I've ever used. All watered down and thin with zero coverage, regardless of the colour I've used.

Zach wrote:I am in no way making fun of anyone, but I am sometimes amazed by the paint horror stories that I hear on these forums. It's like the paints in question are from some bizarro world were they are pigments mixed with demon urine.

I slay demons so that I can mix their blood with my paint!

Sauragnmon wrote:Both paint lines, given all manners, tend to Dry quickly.

I think that compared to paints of a couple of decades ago, paints today generally dry a little more quickly. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I recall that when I began painting minis (with acrylic paints -- my first ones were actually with Testors enamels), it took longer between coats.

Personally, I am very happy with the drying times of GW/Vallejo. Thin them a little, and they will take a few seconds longer to dry, by the way. Also, let's not forget P3, which has a slightly longer drying time. For this reason, sometimes, I use P3 for blending (slower dry time = easier blending).

Elbows wrote:While I prefer dropper bottles, I simply choose Vallejo based primarily on:

A) a more comprehensive/better paint range
B) cheaper (at around $2.50 ordered online per bottle)

The more comprehensive range is largely in a very small cluster of colors that represent authentic military vehicles -- there are a zillion shades of camo grey, green, tan and brown, most of which no ordinary human can discern. In their metal color, there are a ten shades of silver that look exactly the same (like Chrome, Aluminum, White Aluminum, Duraluminum, Silver, etc.). In the "colors useful for scifi/fantasy minis" palette, it's their Game color/air range, a slice of their model range, and a half dozen paints from their metal range. I'd say it's about the same number of useful colors as GW, some of them slightly different -- which is a good thing.

I think it's worth nothing that the Metal Color (airbrush) paints are really quite different from anyone else's acrylic metallic paints. They go on with much finer mica flakes, for a different, often pleasing, effect -- especially if you're not washing/drybrushing after.

I WISH I could get Vallejo for $2.50 per bottle. In Western Canada, only one place sells them, at $5 a pop, with small discounts if you buy a lot (or if you dare to go at Boxing Day/Black Friday). From Amazon, they're something obscene, like $7.50+.

I've heard horror stories of pots, but only complaints about eye dropper clogs. Most of them can be removed with a bent paperclip. If the tip is really clogged, toss it in a salsa cup with water and a little dishwashing soap and shake like mad. If it's a Vallejo bottle, add a piece of sprue as an agitator while you're at it. Squeeze gently, and you can get a single drop out of the bottle onto the wet palette. Reaper paints already have flow improver, so I don't add anything except maybe a premade wash as thinner. I do paint to advanced tabletop, so MMMV. BTW, Reaper infrequently has KS where they'll sell two or three 12-bottle sets at a discount. 6 bottles for $10 plus KS shipping.

Vallejo, btw, now has a Game Air range, for non-military use. This review is two years old, so more colors may have been added. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7WkwcPZ9k0

EDIT: Might as well add the GW paint pot horror story I had today! I just bought the Battle for Vedros paint set, and all thirteen paints were gravity-defying sludges in bottles of 85% air. After sacrificing thirteen plastic forks to the scraping and stirring gods, and employing virgin drops of water and airbrush thinner to the cause, I got the paints to the consistency of (gasp) actual usable paint. The pots are still 1/3 full. The set was not just unopened, but it was released in 2016! June 2016, if it was released at the same time as the Battle for Vedros starter set! That means these starter bottles (half the size and twice as much air as regular GW bottles) became viscous sticky-bottoms in less than four months! With the Battle for Vedros as GW's starter game, and I can't imagine how Junior will react after emptying his stocking stuffer to these dried-out GW paints that Dad and Mum shelled out good money for. I remember being quite enthusiastic about the low-cost GW hobby kits, but, if these are the paints new hobbyists will encounter, I think those boring old Testor's kits will get a third look!

EDIT EDIT: One thing that *is* nice about pots is that you can easily add a few drops of water and medium before closing the pot. Of course, I use eyedroppers of water and medium for this...

I wonder, now that FFG and GW are parting ways, FFG will slap their name on a new line of Runewars Miniatures paints!

i've had Vallejo arrive completely dried out in the bottle, my latest Air Gold arrived completely separated, and will not go back to usable no matter how much i shake it, and every bottle i've bought has ended up with split tips on the dropper...
i take good care of my paints, but still end up very frustrated with Vallejo lately...

Reaper colors are way too matte for my taste, but i am going to give Scale 75 metals soon, since the metals won't suffer from the matte finish that the rest of their line does...

i don't use a wet palette, or an airbrush, so i don't mind flip-tops at all, especially since i paint straight out of the pot...
if i were a wet palette user, or an airbrush user, i'm sure i would prefer droppers over flip-tops....
luckily, my P3 paints come in my preferred bottle

honestly, though, i don't understand why anybody would sweat someone over their choice in paints or methods...
as long as your tools and techniques get the job done, and you enjoy the process, that is all that matters...

cheers
jah

Ah, see Talys...I paint a lot of Old West. Which of course means I have (no exaggeration) perhaps 20+ different shades of brown and frequently use 4-5 on a single model. I agree if you're going to be painting some crazy colour schemes the Vallejo Game Colour range is limited. I use a much more subdued palette for Old West and Fantasy (and my recent 40K stuff) so Vallejo's different colours are fantastic for me.

These are my estranged ex-wife paint pots:

The old screw-top.
Yes, I have managed to keep them alive all this time.
Clean the thread or use channel-locks to get them off.
Many of these I have ported over to dropper bottles and mixed for airbrush use.
I understand the irritation, I found the simplest solution was to mix to airbrush and I use the same mixture for hairy brush.
I had gone insane a long time ago and got some 3 odd pots of each colour so they are the zombies that will never die.
Mixing in matt-medium has been key in their overly long lives.

They make EXCELLENT model handles so I am constantly reminded of them.

Honestly never really dropped too many of GW pots.

Now P3... oh god iv knocked over a bunch of those while trying to close the lid :/ coal black.

coal black everywhere.

Mind ya, iv also had massive failures with dropper bottles.
take it from me. if there is a clog dont ever try to squeeze it out. iv had whole bottles explode on me as the drip tip pops out and paint goes everywhere. oh the horror

 Zach wrote:
We need to talk. Our relationship needs to change. I want you, I need you, but...

LOL

I always enjoy the GW abusive relationship analogy. People on the forum shouting "if you don't like it, then don't buy it!", and you're standing there with a black eye, and a dried out paint pot, going "I can't leave, I know he can change... Oh this? I err... walked into a door"

My names "Smacks" and I've been clean for about 6 years now. I considered going back when they brought out their line of technical paints, but then I looked at the price and thought... "they can feth off!"

I think it's the price that really kills GW paints for me. No paints are perfect, Vallejo has a habit of separating, and there are pros and cons to the dropper bottles. Coat d'Arms and PP are pretty good, but sometimes the hinges break, and "very occasionally" the lids split. GW definitely has the worst pots, but they're also smaller and more expensive. It's like some specular trifecta of fail.

If you want a tip on transferring your paints easily, I suggest using alcohol. You can dilute them with the alcohol, which makes them easier to pour, then the alcohol evaporates quickly, allowing them to laps back into the almost-dried-out state that GW intended.

 Desubot wrote:
Honestly never really dropped too many of GW pots.

Now P3... oh god iv knocked over a bunch of those while trying to close the lid :/ coal black.

coal black everywhere.

Err.... pick them up before you try and close them?

The only paint pot spillage incidents I've ever had was a model slipped out of my hand and knocked over a bottle of shadow grey, and once when I was about 8 years old I had a tinlet of humbrol that I couldn't get the lid off, you pry them off with a screwdriver and being a weedy little kid I had to give it a bit of a whack and the lid cartwheeled through the air and landed paint side down on my bed that was next to my hobby desk

I have also noticed that Vallejo Metal Colour pots tend to splatter when you open them, so after getting metallic paint on myself once I now always point them away from myself at something I don't care about when opening them.

"Dear" Games Workshop, was this a pun? It feels like a pun

 Desubot wrote:
Honestly never really dropped too many of GW pots.

Now P3... oh god iv knocked over a bunch of those while trying to close the lid :/ coal black.

coal black everywhere.

Mind ya, iv also had massive failures with dropper bottles.
take it from me. if there is a clog dont ever try to squeeze it out. iv had whole bottles explode on me as the drip tip pops out and paint goes everywhere. oh the horror

I have had problem with P3 as well, the lids like to crack for some reason. I have also had problems with Coat d' Arms pots because the little tabs like to break as well as the hinge on the lids which means I have to be extra careful that I do not flick the lid away when I open them.

So far I have only spilt a modern GW pot once and that was a pot of Badab Black (Nuln Oil). I managed to salvage a bit of it.

I hated the clear plastic screw top pots at the time, but now I love them and wish I had more. The stack nicely and with a small amount of care they keep (so far) for decades. My Boltgun Metal, Mithril Silver, Goblin Green etc are still going strong. The only colour that is playing up, mainly due to me neglecting it is Sunburst Yellow.

I have also had dropper bottle problems with blockages at the tip and a sudden spray in a random direction. Luckily it mostly hit table. I have been a bit more respectful with my bottles since then though.

I prefer Vallejo for their dropper bottles but use Citadel shades and picked up a few of their paints if I wanted a very specific colour or one I knew I wasn't going to mix or use much of. Both ranges have their pros and cons the dropper bottles are a huge plus for Vallejo

 Anastasis13 wrote:


When using the large 24mL washes, I blu-tack the pot to my table and well out of the line of fire (away from my arms, elbows, drink, keyboard, mouse, etc).

That's clever... I'll have to try that one

 Desubot wrote:
Honestly never really dropped too many of GW pots.

Now P3... oh god iv knocked over a bunch of those while trying to close the lid :/ coal black.

coal black everywhere.

Mind ya, iv also had massive failures with dropper bottles.
take it from me. if there is a clog dont ever try to squeeze it out. iv had whole bottles explode on me as the drip tip pops out and paint goes everywhere. oh the horror

lol. I hear you.

With P3 pots, and the new GW shade pots (the tall, double-sized ones), I accidentally knock them over with paint brushes now and then, enough that I now put the pots all in a little plastic container so that if I DO knock them over they don't make a mess. I actually transfer the 24ml (or whatever it is) size shades into old pots.

I like the GW paint pots because they're short, stubby, and wider at the bottom than top, making them unlikely to knock over.

With Vallejo dropper bottles, I've had cases (including with airbrush) where I squeeze and BOOM, the dropper pops out, along with a quarter of the bottle's contents, all over my airbrush, hood, floor, everything. Fortunately, this is rare

I like dropper bottles. I like to waste my paint I guess. Only need a brush tipful? 2 drops minimum goes into the pallet.

Seriously folks, there are hundreds of drops in each $3.00 bottle. And any waste is more than made up for in being able to mix paint exactly. e.g. My pink, Farrow basecoat is 1 drop red, 2 drops white. I can mix that ratio in any volume I want. but on a brush I'll combine and mix all day and never get the right shade.