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Hello

So instead of water what could I use to thin my GW base paints?

Am struggling atm to get a good smooth coat.

Water is generally a suitable thinner for brush painting but thinning the paint will mean you have to do two or three coats for a smooth finish.

You can use matte medium to thin as well or Lahmian medium if you prefer, but that gets pricey.

Thanks for the info.

Is your paint chunky? If it's chunky and not smooth then no amount of water or medium is going to straighten it out, you've got dried or clumped pigment in the mix.

Are you doing broad surfaces? You might consider flat watercolor brushes instead of round ones as they're a bit easier to layer flat areas. Also don't overload your brush, if your brush has a big dollop on the end then you're just smooshing too much paint all over the place.

You should not use regular faucet water, use baby water, they are $1 / gallon, also use a few drops of acrylic mediums, for metallic colors use acrylic metallic medium.

Right now, I'm using Tamiya X-20 A acrylic paint thinner with GW and Vallejo paints.

Very impressed with it for smooth coats. Can reduce any paint all the way down to a glaze without much effort.

Water really shouldn't be an issue anywhere in the UK. I live in Oxfordshire which has super hard water and I have no issues. Of course I don't know your experience level, but maybe you just need more practice thinning.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Water really shouldn't be an issue anywhere in the UK. I live in Oxfordshire which has super hard water and I have no issues. Of course I don't know your experience level, but maybe you just need more practice thinning.

Yeah I definitely need more practice.

Am going to try the medium I purchased and see. How it goes.

Medium is OK, but you're going to spend a lot of money if you're using it to thin all your paint. Especially when there's a free (well basically) source right there at home. I think as others have said, thinning paints requires you to do multiple coats, usually 2-4 passes, and then you'll get a nice smooth layer.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Medium is OK, but you're going to spend a lot of money if you're using it to thin all your paint. Especially when there's a free (well basically) source right there at home. I think as others have said, thinning paints requires you to do multiple coats, usually 2-4 passes, and then you'll get a nice smooth layer.

I’ve not painted for awhile so it’s probably just me needing more practice getting back into thinning. I’ll try the medium might as well.

We released a thinner a while back called Water+ which is causing a big stir in the community, it's not a traditional Medium thinner like some of the others.

It's a secret formula that crosslinks the particles in the paint creating a blanket effect.



In laymans terms this means three things, smoother coats with no brushmarks, more paint in your brush meaning you can paint longer and it also looks after your brush!

This was done using Water+ as a thinner, it just made the painting and thinning process much more easy



And to really show of what it can do, this was created by Edo Kalkman using our Water+ to dilute his Scale75 paints, he said it made all the freehand work much easier to do (You can find more of his work on his Instagram @edo_paints_miniatures)

Ok thanks I’ll take a look.