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mrFickle wrote: Citadel paints are typically thick and I did wonder if that was part of the value GW perceived in them but they do not tell you to thin the top the constituency of a V paint.[/quote
Literally every Warhammer TV tutorial has you thnning your paints. Almost every line of paints will need some thinning, even Vallejo (the amount is dependent on which line - less for Game Color and more for Model Color).
To be honest i haven’t seen that last video and it’s better than their usual “just add a drop water” but I don’t think it addresses the question fully, at all. They have. A huge range of paint that perform differently compared to other brands that have more consistent paints, in my opinion. If they had any decency they would explain to you how to turn their white paints from a lump of cheese into a smooth paint.
In my experience you can only use water to thin a paint so far, flow enhancer and medium are required to go very thin don’t you think? They sell their own medium and I have seen it an a video but not explained properly, fro noobs, what it is for.
I always get a good chuckle when I read people proclaiming you can't craft paints for miniatures. I used to use craft paint (Delta Ceramcoat specifically) quite extensively for miniature painting over the years and I still use craft paint occasionally on my miniatures (except metallics, craft metallics invariably suck). Heck, I know a Goldon Deamon winner that used Delta Ceramcoat almost exclusively when he was a commission painter in the early 2000s. I think he had switched over to Vallejo by the time he won the GD but I know of at least one complete army that he had featured in a White Dwarf back in 2003 or 2004 that was painted primarily with Delta Ceramcoat. I know another commission painter that still uses Delta Ceramcoat paint primarily. As Gorgon said there's different levels of quality for craft paint and it's been my experience as well that Delta Ceramcoat is by far the best of the craft paints, with Americana also being pretty good, Folkart and Apple Barrel ranging from awful to decent depending on color and Craftsmart paint being utterly awful, I won't even use it for terrain.
But, paint is not all equal even when the pigment is the same. The issue with craft paint isn't just pigment, but also the acrylic binder (the clear medium used in paint) and the additives for flow improvers, drying retardants and flexibility. Delta Ceramcoat generally adhere's fairly well to miniatures, but it dries hard and brittle. Perfectly fine for metal miniatures and the older GW plastics that never bend much, but not something I trust on all those thin plastic parts GW likes to put on miniatures nowadays and certainly no good for PVC plastic figures, it'll just crack and flake off when the PVC flexes whereas Vallejo stays rubbery and flexible and will bend with the part. Acrylic inks (like Daler & Rowney) are really popular right now, and they're even harder and more brittle than craft paints, but are usually applied so thinly it won't matter.
Most of the miniature specific paints are all high enough quality it won't make a big difference which one you use and most are completely inter-mixable with each other, I always recommend using whatever is easiest to get ahold of, with Vallejo being generally the best in terms of overall availability+cost+quality, but it's such a slim margin that it barely matters vs GW or ArmyPainter or Scale75 or Warcolours (all of which I use)
If you have god awful amounts of talent or skill you can make anything look good.
It's theoretically possible to rattle can your vehicle and make it look as good as if you used a paint gun and high quality enamels but the average painter could never do it and even a professional auto painter would spend way longer than necessary to achieve the same results with a rattle can.
For "tabletop standard" to get the 10 VP's in matched play games I'm sure Delta paints are good enough. But there are people who paint their armies, not to GD standard, but to a high enough standard to hope to win painting awards.
I've tried using Apple Barrel and Delta on miniatures and I found it extremely frustrating to make it work. If I'm going to drop over $1000 on plastic toys and $100's more on gas and food to travel to tournaments or local events I'm not going to cry over spending $5 on a jar of paint, when used the way I use it, can probably paint a 1000pt army with paint left over.
jivardi wrote: If you have god awful amounts of talent or skill
It hardly takes much talent or skill to work with those paints. If you couldn't get them to work, then I don't know what to say that won't be an incredibly offensive personal attack, so I'll try and thread that needle:
It's not rocket science. You thin them down a bit and apply the paint where you want it, you spend a bit of time learning the exact characteristics of the paint for how it thins, how opaque, how thick, how long to dry etc. Literally the same for every paint mankind makes. It takes only a modicum of practise to learn the properties, and then beyond that it's all skill of the painter whether it's Vallejo or craft crud. The individual properties are different, but not THAT different, and I just laid out the major shortfalls of Ceramcoat pretty well in my last post. I've used them with many different additives from water to Future Floor Finish to drying retardant to flow improver and artist grade acrylic medium, for everything from basecoats to feathered highlights to drybrushing to airbrushing to washes and glazes. They are really poor for washes and glazes, they don't like to airbrush without a LOT of thinner and flow improver, but they work fine for everything else. At least all the ones I've bought from Walmart. Or from the other Walmart. Or Busy Bee Hobbies. Or Michaels. Or online. But who knows, maybe I just got exceptional batches from all those different suppliers. Steadily, throughout 20 years of painting, that's possible. I guess I'm just amazingly lucky with my Delta Ceramcoat colors over 2 decades and multiple sources /rolleyes
One anecdote, and this was around 2002/03 when I was just starting to actually become a semi-decent painter: My buddy sat down next to me and asked how he could replicate my faces, he liked how I did skintones. I gave him the 3 Delta Ceramcoat colors that I always used for caucasian skin, quickly described how I used them, then went back to painting whatever it was I was working on at the time. A few minutes later I hear "goddamnit Kala, I hate you..." and I look over and he had made a complete mess of the face, looked like sad mud swirled around. It was my first absolute lesson that there's more to painting than a list of colors. Technique matters.
I have since moved on from the FLGS to the auto body industry, we paint a LOT of cars (roughly 1000 a year) and have used multiple different paint brands on those cars, but every one of them has a shop-guaranteed lifetime warranty, which we have honored the very, very few times it has comes up. They all spray almost exactly alike, but can be very different to get that true factory-finish. It took our painter WEEKS to get comfortable when we switched from Shermin Williams to PPG, weeks again for DuPont, now we're back on Valspar(Shermin Williams). All of those are warrantied for the life of the vehicle, all of them are high quality automotive paints, the ONLY reason we changed is the deal we get on the business end on them from our suppliers. Each of them sprays differently with different thinners and reducers, sometimes VERY differently. If we mess up a paintjob, it's almost always because we didn't use the materials properly. Every. Time. It's almost never a product problem, it's an end-user application problem. Delta Ceramcoat acts differently than Vallejo than GW than Army Painter than Scale 75 than Warcolours than Golden High-Flow. If you can't get Delta Ceramcoat to work OK when noobtard 20-year-old-me was using it just fine in the days of vague Coolminiornot blog guides, long before youtube (let alone video tutorials), when multiple commision painters at my shop used it just fine, then I don't think that's a problem with the paint. Might want to check on the end-user application.
My point isn't to humiliate or offend, just to illustrate that you can totally and absolutely paint just fine with these paints, just so long as you're aware of their limitations. They are good paint for the money (at least Delta Ceramcoat and Americana is) for basic colors, if you're on a limited budget than spend your paint-money where it's important: washes and metallics. Don't ever cheap out on metallics, and research what you're doing if you cheap out on washes
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/07/25 05:38:11
You are comfortable with craft paints. I'm comfortable with higher end paints for painting little plastic men.
More power to you. If we REALLY want to compare value in paint jar sizes than Createx are probably the best bang for your buck. Hobby Lobby sells 4oz bottles of Createx for $6 for opaque and it's $7 for transparents, candies, pearls.
As cheap as Createx is for the quantity I will, if I have to paint inside for some reason, use Createx AB paints for terrain.
I've never used Creatix, no idea if it's good or awful, but the last time I bought Delta Ceramcoat it was $1.89 USD for a 2oz bottle in southern california, USA, so $6 for 4oz Creatix doesn't strike me as a bargain. I may be out of date with prices, that $1.89 was probably 5 years ago, Delta Ceramcoat lasts a very long time. I'm finally almost out of Light Ivory, I'll need to compare prices when I eventually hit up my local Michaels to buy some more.
It's not a matter of what you or I am comfortable with, it's a matter of what is a viable alternative to overly expensive GW paint (and GW paint IS overly expensive compared even to other paints in the same industry). Vallejo and other brands of miniature-specific paints are a viable, even BETTER source of hobby paint, but completely discounting craft paint is an absolute disservice to new hobbyists, and it's the kind of gatekeeping that holds people back instead of helps them grow. And personally, remembering back to my youth when money was DISTINCTLY limited, it should be important to let new players know where they can cut corners to save a buck.
jivardi wrote: If you have god awful amounts of talent or skill you can make anything look good.
It's theoretically possible to rattle can your vehicle and make it look as good as if you used a paint gun and high quality enamels but the average painter could never do it and even a professional auto painter would spend way longer than necessary to achieve the same results with a rattle can.
For "tabletop standard" to get the 10 VP's in matched play games I'm sure Delta paints are good enough. But there are people who paint their armies, not to GD standard, but to a high enough standard to hope to win painting awards.
I've tried using Apple Barrel and Delta on miniatures and I found it extremely frustrating to make it work. If I'm going to drop over $1000 on plastic toys and $100's more on gas and food to travel to tournaments or local events I'm not going to cry over spending $5 on a jar of paint, when used the way I use it, can probably paint a 1000pt army with paint left over.
Kalamadea wrote: They are good paint for the money (at least Delta Ceramcoat and Americana is) for basic colors
I have found Delta ceramcoat to be perfectly usable paint for metal miniatures. It also works just fine on the plastics like the Reaper Bones or those D&D pre-primed minis. It does fine on properly primed HIPS minis. Americana, every color I have tried, leaves a gritty looking surface no matter what I do. I recommend avoiding it.
Fair enough, my experience with Americana is much more limited than Delta Ceramcoat, I've used a dozen or so colors and found them very similar to Delta C, but I have NOT used Americana extensively. The few colors I've used have acted very similar (mostly blues and greys), so I may have assumed too much
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/07/25 07:27:13
Rather than craft paints, I use colored primers. While colored primers are sold for airbrushes, they can be brushed-on like brush-on primer. Colored primers are often sold in larger volumes (eg. 2 oz, 4 oz) than hobby paints, so are much less expensive per ounce..The variety of colors is much much more limited, but the color primer can be used as an undercoat I will often use a wash on top of a color primer, then continue with hobby paints.A color primer followed by a wash saves a *lot* of time for assembly-line painting. With assembly-line painting to advanced tabletop, I use pots more than wet palettes. You can thin in the pot, add a shaker more easily to the pot, do touch-ups quickly, and add hobby paint to the pot and use it as a palette. (I'll often buy paint sets on sale, and, sometimes, one or two colors will overlap a paint I already have.) Many color primers have caps, so I'll also shake up the primer bottle, and paint from the cap. I still use craft paints for basing.
It's hard to find Delta Ceramcoat over here, but I've had a few colours of Anita's and Folkart that didn't work too badly,
Craft paints I'd avoid are Royal & Langnickel (thin and glossy) and some french brand whose name escapes me. (chalky, huge colour shift) When it comes to craft paint, you americans take the gold.
The thing about craft paints is they tend to have bigger pigmments and less desnsity of pigments.
I have personally found the idea of using craft paints kinda weird.
we already pay stupidly huge amounts for these models so i doupt alot of us want for money. Why not get the paints made for this?
Other than my blacks or whites, or my mettallics, i never really run out of a color.
jivardi wrote: You are comfortable with craft paints. I'm comfortable with higher end paints for painting little plastic men.
Miniature paints are not high-end. They are, in general, low-quality paints when compared to artist grade paints. They are objectively lower quality because of 1) pigment density. 2) pigment blend. The ONLY thing that makes them 'better' for miniature painting is that they are the correct consistency/ thinness (even then, a huge amount of miniature paints aren't even the correct consistency, escpecially when looking at GW). Miniatures companies also sell paints in smaller and more useful containers, which makes it seem less intimidating to use for newer painters.
It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what paint made is made of and why to assume that you can only use miniature paints for miniatures. Or even that it is better to use miniature paints for miniatures. It's is 98% branding & packaging, and 2% pre-thinning. You are not paying more for a better product, you are paying more for a product that appears more accessible.
Venture outside of your usual bubble and spend some time actually using other paints and you will very quickly see that - for the most part - acrylic paint is acrylic paint. All you gotta do to make it the way you want it to be is find the right additives.
This doesn't apply to everything, sure. But for a lot of brands (especially the likes of GW and Army Painter) it holds true. Scalecolour is a good example of a product that is quite different to ordinary acrylics, making heavy use of an unusual medium to make a more specialised paint. A lot of scale-model branded enamel paints and Tamiya Alcohol-based acrylcis also fall into this more specialised category, but general basecoat/ layer/ wash acrylics do not.
Or I'll just stick to "hobby paints" because I'm not financially strapped.
I also use artist grade paints and automotive grade paints to paint my figures. I tried 2 colors of "craft paints' and the results were gak, IME. Maybe I had bad paint, maybe I just suck at painting (can't be that, been painting 40k since 2nd edition).
My usual reducer I use with NO problems in Citadel, MM, Vallejo did not react well to the Delta and Apple Barrel I tried. Perhaps I could have come up with a new reducing method but why? I already have 3 different reducers I use for my hobby. I don't need to add a 4th version and clutter up even more of my painting area.
The one thing I won't buy that is "hobby" are rattle can primers/paints from GW or Vallejo or anybody else. THOSE products have the word "sucker" written all over the can.
shmvo wrote: You are not paying more for a better product, you are paying more for a product that appears more accessible.Venture outside of your usual bubble and spend some time actually using other paints and you will very quickly see that - for the most part - acrylic paint is acrylic paint. All you gotta do to make it the way you want it to be is find the right additives.
A Reaper miniatures interview pretty much says that, in a positive light.
"Our original Master Series Paint was designed by Anne Foerster, who is a multiple international award winning painter, who said I need a paint I don’t have to futz with. She had been using a couple of our competitors GW and Citadel and Vallejo and some of those, and was always adding additives and additional mixtures and working to make the paint work. She said I want to make one that works the way I want it. So she developed our Master Series Paint. We’ve been working on that for years now and it’s been incredibly popular.
But one of the biggest complaints we got was because it’s designed by a pro painter, with layering and blending and those kinds of techniques in mind, it’s a little thing and doesn’t have tremendously good coverage. It does cover but sometimes you need two or three or four coats because we wanted to layer with it and blend with it. So we developed the HD paints so that we have a one or two coat solution. We have a one coat solution on everything but our red. Our HD Red I believe still requires two coats. But even the HD yellow is a one coat coverage over your primer and it’s amazing. So it’s really great for your based coat, really great for your foundation. Or if you are a novice painter it’s really good to get you started in painting without having to worry about all the techniques of an advanced painter."
In the end, the only person painting your miniatures is you, so do whatever it takes to get your miniatures painted. Oh, and try acrylic inks with your paints!
Lads and lasses, the volume difference is not the only thing about GW pots vs dropper bottles
GW pots also tend to accumulate paint in that ring in the cap that acts as a "locking" surface, meaning your pots wont propperly close after a while, leaving a gap.
That gap obviously promotes the drying of paints, so you loose what little you got in the first place faster.
You know what also promotes the drying of paint? That nice comfy lip in the pot cover, they use in every tutorial. Speaking from experience, especially if you paint up something like a large group of units, say ork boyz or the like, using that lip and keeping the pot open while painting is something you will only do for your first army and never again.
I also use artist grade paints and automotive grade paints to paint my figures. I tried 2 colors of "craft paints' and the results were gak, IME. Maybe I had bad paint, maybe I just suck at painting (can't be that, been painting 40k since 2nd edition).
I use artist grade paints as long and the big plus for me is if I go into the shop and buy "Brilliant Red", "Orient Red" and "Ice Blue", those are the same colours as they were 20 years ago and don't need to fear that they are gone
also I never had any problems with them
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
I've got $400 worth of automotive paints and $500 worth of high end artists paints and at least one of every color of Citadel paints (barring the Air line).
I just have no desire to buy dollar store brand "craft paints". I know the paints I use will never fail me. Not unless I am the fault.
Kosake wrote: GW pots also tend to accumulate paint in that ring in the cap that acts as a "locking" surface, meaning your pots wont propperly close after a while, leaving a gap.
That gap obviously promotes the drying of paints, so you loose what little you got in the first place faster. You know what also promotes the drying of paint? That nice comfy lip in the pot cover, they use in every tutorial. Speaking from experience, especially if you paint up something like a large group of units, say ork boyz or the like, using that lip and keeping the pot open while painting is something you will only do for your first army and never again.
Yeah, I hate that, too. At least with GW pots, I can see the crust-o-paint and scrape it out with the hobby knife. With the eye dropper, clogs are PITA because you expect to and are there to paint, not unclog tips and sometimes get paint on your fingers. Also annoying when you (or at least I) shove that paperclip in and the paint STILL doesn't come out. Also, you can shake that dropper forever and you still may not mix the flow improver that's in the tip.
Screw-on caps for color primers and craft paints are the best. Shake the bottle, unscrew the cap, and paint from it. If the paint's drying on the threads, you can see it, and scrape it off. Never clogs. If you want a drop, flip up the top of the cap. And, if the cap gets stuck, so what? You can still use it as a dropper. Add some thinner to it, or a shaker ball without the paint mess. For hobby paint companies, they're much more expensive per bottle than eye dropper bottles, so that's maybe why nobody thinks of using them for hobby paints. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=15ml+flip+top&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Oh, and when my GW red paint dried up, I replaced it with craft paint because I could. I paint to advanced tabletop and the paint wasn't any different than hobby paints.
jivardi wrote: I've got $400 worth of automotive paints and $500 worth of high end artists paints and at least one of every color of Citadel paints (barring the Air line).
What’s the definition of craft paint here? I Some have acrylic paints by Windsor and Newton and artiste. The burnt umber in W&N is my go to base for flesh and it’s so easy to use but dries quickly. In the artiste range they have a pearl medium I’ve used a bit and a metallic amathyst which is an amazing paint and thins for airbrush is perfectly. The only different I can detect is consistency and normally it’s that they are thicker. I guess their Colour tones are not made with weapons and armour in mind.
I think the W&N paints are for painting pictures I think but I am in the process of putting everything in dropper bottles and have thinned them accordingly so hopefully will work well. Their colours are very vibrant compared to most mini paints I have.
jivardi wrote: I've got $400 worth of automotive paints and $500 worth of high end artists paints and at least one of every color of Citadel paints (barring the Air line).
I just have no desire to buy dollar store brand "craft paints". I know the paints I use will never fail me. Not unless I am the fault.
problem is, here it is also the craft shop (or school supply shop) that sells the artists acrylic paint
and also artist quality paint is going from 50/60 ml glas bottles over 100ml tubes to 1L dropper bottles and even from the same brand you can get different qualities (as made for different applications)
just being a cheap craft store paint in 100ml plastic tubes says nothing about how good or bad the colour is.
the stuff you want avoid here is called Abtönfarbe (tinting colour?) from the Hardware Store which is often suggested as the cheap alternative to hobby colours but is actually crap for mini painting (even for terrain).
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
This is brand I’m talking about. Needs a bit of medium and flow enhancer adding but it’s perfectly usable. I wouldn’t buy it over model paints except for the fact that you get a lot so it’s good if you have a lot of surface to cover and they do some colours, especially in their pearlescent range that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The majority of my paints are citadel, Vallejo and GSW but I am also way looking at other paint brands for something they don’t do.
"craft and decoration" names it as the basic quality (but you still can get one step lower with "craft" or "kids" paint)
I have similar ones
and they are similar to the older GW colours and good for basic techniques or larger terrain pieces
the next step is student or study quality which has a higher amount of pigments and usually higher quality ones
and the high quality ones are named artist or professional
for high end painting like fine blending, artist quality is the way to go, if one is just dry brushing Sector Mechanicus pieces, "craft and decoration" is good enough
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/07/29 15:58:06
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
However I've found GW paints the easiest to work with.
I've dabbled with Vallejo a bit and its decent but hard to find by me and I also have to put the colors through a converter website.
I'm aware I am paying a premium for GW but I know what I am getting and I am never disappointed.
Hard to find? Just play games and the mighty lance both have a good selection as do lots of other websites. GW colours are great especially if you are trying to get “the look”. I’m the kind of person that always makes things harder for myself by wanting to do something different.
5000pts 
6000pts 
3000pts
Waaagh an' a 'alf
1500 Pts WIP 
