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Has anyone tried foundation paints? Is there any thing else I should be looking at? If so where can I find it?

i've tried foundation, and it covers well, but it's not some miracle paint...the colours are very flat, and mostly earth tones...if ya want more vibrant colours, and variety, go for p3...they are great paints, and are gettin' more and more use on my minis...
neal at the war store has a good discount on 'em...chaos orc has good prices too...

cheers
jah

currently, my favorites for coverage would be as follows

1st- Foundation paints - if they have the colours you want, they are simply fantastic

2nd - P3 paints. I don't have their inks, but I have their complete Range, and although lacking in some areas, their unique colours are beautiful.

A very close 3rd - Citadel colour range. I still use these for the majority of my work, and I love the range, but if you just are talking coverage, not quite as nice as the P3.

4th - Vallejo Game colour. I have their complete paint set, and it's very nice for some of the discontinued citadel colours, but I am not a fan of the coverage / consistency of their paints. I don't dislike them, they just aren't a preference.

I hear the Reaper pro paints are nice, but I have never tried them.

I've used the foundation paints and I was really impressed, but Jah-Joshua's assertion about the boring colors is correct. Where I found the most use for it was as a base coat when my priming was a little uneven. However, if they made a bright yellow foundation paint...

I really love the Vallejo paints, but I've never used the P3 paints. How does P3's yellow measure up? Is it a bit thicker than the GW or Vallejos?

I've used the foundation paints and I was really impressed, but Jah-Joshua's assertion about the boring colors is correct. Where I found the most use for it was as a base coat when my priming was a little uneven. However, if they made a bright yellow foundation paint...

I really love the Vallejo paints, but I've never used the P3 paints. How does P3's yellow measure up? Is it a bit thicker than the GW or Vallejos?

its thin like the vallejos, but covers much better

Don't try the reaper paints- in my experience they're grainy and the colors are so-so.

The Foundation paints are very nice, in my experience, just have a limited pallette of dull, earthy sorts of tones. They're meant for basecoating, and I find they do well with that. Also good with drybrushing.

An addendum to Savnock's comment: he's referring to the Reaper Pro Paints. The Reaper Master's Series (found in a dropper bottle like Vallejo paints) seem to work rather well; I've only used one color so far as a replacement for a Vallejo dark green that doesn't work well at all. Other people swear by them though.

I just started messing around with the Foundation paints. I'm touching up and redoing alot of the models in my Ork army, and decided to try mostly Foundation paints.

Whats been said is pretty much right on, you can water it down, mix it with other paints, and it covers suprisingly good. It actually saves time because there's less coats to build up colors-(like red and yellow),but the downside, as mentioned, is the color selection...very neutral. You really need to add another paint line to make models colors pop.

Iorek mentioned a problem with Vallejo's dark green. I've had a problem with my Dark Green too, In fact, its the only color that has been thickening and drying out, since I started buying Vallejo paints. Maybe it was a batch thing?

Please remember what Foundation paints are: foundations funnily enough.

People get the idea its one coat serves all. No you use one coat as your main coat, then you apply regular paints in the similar colour. Less paint overall, but NOT a one coat solution.

You want a good yellow, I choose yellow as its the hardest colour to get right. Undercoat then Iyanden Darksun or Tausept Ochre, then add your yellow on top of that.

I think the colours are all earthtones because of the chemical structure of the paint. The basic paint supports only earth tomes while retaining its properties. GW are not blind to colours, in fact they used to enjoy a few too many primaries in their past. If they could do bright Foundation paints they would so so. If they could collapse their paint range into fifty or so Foundation paints they would do so.

Frankly I have always been impressed. To have a yellow that goes over black at all is a real bonus, and I love using Foundation paints on raw plastic to preserve detail. These two advantages are unique to Foundation paints as far as I am aware.

Orlanth wrote:Frankly I have always been impressed. To have a yellow that goes over black at all is a real bonus, and I love using Foundation paints on raw plastic to preserve detail. These two advantages are unique to Foundation paints as far as I am aware.

So you can use the Foundation paints w/o priming?

I'm glad someone pointed out that the foundation paints are meant to be used with other paints as a highlighting step, it probably stopped me from getting lazy somewhere down the road.

I second Orlanth, in that I love the Foundations for dark basecoats, and then build up to the brighter reds, yellows and flesh tones I am looking for. Mainly because I can prime my Sisters black, foundation their cloaks the dark red, their faces flesh and their hair sometimes yellow, and after that one coat build up to a lighter red, flesh and yellow very easily. It really saves time over the 3+ coats of medium red I used to use, etc.

I'm getting excited with all this paint talk. Don't forget all those articles where they mixed Foundation paints with regular paints.

Tacobake wrote:

So you can use the Foundation paints w/o priming?

I'm glad someone pointed out that the foundation paints are meant to be used with other paints as a highlighting step, it probably stopped me from getting lazy somewhere down the road.

Yes, best use for them.

My common method for painting marines now is to build my marines excluding any heads for the helmetless models. then spray undercoat and paint the marines normally.

I drill a pinnning hole into the bottom of the neck and mount the heads temporarily on poles and paint them with foundation paint watered down aout 20-30% (I water down all my paints, but this is as far as I sare go with foundation paints over raw plastic. The result is thin enough to basecoat and undercoat marine heads in one coat preserveing opretty much all the face detail. After they are dried touch them up with more raw foundation paint on raised surfaces, then ink wash and drybrush up to a finish with normal paints and inks.

I did a test at my local GW store, I asked for a scrap mini and tried to paint foundation direct over metal. It doesnt work.

-- By the way. The random test miniature was the old techmarine that goes with the old OOP command squad boxset. It was a lucky dip as I was allowed to keep him (and recover his arm and pack). A techmarine and dread were all that was missing from my army. Two weeks later a friend no longer in the hobby found a box of old stuff.... a second techmarine (which I gave away), four servitors, a plastic ork, a vindicare assaassin and a metal fire suport dreadnought. Sometimes things just go out of their way to work out for me.

Orlanth wrote:

Tacobake wrote:

So you can use the Foundation paints w/o priming?

I'm glad someone pointed out that the foundation paints are meant to be used with other paints as a highlighting step, it probably stopped me from getting lazy somewhere down the road.

Yes, best use for them.

My common method for painting marines now is to build my marines excluding any heads for the helmetless models. then spray undercoat and paint the marines normally.

I drill a pinnning hole into the bottom of the neck and mount the heads temporarily on poles and paint them with foundation paint watered down aout 20-30% (I water down all my paints, but this is as far as I sare go with foundation paints over raw plastic. The result is thin enough to basecoat and undercoat marine heads in one coat preserveing opretty much all the face detail. After they are dried touch them up with more raw foundation paint on raised surfaces, then ink wash and drybrush up to a finish with normal paints and inks.

I did a test at my local GW store, I asked for a scrap mini and tried to paint foundation direct over metal. It doesnt work.

-- By the way. The random test miniature was the old techmarine that goes with the old OOP command squad boxset. It was a lucky dip as I was allowed to keep him (and recover his arm and pack). A techmarine and dread were all that was missing from my army. Two weeks later a friend no longer in the hobby found a box of old stuff.... a second techmarine (which I gave away), four servitors, a plastic ork, a vindicare assaassin and a metal fire suport dreadnought. Sometimes things just go out of their way to work out for me.

Nice.

I have some finished Guardians in a blue paint scheme I'm going to convert to Dire Avengers but I didn't want to spray prime all the individual bits (heads, swords, banners, fiddly bits, etc).

DP

lifeafter wrote:I've used the foundation paints and I was really impressed, but Jah-Joshua's assertion about the boring colors is correct. Where I found the most use for it was as a base coat when my priming was a little uneven. However, if they made a bright yellow foundation paint...

I really love the Vallejo paints, but I've never used the P3 paints. How does P3's yellow measure up? Is it a bit thicker than the GW or Vallejos?

hmm adding white to their yellow doesn't cut the muffins?