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I admit I'm a noob here, but something hasn't been making much sense. I can get blue, grey, brown, black, gold, silver, greenish color paints to go onto a model excellently. They just sort of seem to want to be there.

But when it comes to yellow, red and white it's a nightmare. If I thin them down even remotely, they're streaky even after multiple coats- which then ends up with the added 'bonus' of globbing up as if I never thinned them in the first place.

Does anyone know the secret to yellow, red and white? I've been priming in a flat grey, but can try and mix that up. Is it just that Citadel paints are kinda weak? Is there a high god of painting I need to sacrifice a virgin to? I could go down to the game store, that's not a problem...

These are three of the hardest colors to work with.
I do not have the expertise to give you perfect answers, but the secret to all three of those colors is not to go straight to them, but undercoat with a better covering color closer to it. There are way better painters here who can give you more detail and better color choices than I will. But for what it's worth...
For whites it has worked for me to do grey first (your undercoat should be working better, but maybe you have a lighter grey that covers well to put under the white). Remember, one of the keys to white is that you cannot highlight it up, so you actualy do not want your "base" completely white or there will be no room for actual highlights.
If I want a bright yellow, I undercoat with grey then white then the yellow. If I want a darker yellow I will undercoat with a light orange or light brown.
The issue could also be your medium. Straight water can cause issues as it will bead up etc and just doesn't flow the same as a built for it product. Again, I wish I had more details, my skills just aren't up to it. Someone here will come along and refine this.

It boils down to paint transparency. Paints are just made of chemicals and some of those chemicals let light through, while others don't.

First off, bright colors need a bright undercoat. So using a white primer makes life a lot easier. If you're painting over a dark color, putting down a brighter base coat (like a brush on primer) can help as well.

You can also put down a complimentary opaque paint first. For yellows, I often use a mustard color because mustard paints tend to be more opaque. This lets me put down brighter yellows with less problems.

There are also specially formulated high-pigment density paints. They're not perfect, but they require fewer coats. Mephiston Red from GW is a really good opaque red, for example.

White paints are generally lumpy crap thanks to chemistry. Vajello's Game Color Dead White is the best I've found so far. You're usually better off finding a very light grey and using white only as a highlight.

^ I was going to say Mephiston Red is a good color to work with.

Yellow and white are much harder and no one makes a good white because of how hard it is to make opaque. You should try Grey Seer as a base for white and layer it with Ulthuan Gray, that can be highlighted with Ceramite if you’re brave and don’t get a clumpy mess.

I've never had an issue with red. You could try basecoating with a light brown? For yellow I always basecoat with a light tan/khaki, then mix yellow into that base as I work up the layers. For white, it's just many, many layers. If it helps I use vallejo white.

If you are using GW paint, Averland sunset is the one you want for basing yellows, it covers over red and black like it wasn't even there then makes yriel yellow bright

Pigment type and quantity of pigment are big factors, when looking exclusively at the paints. Less pigment = less coverage, and if you are using GW their 'base' range has the highest pigment density, whereas their 'layer' range has much less. Citadel layer paints I have found to be pretty abysmal in all honesty, especially their yellows, and trying to basecoat anything with them is a chore.

Excepting the paints themselves, a good general rule to help with coverage is to 'work up' to the colour you want in the end. If you are struggling to get a strong white basecoat, start with a mid grey basecoat, and build up to pure white, mixing in a little more white each time in as many steps as you need for good coverage.

 Rybrook wrote:
If you are using GW paint, Averland sunset is the one you want for basing yellows, it covers over red and black like it wasn't even there then makes yriel yellow bright

Seconded. Well, sort of - I'm still using up old pots of Iyanden Darksun (same paint, pre-name change)...

I use it under red, as well.

I have a bunch of videos dealing with specific colours: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvLuFonzhD6rqnYiOfQXTVnszb50w_9Jq










It’s always better to start with the shade and build up to a highlight from there with reds, whites, orange and yellows.

We have this on the way, so problems painting with White should be coming to an end




As for Yellows...well there is this too, the reds cover just as well as does every single colour in the new range!

That’s really nice.

 Fajita Fan wrote:
That’s really nice.

Thanks!

You can use these as Alpha Paints as Base, Layer, Contrast, Wash, Glaze, Drybrush and Transparent (Pure range only) just by thinning with Water+ in varying amounts, there's a possible 8th and 9th way of using them but we're just waiting on a confirmation

We are working on getting distributors, however our international rates are quite low so it still works out just as cheap to buy from us direct

They're not out until December though, but we are opening the doors for pre orders on Friday

 Supershandy wrote:
We have this on the way, so problems painting with White should be coming to an end

You're very full of yourself aren't you.

What makes your paint supposedly so good?

 Snrub wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
We have this on the way, so problems painting with White should be coming to an end

You're very full of yourself aren't you.

What makes your paint supposedly so good?

Of course we are, we've just made the next generation of Miniature paints

Fully Acrylic, Airbrush ready with no extra thinner required, Ready to paint straight out of the bottle thanks to it's ultra thin formulation, Can be used straight as a Base paint with just a tiny brushful of thinner (We use our coveted Water+, more info at our website), adding more thinner turns them into Layer, Contrast, Glaze or a Wash, The Pure line is Transparent in nature and designed to mixed with the other 13 colours in the Pure Range to create over 2 billion possible colour combinations.

The addition of our upcoming Matte+ additive can take the mild sheen off the Alpha paints, adding more can turn these paints into a Drybrush paint.

And lastly, Perfect coverage in only 1 or 2 applications leaving a paper thin, yet tough finish, perfect for getting game ready pieces done fast

 Supershandy wrote:
Of course we are, we've just made the next generation of Miniature paints

Says who? You? That doesn't count for anything. I can say exactly the same thing and it means nought until proven.

Fully Acrylic, Airbrush ready with no extra thinner required,

Now i'm no chemical engineer, so correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't all acrylic paints "fully acrylic"? What makes yours more acrylic then other acrylics? You say your paints are airbrush ready, where's the advantage in that unless you use an airbrush? How does that help me, the regular brush user?

Ready to paint straight out of the bottle

All paints are like this. They don't have an ultra thin formulation to be ready to paint straight from the bottle. And when you say "ultra-thin", how thin is that? Is that something i'm going to want 100% of the time when painting? Because "ultra-thin" sounds like something a bit more situational then just "thinned down"

(We use our coveted Water+, more info at our website)

Coveted by who? You constantly throw sentences like that around in your posts glorifying yourself, but i'm yet to see anything to bolster the claims.

The addition of our upcoming Matte+ additive can take the mild sheen off the Alpha paints,

So it's exactly the same stuff as GW's Lahmian Medium or Vellejos matte medium or etc etc.

adding more can turn these paints into a Drybrush paint.

And without trying to sound snarky, (as i'm sure the rest of my post has) can you explain how that works? How does adding (what i'm assuming is) a liquid create a dryer paint?

 Snrub wrote:

 Supershandy wrote:
Of course we are, we've just made the next generation of Miniature paints

Says who? You? That doesn't count for anything. I can say exactly the same thing and it means nought until proven.

Fully Acrylic, Airbrush ready with no extra thinner required,

Now i'm no chemical engineer, so correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't all acrylic paints "fully acrylic"? What makes yours more acrylic then other acrylics? You say your paints are airbrush ready, where's the advantage in that unless you use an airbrush? How does that help me, the regular brush user?

Ready to paint straight out of the bottle

All paints are like this. They don't have an ultra thin formulation to be ready to paint straight from the bottle. And when you say "ultra-thin", how thin is that? Is that something i'm going to want 100% of the time when painting? Because "ultra-thin" sounds like something a bit more situational then just "thinned down"

(We use our coveted Water+, more info at our website)

Coveted by who? You constantly throw sentences like that around in your posts glorifying yourself, but i'm yet to see anything to bolster the claims.

The addition of our upcoming Matte+ additive can take the mild sheen off the Alpha paints,

So it's exactly the same stuff as GW's Lahmian Medium or Vellejos matte medium or etc etc.

adding more can turn these paints into a Drybrush paint.

And without trying to sound snarky, (as i'm sure the rest of my post has) can you explain how that works? How does adding (what i'm assuming is) a liquid create a dryer paint?

Considering we made the product ourselves and didn't use an outside company, Lets start from the top.....

 Supershandy wrote:
Of course we are, we've just made the next generation of Miniature paints

We have indeed as this formula exists nowhere else in the world, there is a book on how to make any paint formulation in the world including examples of what you need, our formula is not in that book and made from the ground up so it's an entirely unique product, so yes, we can say that we have made the next generation of miniature paint as it's completely unlike anything else, all other brands follow similar formulas just with minor tweaks, for example Scale75 contains more Matting agent than Citadel does, but ultimately it's a similar formulation, almost all paint you see follows a similar convention...our Alpha paint howeve does not

Fully Acrylic, Airbrush ready with no extra thinner required,

While one part of this is true, not all of it is as you can have different types, Airbrush specific paints tends to be latex based compared to standard paints, but even then these can be vinyl based or polyurethane based, our's is Acrylic, just a totally different one than is normally used

Also, Airbrush paints tend to not be suitable for Brush Painting and the opposite is also true, the advantage ours has is that you get a great finish whichever method you use, if you decide to brush with them, they don't leave any brush marks being unthinned, if you use them in an airbrush, you can just put it in the chamber and pull the trigger without needing to do any messy mixing before hand

Ready to paint straight out of the bottle

Yes and no, you could paint straight onto a model with unthinned paint like a Citadel Base Paint, but then you'd end up with all the nasty brush marks and patchy finish so you need to thin them down first beforehand, but this is open to interpretation as everyone gives you a different idea of how thin a paint should be.

We've taken that entire step out of the equation by making the paint ultra thin right from the very start, all that's needed after that point is how transparent you want it to be just by adding extra thinner so you can turn them into layer paints, glazes, washes, contrast etc

We use our coveted Water+, more info at our website

Asset Drop, Model Box, Adrian Cook (A golden Demon Winner), Scale Model Challenge Gold Medal winners such as Edo Kalkman and Pascal Rooze all use it pretty much exclusively......so yeah.....

The addition of our upcoming Matte+ additive can take the mild sheen off the Alpha paints, adding more can turn these paints into a Drybrush paint. " So it's exactly the same stuff as GW's Lahmian Medium or Vellejos matte medium or etc etc. And without trying to sound snarky, (as i'm sure the rest of my post has) can you explain how that works? How does adding (what i'm assuming is) a liquid create a dryer paint?"

Not at all, Lahmian Medium or Matte Medium (or any that say they are a Matte Medium) is actually just the paint base with no pigment, our Matte+ is a Matte Additive without the acrylic base so it's entirely pure meaning you can modify the finish of a paint without thinning the paint because it actually thickens it up (Which in turn can increase the opacity at the cost of a chalkier finish depending on how much is added), this is what ends up turning the Alpha paints it into a drybrush paint because a Drybrush paint is not the pigment left behind when you take the paint , it actually a mix of the fillers they use in paints + the pigment, the alpha paints are made without extra filler so they can't drybrush straight out of the bottle so they need a small boost. As to your question about how they make it drier, basically the more filler and additives you add, the less water or carrier there is in the paint, less water means the paint is drier, mostly the reason why Citadel Dry paints are quite bouncy and have a pudding like consistency.

However the Matte+ does work with all brands so it's not a one trick pony

I trust this answers your questions!