paint pallette

[jimbo1634]

I painted my first mini at GenCon04 and am looking forward to GenCon05. Mel(Cerridwyn1st) helped me at the paint and take and I hope PaintMinion allows her to help there again this year. This year I have a couple classes with Jen and I am taking my son to a beginners class.

My question is, can the folks here help me put together a list of colors and manufacturers that I should have on my pallette? When I came home from GenCon last year I had some hobby paints that I was using to paint cartoon characters that I had drawn on my daughters bedroom walls. Well I am not happy with how those paints work. I had a great number of colors and shades to pick from but the consistancy is just not there.

So when I get to GenCon this year I would like to have a list of paints to purchase while I am there. There is no one in my area that carries a good selection of mini paints.

Thanks for any help
Jimbo

 

[Wolf_Fang]

Vallejo is sposed to be pretty good i use GW paints.... as for colours and minis..... what ever you want my friends and welcome to the forums!

 

[EricJ]

Welcome to the forums! I think you are pretty safe getting colors from Reaper Masters, Vallejo, or GW, they are all very well made paints and while each act slightly differently when using them, that is really just details. Personally I pretty much only use GW paints, mostly because I am used to them, even though I have many vallejo as well sitting around unused and a few reapers. If you\'ve been using craft paints, you\'ll be more than satisfied with any of these brands.

good luck and happy painting

-Eric

 

[lahatiel]

As mentioned, you\'d be safe with GW, Vallejo, or Reapers Master Series, with each having their own particular points to keep in mind.

GW will probably be the most plentiful, both in what you\'re able to find and the colors you\'ll see people naming in color recipes and such, simply because of the size of the company. A lot of people find the dropper bottles used in the Vallejo and Reapers Master lines to be quite helpful. One advantage of Vallejo is that if you use their Game Color line, you\'ll find the colors match up nearly identically to the GW line, whereas their Model Color line can\'t be beat in terms of sheer numbers of colors to choose from. The Reaper Master Series is designed in a tri-color system, with colors designed to complement other colors as specific shade and highlight colors, and a beginner might find this especially useful; see just what this means on Reaper\'s color chart PDF by clicking here.

Also, don\'t forget that you\'ll be fairly safe in mixing and matching paints between manufacturer, as well. My own collection is split between GW -- which I transferred into dropper bottles myself -- and Vallejo Model colors; of course, I haven\'t been able to paint since before either the Vallejo Game or Reaper Master lines were introduced. Once I can start painting again, I plan on adding some bottles from each of them as well!

 

[Ritual]

Welcome jimbo! :flip:

As the others already said, Vallejo, Reaper and GW are all good paints. Some prefer one brand while others prefer another. As for colours, that depends a lot on your preferences and painting style.

Vallejo Model Colors have 220 different varieties so there you have a huge selection. Most of them are a bit muted though and there\'s a lot of earthy colours. Very good for historical painting or if you want realism.

Vallejo Game Colors match GW\'s range and both of these contain more vibrant colours. There\'s not that many to chose from, but you can always mix any of these brands with each other. There\'s no need to stick to one range.

With Reaper my experience is zero. They\'re not available where I live. I\'ve heard that their newest range is good though.

 

[vincegamer]

The deciding factor for many is cost and packaging.
You get more paint for your $$ with Vallejo, though I\'ve never run out of any paint.
Vallejo also comes in very convenient dropper bottles, easy to use and much less likely to dry out.
I haven\'t seen the Reaper paints, but each one I understand comes with a metal skull in the bottle to help mix up the paint.

 

[airhead]

Jimbo, welcome to the forums (another convert by Mel ) Last year, I believe she was painting with the older pro paints? If you make it this year, there should be some master series paints out on the table. They are sooo much better than the old pro paints. Not so much the paints, but the bottles. No nasty skins of paint like GW and the pro paints like to give you.

I have not got to use them side by side with the vellajo paints, but I know that they have more binder than either line of Vellajo. It is hard to rub off the MSP\'s.

Primarily it is a matter of what you are after.

Display only minis? VMC has a huge range of colors - mostly historical colors like WW2 Tiger Tank Green, etc. They have a very low binder content though and a very prone to rubbing off before you can get them cleared.

Game minis? GW, RMS, VGC - all good choices. Personally, I don\'t like the flip top lids on the GW paints. My strongest suggestion is to use what your FLGS (Favorite Local Game Store) sells. It helps keep them in business. If you can talk them into carrying another line - go for it. But most cannot afford the floor space that entails.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Jimbo1634: Airhead has given you sensible advice, but I would add that there is no one set of paints to have. I use GW, Vallejo Model colour, Vallejo Game colour, Foundry and Artists Acrylics (the ones in the tubes.)
I also use Reaper Master paints which were a gift to me from Mel.

All paints are usable in their own special way and almost all are interchangeable and mix together quite nicely.

Think about the colours you use most frequently and then consider what is available in each range. Then make your decision on purchasing.

But remember that the best paints deserve the best brushes and take care of them. Buy a bar of brush soap from an Art store. It is an investment that will pay for itself in taking care of your brushes.


(And welcome to the forums).

 

[jimbo1634]

Thank you all so much

I don\'t have a local game store The closest is a comic book store about 30 miles away. IIRC they had citadel? paints and not much of a variety. So I am hoping to pick up a good supply at GenCon in two months.

So I basicly can\'t go wrong with Game Workshops, Reapers or Vallejos paints is what I am hearing.

What are some colors that you find yourself using the most? I am sure I will need the primary colors red, blue and yellow and green and brown. But what about the colors that I might need for gold, silver, copper, mithral, steel, wood, stone, etc? What colors are you using for flesh(living and non-living), leather, basic hair colors etc? I would assume you use more white and black than any other color? What other colors do you find yourself using to create light and shadow that isn\'t white or black?

Thanks again

 

[EricJ]

I think in general when choosing colors if you would like to use green (for example) on a figure, you\'re likely going to need a mid-tone, a dark and a light tone green for starters, so grab 3 greens at once and then you should be set to start painting green, or blue, or whichever color you would like to use. And of course get a white and a black, for the brightest and darkest tones.

I would start with blue, green, red, grey and brown personally, 3 of each type and you should be set to do a whole lot. Then as you expand your painting, expand your colors.

-Eric

PS oh, and a couple flesh tones

 

[solaria2k]

Reaper have some great \"how to paint\" kits for Fur/Armor - Skin and Hair and even NMM, they contain 9 bottles of paint - a few primary colors, metallics and even flesh colors, plus 2 minis.
I got the first 2 for Christmas and found the tutorials to be excellent for a beginner.

They run about $19-20 and are in abundant supply on Ebay.

Since then I\'ve bought GW and VMC paints and find them all to work well together. I dont worry about the flip top lids on some of the pots as I transfer everything into eye-dropper style bottles anyway.

I\'ll be doing the paint-n-takes at Gencon too this year, I\'ll keep an eye out for you!

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by jimbo1634
So I basicly can\'t go wrong with Game Workshops, Reapers or Vallejos paints is what I am hearing.

If you want to stretch a bit from straight hobby paints Jo Sonja\'s tube acrylics are very good too and I think they\'re pretty widely available in the US, if not you can get them cheap from Dick Blick.

Also easy to find, some of the paints in the small jars from Liquitex (now called Soft Body, older packaging says Medium Viscosity) are okay too but you\'ll probably want to stick to opaque colours only as their coverage isn\'t that great compared to what you\'ll get used to in most hobby paints. Some of these will dry to a satin sheen so bear this in mind if you don\'t want to use any overcoats to even up the finish.

Originally posted by jimbo1634
I am sure I will need the primary colors red, blue and yellow...

The primary colours are really cyan, magenta and yellow just like those used in inkjet printers.

Originally posted by jimbo1634
I would assume you use more white and black than any other color?

White yes, black not necessarily. Black\'s very useful still, it\'ll darken most any dark colour perfectly well, and of course you really need it for lining and painting things that are black but it\'s best not to use it alone for shadowing because there are a number of other ways of doing this, most of which don\'t have the problems that using just black does - greens from yellow and some oranges for example.

Originally posted by jimbo1634
What other colors do you find yourself using to create light and shadow that isn\'t white or black?

For highlights in red, green and some oranges if you don\'t use another paint straight from the bottle I would recommend you lighten using both white and yellow, gives you a good middle-of-the-road colour - no pink highlights on red for example which often looks wrong and some oranges go pinker and pinker the more white you add, which definitely looks wrong

I generally use complementary colours to dull down and darken paints but this gives duller, more subdued results that may not be suitable for mini painting depending on what you want them for and your personal taste. Many mini painters just use a darker paint of about the right colour for each step and do minimal mixing.

Originally posted by Dragonsreach
I would add that there is no one set of paints to have.

I agree, sticking to one range only can be very limiting.

Originally posted by Dragonsreach
...Artists Acrylics (the ones in the tubes.)

I\'ve used these for model painting for years too, what brands do you like?

Einion

 

[Legacy Account]

Originally posted by Einion

The primary colours are really cyan, magenta and yellow just like those used in inkjet printers.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (and Black) are Process colours used in printing and plastics. Traditional, painting primary colours are as Jimbo states.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (and Black) are Process colours used in printing and plastics. Traditional, painting primary colours are as Jimbo states.

Yes, and the tradition is wrong

Einion

 

[Legacy Account]

Tell that to Sir Isaac Newton or Johannes Itten...

 

[Einion]

Newton was a great scientist but he wasn\'t right about everything and he didn\'t know about trichromatic colour theory - and in fact if you check you\'ll see he identified each of the named colours in ROYGBIV as primaries. Itten was a bit of a quack and you have to remember that he was teaching and writing in the early part of the 20th century, things have come on a little since then...

Want to take a stab at defining primary colours?

Einion

 

[Legacy Account]

Nope. No such thing as true colour IRL...

 

[Einion]

Who said anything about \'true colour\'?

Einion

 

[jimbo1634]

I was pulling info that was stuffed in my melon 20+yrs ago. Red, Yellow and Blue was primary. While IIRC Green, Orange and Purple were secondary? colors. And for the life of me I can\'t remember what Brown was classified as and I am not sure if it was a mixture of all three primary colors or not.

But I have a limited knowledge of color mixtures and what I should expect when I mix A with B. That is why I asked the question about different colors for shading and highlights. I know that I can\'t rely on white and black to do this and have it look proper. But if the variety of paints available are as EricJ suggested then I won\'t worry about mixing my own. And looking at the Reaper master series chart that seems to be the way they have set it up.

Thanks for the help

 

[Legacy Account]

Einion is of course right about CMY, I was just being obtuse and don\'t profess to be an expert on the subject Although it is realistically impossible to create every hue from three primary colours anyway, no matter which ones you use!

For the purposes of painting, \'traditional\' colour theory works just fine I reckon.:flip: