What do I use to paint?

Basically, I have two competing criteria - cheap, and good. Cheap usually wins out, since it isn't the typewriter that makes the Great American Novel. I'm perfectly willing to spring for high-quality goods if I need them. Amusingly, this means I spent as much on a 20/0 brush as I did on 80% of my other brushes combined, including spares.

Getting Started

First, what did I start with? Well, thanks to a few friends of mine I knew that I could get back into mini painting cheap. I was certain that I did not need to be spending $2.50 for 17 ml of paint and $5 for brushes and...accckkkk...$8 for primer. So I talked to a few people, and headed to a local A.C. Moore. This is what I picked up back in 1999 in Delaware to paint with:

Brushes: I bought 10/0 line, 5/0 liner, 3/0 round, 0 round, and 1 round sized "Signature" brushes, cost $1 each. Shortly afterwards I also picked up a cheap-o pack of children's brushes - the multi-colored black-brushed junk you can get for 10/$1. They are excellent for drybrushing, painting large areas, and so on - plus they are about a dime each so I can freely chop them down to a couple bristles or whatever. Even if the brush is used on one miniature, it's worth it.

Primer: Rust-oleum's "Painter's Touch" Sandable White Primer (12 oz spray can) and Grey Primer (12 oz spray can). Cost - roughly $2.50 per 12 oz.

Paints: Plaid's "Apple Barrel Colors" flat acrylic craft paint (2 oz bottles). Inexpensive, and just as good as any game-store paint. For your information I included the color number and the # of bottles I bought in my initial run. Since then, I have added a lot more paint by Plaid and added some Anita's All-Purpose Acrylics, including a couple of metallics. Lots of people claim that craft paints are junk, and that only "miniatures" paints (such as GW, Reaper, Vallejo, Polly-Scale) are worthwhile. I disagree - not only have I gotten very good results with craft paints but my experience with "gamer" paints is that I cannot tell the different side by side on a pallette or even side by side on the same mini. Admittedly, some craft paints are not are good as others (I find Anita's to be a little runny compared with Apple Barrel) but as for the generalization that "you get what you pay for", well, maybe not. Sometimes what you get is ripped off.

Bright Red #20501 Yellow #20502 White #20503 (2) Black #20504 (3) Burnt Umber #20512 Flesh #20514 Ivory #20516 Dutch Blue #20522 English Ivy Green #20756
Pure Gold #20761 Pure Silver #20762 Pure Bronze #20763 Sky Blue #20770 Green Clover #20776 Country Tan #20778 Cobalt Blue #20596 Pewter Grey #20580 Cardinal Crimson #20590

What did I learn from this set of paints? First, I needed a good dark grey metallic (I now have Folk Art Metallic Gunmetal Grey) and I should have gotten Apple Barrel's True Blue and Nutmeg Brown. Otherwise, this covered a lot of ground, and allowed me to paint a large number of minis with a wide variety of colors before I was skilled enough to get some value out of branching out. The top six minis displayed on my homepage were all painted with just these colors.

Sealant: Testor's "Model Master" Laquer Overcoat - Lusterless (Flat) 3 oz spray can. In my experience this is the only overcoat that is really "flat"; all of the other ones are noticably glossy...especially Rust-o-leum and Armory.

What about now?

Well, I still use basically the same run of paints, with lots of additional colors. My collection includes Apple Barrel Colors, Anita's All-Purpose Acrylics, Folk Art (mostly metallics), Reaper (a few choice colors plus the contents of the Painting Kit I got cheap), Vallejo Model Colors (smoke and natural wood transparants), some and Ral Partha Will-o-the-Wisp (glow in the dark overcoat).

Inks: I have used both GW and Reaper Pro Paints inks. My impression is more favorable when it comes to Reaper - better containers, and better value since they are cheaper where I get my paints. I have pretty much everything except orange and purple inks...not sure why, I need to pick those up for when I do my pirates.

Techniques

For washing with inks, I tend to use the "Magic Wash" technique detailed in the link provided.

Go back home.

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