Best paints for models?

[Neil.C]

Many may have seen my first debacle (F4F) and I think I may have to buy some more paints to supplement the old Humbrols I have got.

 

I'll be hand painting and like the idea of acrylics (wash out with water).

 

Any reasonably priced suggestions?

[Mike]

Can't help you with the brush-painting of acrylics Neil, but I can move your topic to the paint section where you'll get a more focused audience for your question

[Lawzer]

Personal preference i guess but i recently did a kit where the airbrush packed in so i reverted to brushing.  It was humbrol,acrylics thinned with tamiya x20a thinner and i was pretty pleased with the results.

 

the first kit i did after getting back into this lastvyear was brush painted with tamiya acrylics BUT i didn't thin them .  Still came out "ok".

 

humbrol and tamiya are pretty much the same price - but like i say, horses for courses

 

[Neil.C]

34 minutes ago, Mike said:

Can't help you with the brush-painting of acrylics Neil, but I can move your topic to the paint section where you'll get a more focused audience for your question

Cheers Mike! 

 

Didn't know this section was here. Still finding my way around. 

[Max Headroom]

Revell do a good range of acrylics but matching their colours to what you want may be a problem.

 

Games Workshop do very decent generic colours, again in acrylic.

 

Xtracrylics are also worth checking out, along with Lifecolor and Vallejo.

 

For enamels, Colourcoats get good reviews.

 

You will find all modern paints of whatever formulation, do not cover in the way that old ‘proper’ paints do. Two, maybe three coats is the order of the day. Saving grace with acrylics is that they dry enough in an hour to put another coat on, without lifting or dragging the layer below.

 

As for thinning, Revell and some Humbrol acrylics definitely need the treatment and for me tap water gives satisfactory results (others will swear by specialist thinners). I have a mixing dish I bought for about a £1 from The Works a few years ago. Blob a paint into one of the recesses and wet a paint brush with water. Stir and thin. Works for me. However, practice to find your own preference.

 

Two final pieces of advice. Undercoat every time. A rattlecan of Humbrol, Tamiya or Halfords primer gives a key for paint to stick to. Acrylics straight onto plastic is a bit iffy. Final piece of advice is to invest in micromesh. These are strips (or sticks) of a smoothing wet n dry type abrasive. Useless for rubbing out mounds of filler, they are more of a polishing aid (especially canopies). Several sheets of ever finer grade, each one is used at a 90 degree angle to the previous sheet. They will polish out ridges in brushed paint work (especially between two colours) and will smooth out your paint work to the extent that if done properly, a gloss varnish as a base for applying transfers may be unnecessary. 

 

Hope this helps!

 

Trevor

[Troy Smith]

1 hour ago, Neil.C said:

I'll be hand painting and like the idea of acrylics (wash out with water).

 

Any reasonably priced suggestions?

 

Hi Neil

well,  as with many things, you may want to refine your questions.

 

Have you used acrylics before?  

 

If not then they work differently than enamels,  and can be frustrating until you get used to them.  

in this case, multiple thin coats and it looks like crud when the first coats go on.   But they dry fast and don't stink

 

There are threads here on brushing painting acrylics,    this on Tamiya, note the differing opinions

 

this is a general thread on brushpainting

 

and there are members here who brush acrylics very successfully @tonyot  and  @PlaStix  have a look at some of their threads.

 

the flat brushes  work really well,   as it using a flow improver.   

 and I've been using Vallejo,  which brush well, but it's a sod working out specific shades.

You can often get set of their paints on special offer at Creative Models. 

 

 

 Some excellent point from Trevor too.

 

Really, you need to read through the links,  and experiment with different brands.

 

HTH

T

[Vinnie]

Another nod for Revell Aqua but as Trevor said you are limited colour wise. They also need a lot of thinning which does make them go a long way. Another brand you may want to try is Hataka. Their 'Blue Line' series is supposed to be formulated for hand brushing and does work quite well. A plus point with them is you can buy sets covering specific operational areas and times, ie early or late Luftwaffe, RAF in Africa just to name a few. It's all going to be trial and error but just make sure you enjoy yourself.

[Mike]

51 minutes ago, Neil.C said:

Didn't know this section was here. Still finding my way around. 

There's a LOT of sections.. I sometimes get lost myself

[sapperastro]

If you had said enamel, I would have just suggested Colourcoats enamel, pick correct colours (or ask on the sovereign colourcoats forum here) and go through the familiar steps;

 

1) stir paint thoroughly until fully mixed.

2) Spoon desired amount to bottlecap, or whatever you want to use as a pallet.

3) Add a couple of drops of colourcoats thinner, mix in thoroughly with old mixing brush.

4) load brush, rubbing excess paint off into pallet before applying to model.

5) wash brush in el cheapo white spirit

6) wash brush in water and detergent solution, place brush upwards to dry.

7) wait a few hours, apply another thinned coat.

 

Acrylic is similar, but not as easy, to get a decent finish.

 

In this instance, I will direct you to a series of videos that I wish I had when I started many, many years ago. This young guy is very talented, and uses very little in the way of specialist hobby equipment.

 

 

Watch that, and watch his other videos of builds and tips. An excellent resource for the starting brush painter.

[Tony C]

Acrylics tried them (Lifecolor, Xtracrylics, Humbrol) and hated them!

 

In my opinion, they're the Devils work  stick to enamels...

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by Tony C

[markg]

On 1/1/2018 at 3:27 PM, Neil.C said:

Many may have seen my first debacle (F4F) and I think I may have to buy some more paints to supplement the old Humbrols I have got.

 

I'll be hand painting and like the idea of acrylics (wash out with water).

 

Any reasonably priced suggestions?

Hi Neil

Revell Aqua Color are very good for hand painting. Best thinned with Revell's specific thinner for Aqua, or with a home-brew thinner (google it), which is basically water, IPA and a drop of flow-improver. You will have to do some color mixing though in a lot of cases, but that's no biggie.

 

[sapperastro]

If I were you, I would grab a couple of pots of different paint and try them out. Don't worry about exact colours until you get your painting skills and process downpat, hence why I suggested watching that fellows videos on how he builds and paints models. He lists what he uses in each build video, and uses a mix of enamel and acrylic paints. Once you have your technique up to speed and what you are going to use, in whatever order, then you can start focusing on 'exact' colours.

 

I have had good results with Revell Aqua and Model Master Acrylic. I have used Vallejo, and it is ok, bur somewhat weak. Humbrol acrylic can be brushed ok, but I have found it very rough, so I don't bother with it. Tamiya Acrylic can also be brushed but it requires more steps and hassle than is worth your time at the moment. I cannot speak for other paint brands Acrylic.

 

As for enamels, I get decent results with humbrol, but some new tins can be a pain in the rear to use, and can be a lottery. Colourcoats have been the best of the modern paints and I heartily recommend them. I also use Tamiya enamel which is fairly good, but I don't think you can get that in the UK. I cannot really speak for any other brand of enamels on the market today.

 

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by sapperastro

[Neil.C]

Thanks everyone, food for thought.

 

Great to get first hand advice from such skilled modellers. 

[06/24]

I have been an enthusiast for Revell Aqua, but have recently been trying out Colourcoats enamels. They are superb. The slow drying time is frustrating (although might be improved/shortened by airbrushing?) and I haven't managed to get hold of their own thinner, but have got by with Humbrol or Daler-Rowney.

 

[Troy Smith]

5 hours ago, 06/24 said:

The slow drying time is frustrating (

 

have you tried using Terebene Driers?

I don't know if @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies  got round to experimenting with them as yet, see linked thread.

 

 

[06/24]

I think its my methods tbh, i've watched Jamie's videos and theres clearly a degree of "user error" on my part. I still love them!

[Giorgio N]

Unfortunately with paint there are 200 different experiences for every 100 modellers, so the best advice would be to try a few brands and see which ones work for you.

In general though it can be said that there are paints that are better suited for brush painting compared to others.

Personally I've mostly switched to acrylics for a number of good reasons (smell, drying time etc). Of these, the ones I find easy to use with a brush are the ones that can be thinned with water, like Xtracylics, vallejo, lifecolor and revell aqua. There are others but I've yet to try them.

In my experience they all work pretty well, but the latest lifecolors are maybe a bit too thin and may require more coats to have good coverage. Said that they are also the strongest (all these acrylics are more fragile compared to enamels). Lifecolor and Xtracrylics have a very wide range with a lot of paints properly matched to the real ones, so making it easy to choose the right paint for a given subject. Vallejo has a huge range but their colours are not really matched, some are good to reproduce real paints and others are not. Italeri acrylics are a bit better here as they have a decent number of paints matched to the US Federal Standard. As Vallejo make these paints for Italeri, they work exactly the same. Revell has a decent range but all their paints are matched to the RAL standard, that can be very useful for postwar European subjects but may require some cross-referencing for British or US types.

My personal favourites are Lifecolor and Vallejo but mind, a lot has to do with local availability ! I like Xtracrylics paints too but they are harder to find in my part of the world.

I've not tried the Hataka line yet but I'm very eager to do so.

Last but not least, as others have said all these paints need a coat of primer, they will struggle to adhere to bare plastic

[giemme]

What @Giorgio N said. I will add that for brush painting I exclusively use Lifecolor and Italeri paints, but I massively use Lifecolor for airbrushing too, along with Tamiya's. I make both airplanes and figures (various scales, including busts) and one of the supposed "disadvantages" of acrylics, that is the number of coats required to get a good coverage, can be turned into a great advantage, that is modulating the color effects to have a more life-like model.

It all has to go through trial and error, though - as with anything in modelling, right?

 

Ciao

[Graham Boak]

What hasn't been mentioned (unless I missed it) was the gloss/matt finish of the final coat.  Transfers will apply much more easily to a gloss finish.  Therefore if you use a matt paint then you will need to add a gloss varnish before applying the transfers, and then a matt/satin/as required varnish on top.  You can cut this problem short by using Xtracolour paints, with (generally) come in gloss only.  Colourcoats, like their WEM predecessors, generally come in satin (semi-matt) finish, which generally takes transfers well but may benefit from polishing.

 

Having a large stock of various older Humbrol tins, I find it useful to use these (with their more approximate colour matches) as a first coat because they cover well.  You can then often (not always) get away with a single coat of Xtracolour or Colourcoats before applying the transfers. 

[Giorgio N]

Graham is right, using gloss colours from the start avoids having to add a gloss coat for the decals. At the same time gloss colours often are more tricky to get right compared to matt ones.

In my days as a brush painter I usually sorted the problem by using matt paints and then applying a gloss coat using a spray can. The final coat was also applued using a spray can, one of the very few times I used these paints in the whole of my modelling career (not a big fan of spray cans here apart from primers)