Hi folks, I want to start dabbling with painting 1/35 scale figures for armour dioramas and was wondering if anyone could suggest a paint set for a beginner. I think I may want to use oils it seems to be the most used.
Thanks
Red Butcher,
Tamiya would be the easyiest to reccomend. Without buying alot of extra paint you can use the same acrylic paints for your figures as you do for your vehicles. Flat is the way to go.
Vallejo is a line of quality acrylic paints that are a little pricier but folks are getting some great results. They are dead flat and have an aesthetic quality about them that makes them stand out.
OIls are good but take a knack and practice (as do the others but a little more with the oils). Though they blend well, it is that quality that makes them a little harder to work with in that it can be days, weeks or months before the paint dries or cures. You can get some awsome blending and depth with oils paints but they are expensive and start up will hit you hard in the pocket. The biggest draw back is making them flat, which is done with an additive but adds one more step and one more level of contact to the figure.
Enamels can give you a little of both oils and acrylics. It will really be up to your preference.
I would say for popularity and universal appeal…acrylics. My reccomendation would be vallejos.
Hope this helps a little.
I have to disagree on oils. I feel that, IMHO, oils are the easiest to work with. They dry overnight usually for me, and no more than two or three days on the long side. The trick is spreading a smaller amount around over a large area when you lay in your base color. I use a cheaper brush and almost scrub the color in, which eliminates the brush strokes. Thinning it a tad with turpentine also cuts the linseed oil carrier a bit which allorws for faster drying. Make sure also that you have a good undercoat to soak some of the oils in a bit, which cuts drying time a bit too. Acrylics work very well for this, though some use enamals. The oils tend to cut the enamal, which can ruin a paint job, especially if you are employing turpintine in some way, but they don’t hurt acrylics. I’ve had a properly painted area dry enough to handle within hours before. A lot of people use oils mainly for flesh tones, and enamals or acrylics for everything else. That is a good way to go. I do that from time to time.
I’ve found obtaining the same results with enamals and acrylics to be very difficult, though, if you get the hang of it, the results can be every bit as stunning as those with oils. The masters who use acrylics employ a series of glazes to blend in the shadows and highlights, and the results are stunning indeed, but I’ve found the whole process to be tedious when I can simply mix up a few oils, lay in my base, shadows and highlights, blend and call it good. I do like the vibrance of the acrylics designed for figures though. I use Vellejo now for my undercoats. I’ve been very impressed with them in that capacity. Oils go very nicely over them. Kind of a waste of high quality (and spendy) paints, but if it helps me to paint higher quality peices then I figure its worth it.
I used enamals exclusively before I got into painting figures as a hobby of its own (rather than as an extension of armor modeling), but once I discovered how easy oils truely were, I really haven’t looked back. I still use enamals for some uniform work, particularly 20th century stuff and metalics.
The only hang-up I see for oils is learning what colors to use to mix the colors you need. This can be daunting at first, and certainly scores points for enamals and acrylics for the beginner, because they come already mixed in colors you need for figures, like German Field Gray and French Hussar Blue. But even with the other two options, you’ll find yourself mixing to get more exact colors eventually anyway.
If you’re brush painting do not use Tamiya paints. They are horribly unforgiving in that they skin over very quickly. However, if you touch the seeingly dry area with a paint loaded brush, it will break the surface and lifget the still wet layer of pant under it. Also, drying time out of the bottle is very fast so you can’t custom mix colors, a necessity given such a limited palette. I don’t use them at all anymore but some folks airbrush with success. I agree with Plymonkey re: oils for flesh tones. They are the top end.
Andrea/Vallejo paints are the best acrylics I’ve found. Hard to find a dealer, since the sellection is huge and is a major investment on his part.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.Say are the Vallejo gameworks paints the same as the none gameworks.
go with vallejo or gunze for acryl
I say go with humbrol for enamal
and Mr Color for Lacquor
From what I’ve heard, they are different. The Game Color line was produced as a replacement for Games Workshop’s colors. I’ve heard the pigment isn’t quite as finely ground, but I’ve never used the Game Color–only the Model Color.
Dan
Where to by Vallejo on the Internet?
I looked around but bought them at my comic book store. I will see if I kind find that online store agian.
Redlancer, Michigan Toy Soldier and a few others sell it on line.
Here’s another source for Vellejo. http://www.r-kproductions.com/figure_kit.php
Treat yourself to a subscription to their magazine while your at it. It’s a great publication which I highly recomend to anyone interested in figure modeling. Plenty of great how to articles from the masters around the world, and lots of show features.