Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The New Paints

When I first heard that GW was replacing their paint range my thoughts were “That’s nice, there will be more choice in future”. I certainly didn’t see it as some vast conspiracy rendering all my current paints useless as some on the net would have you believe. My current paints are mostly Vallejo Game Colour, supplemented by GW Foundation Paints and GW Washes. So it was unlikely to affect me in the short term.


Now that I have had some time to read/listen to – independent – reviews, I suspect that this may impact me more than I thought. The breadth of the range of GW Basecoats is quite staggering. Whereas the Foundation Paints were muted/dirty, the Basecoats provide a much brighter base on which to paint. I can see myself buying 15-20 of these Basecoats cover the primary colours and their first derivatives e.g. Reds, Blues, Yellows, Greens, Browns, some lighter Greys and of course Ceramite White.

I can’t see myself jumping into many of the GW Layer paints until my current supply of Vallejo are exhausted. Even then I am more likely to continue with the Vallejo paints as I prefer the dropper bottles to GW’s pots. I’m sure there will be the odd GW colour that fills a gap in their previous range that I will buy but that will likely be the exception.

The other impact will be with regard to Washes. I use Ogryn Flesh, Gryphone Sepia, Badab Black and of course Devlan Mud. Early on I’ll have to find the equivalent.

Two things I’m interested in: Will the new Basecoats taste as bad as the current Foundation paints? And will the new Washes stink like the current Devlan Mud?

7 comments:

  1. Oh god, the taste!! And then the aftertaste … blurgh.

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  2. The new range looks great but the new pots are terrible as the lid doesnt stay open. When using the old ones you could pop the lid open and it would sit in a convenient position while you painted. The news close by themselves. Picky I know but its an issue for me

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    Replies
    1. As I water down all my paints on a pallette then close the lid, before painting, I find this to be really helpful, as the paint half closes itself if I forget. Slightly less chance of paints drying up in the pot that way.

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  3. No mention of the new "dry" brush paints
    I think these may become the stars of the range. They even have a PINK! dry colour. Ive got some samples to play around with tonight

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  4. How exactly does a dry brush colour differ from a normal colour? Drybrushing is a technique not a type of paint?!?

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    1. I had a look in store in the weekend, the drybrush paint is more a paste than a liquid, my guess is that it wont draw into the brush and so there'll be less drying the brush on paper before applying to the model.

      Dave

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    2. I have a few samples that I am just going through playing around with them.
      First thing I notice is the thickness in the paint. It is more like a paste. Upon opening the jar i could still see the flume from where the machine injected the paint into the container.
      I tryed gently drawing my brush on the surface of the paint without the tip dipping in. I did not need to wipe any excess paint off the brush before I started dry brushing.
      The paint applied smothly without any texture that you would often get when using a standard liquid paint to dry brush with.
      Im going to play around more tonight but these first observations look good. You could almost drybrush with these instead of layering and still achieve a smooth transient colour change.

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