Vallejo help

[Brother Mitch]

Greetings Brothers,

 

I have recently got some vallejo paints, and to help with both my GW and Vallejo I bought some Liquitex flow-aid, however, I find that the vallejo paint is pretty thin at the best of times, and with the flow-aid it goes on quite watery and tends to pool, prob my painting I know, but what I was wanting to know is the amount of coats needed for a good layer. I am trying to paint my Neophytes boots in Beasty Brown, I have applied about 4 or 5 coats now and its still quite poor coverage with some of the undercoat black showing through. I also wondered if the spray on GW Chaos Black undercoat may not be good for vallejo application.

 

If anyone can shed some light or help me to improve my painting skills, I would be greatful.

 

May the Emperor protect.

 

Brother Mitch

[DV8]

The problem you're running into is the extender itself. Paint, as a general summary, can be broken down into a couple key ingredients. One is the pigment itself. The another is the painting medium (what gives "substance" to the pigment, turns it into a usable viscous liquid and, to an extent, dilutes it). Different paints will have different pigment to painting medium ratios. For example, Foundation Paints have more pigment to medium, so when you apply a Foundation Paint, the color is stronger in less coats. Something like Vallejo has a lower pigment to medium ratio (since they're designed with airbrushing in mind) so those take more coats to get a stronger color. Certain colors will also have different mixes; any Games Workshop yellow, for example, has a low pigment to medium ratio, which is why many people struggle with painting a good strong yellow. White is the same way.

 

Now, one of the primary ingredients of paint extenders/retardants (I giggled when I first heard this in first year) is more painting medium (over-generalizing, but the principle is the same). By adding more medium (and other ingredients), paint extenders/retardants are able to extend the dry time of acrylic paint (that is, paint takes longer to dry, giving you more time to work with it).

 

The issue, of course, is now you've changed that pigment to medium ratio, and by adding more and more medium without changing the amount of pigment, the paints will coat less and less smoothly.

 

There are ways around this, for example, working on a white basecoat. Then the lower pigment ratio is less of an issue because white will give you stronger colors to begin with. Also consider using less extender/retardant, and working in smaller amounts. Instead of using tons of paint and then adding tons of extender so you have lots of color/paint to work with, try using less of both. It's less wasteful and you can more greatly control/tweak that ratio of pigment to medium you have.

 

Personally, I would recommend not using extenders/retardants at all. The changes to the pigment ratio is just too much of a headache to deal with (for arguably minimal gain), and using something like a wet palette achieves sort of the same thing (paint on the palette takes longer to dry, without changing pigment ratio).

 

 

DV8

[verpine]

Are you using the flow aid straight? I mixed it 1:20 w/ water like it says on the bottle and just mix a little dab with paint as needed...

[Vincent Black Shadow]

Actually, flow aid reduces the surface tension of the paint. It's not for retarding drying (though this is one of its secondary effects), its so the paint flows more like water. I.e. paint thinned with flow-aid will have watery consistency while paint thinned with enough water to achieve the same consistency will have a bit lower amount of pigment and binder.

 

But yeah, make sure you're diluting it... it's a concentrate. 1/20 is ideal. I don't use the stuff unless I intend for the paint to get into cracks and crevices (base coats, inks, washes and the like) or if I'm painting thin glaze coats. Vallejo paints are already pretty thin out of the bottle and go on smoothly... I honestly think thinning with a bit of water is plenty.

[DV8]

*facepalm*

 

My mistake. I read Liquitex and my feeble servitor brain automatically interpreted that as "retardant".

 

 

DV8

[Tanhausen]

What vallejo are you using?

 

From thicker to thinner, you have game colour, model colour and and air colour. The last needs no thinning.

[UpTheIron]

I use mainly game colour, with some model colours, and citadel, and find the vallejos to be far too thick to be used neat, the inks extraordinarily so.

[Studio Silvernale]

I have used a lot of the Vallejo game colors and I found that the red/brown/yellow range seems to be almost too watery for brush painting. I ended up taking that lot back to the shop to trade for GW paints. The green/blue/purple range seems to be just right, while the metallic range are the consistency of toothpaste and require a bit of thinning.

[Ironwulf]

I have used a lot of the Vallejo game colors and I found that the red/brown/yellow range seems to be almost too watery for brush painting. I ended up taking that lot back to the shop to trade for GW paints. The green/blue/purple range seems to be just right, while the metallic range are the consistency of toothpaste and require a bit of thinning.

 

I think those Vallejo colors that you were having trouble with are characteristics of a particular batch of paint. I have many different bottles of them, and I haven't had a problem with the metallics being too thick in the manner you describe. Over the years, I have had a few bottles that went to a somewhat watery consistency, but had most of the pigment settle to the bottom of bottle. I have other bottles that are "toothpaste" consistency, too. It might depend on how long those particular bottles were sitting on the shelf, waiting for you to buy them. For me, it's been kinda hit-and-miss on how many years a bottle of Vallejo will last.

 

By way of comparison, I have found that Vallejo Game Color "Bloody Red" is slightly more opaque than GW Blood Red. I sometimes will go back and forth from GW to Vallejo, depending on what effect I'm trying to achieve.

[Brother Mitch]

Thank you for your replies brothers.

 

I have taken everything you have said on board, but alas, I realised that I was diluting the paints wrong. I was using a totally wrong ratio of paint:medium, basically I was doing one drop of paint with one drop medium and adding some water, which basically made a rather horrid wash mix.

 

Have now fixed that and the application is so much better now. I also quite like the application of the vallejo paints, they are lovely to apply. Btw they are game colour range. However, I don't think I fall into either camp completely, I like the contrast of the GW and the Vallejo paints on the one model, so I think I will continue to mix them.

 

Thanks again for all of the advice you have really helped me learn from my stupidity

 

Brother Mitch