Pastels, pigments, powders etc.

[Evil Eye]

We all develop slight obsessions with particular painting and modelling materials, tricks and tools, and my recent obsession has been "dry" pigments.

 

Armour modellers have used them since forever to create really nice dust and weathering effects such as soot, scorching, sand and so on, and there's no doubt they're very useful for that at our scale too. However, my latest mania has been making paints by mixing pigments- either pre-ground or from a pastel- with the appropriate mediums and thinning it to taste.

 

This might sound a bit insane, and it probably is, but there are definite advantages. For one, it's medium-agnostic, so if you have (as an example) a particular shade of red in decent pastel form, you can mix it with acrylic medium for hand brushing or with a lacquer-based clear paint for airbrush work and get the exact same colour with the handling properties of your choice; you could even push this further depending on whether you use gloss, satin or matte medium to control the final finish. Also, whilst decent pigments (and especially decent artist's pastels) are not exactly cheap, if you're using the good stuff you'll only need a minuscule amount of pigment to medium, meaning that a reasonable quantity of pigment will last you a long, long, long time. This makes them surprisingly good value for money, and whilst obviously it might not be practical to use them for your main colour arsenal, for certain effects it's infinitely more cost-effective than buying ready-mixed specialist paint.

 

Speaking of, there are some effects, notably metallic and pearlescent effects, where finding the colour you want in the medium you want can be a royal pain in the posterior. But if you can get a decent pigment, you'll have it available in whatever medium you have to hand and it will last MUCH longer than a premixed paint, and in some cases it doesn't even need to be that expensive. Case in point, I have some fairly cheap (like, £15 for 50 colours) mica powders from Amazon, and whilst some colours are troublesome due to coarser pigment, the majority of them work nicely to get you perfectly servicable coloured metallics. And if you can get the really good stuff even better; I've gotten some "PanPastels" pearl colours and they are delightful to work with due to how fine the grind is.

 

Finally, I think pigment powders can be used "dry" for more than just weathering. Whilst they need fixing (AK Interactive amongst others do a very good pigment fixer) I am aware that many large-scale figure painters use pastels to get really subtle, controllable shading on skintones. Obviously at our scale that might not be so useful for the average miniature, but for larger models (greater daemons etc) they could be quite handy indeed.

 

Anyway, does anyone else enjoy using dry pigments? Any tips and tricks for getting the most out of them?

[Firedrake Cordova]

I know historical modellers often use them for rust effects.

 

Angel Giraldez uses them for his bases, as does Trovarion.

 

++EDIT: Of course, Vallejo has a few videos on YouTube featuring their pigments. :)

Edited December 23, 2021 by Firedrake Cordova

[Bung]

Maybe look up some scale modelling books, there is alot of info about that stuff.

I think the main benefit of grinding down patells is that you can get unusuall colors like blue düst effects for alien soil.

[techsoldaten]

I use dry pigments. What got me into them was this Alpha Legion army with tanks that are heavily weathered.

 

https://marcraleyminiatures.blogspot.com/search/label/Alpha%20Legion

 

I mostly use them 2 ways, one with affixer and one with isopropyl. Isopropyl is great as a medium, mixes with underlying acrylic to create unique hues. Very easy to apply.

 

With affixer, I put down a layer, wet it down, and put more pigment on top. Creates a "thick" effect. 

 

James Wappel has some pigment tutorials that are worth tracking down.  

[Arkhanist]

I use a mix of dry pigments to do dust effects on marine legs; ties them into the world better. Also for rust. Fairly normal.

 

Vince Venturella showed mixing GSW dry metallic pigments into gloss varnish to get a hard, glossy metallic paint that dries smooth and can have oils/solvents applied directly as the next layer without the acrylic pigment being affected; and gives a high quality for coloured metal.

 

 

Matt varnish apparantly also works but gives a non reflective matt effect, unsurprisingly. Not so useful for metallic pigment, but could be a useful idea when you want to put down a nice opaque base colour with an airbrush, then you can skip varnishing before weathering with oils, because it's a 2 in 1 step! Or stick with gloss if you want to be able to move the oils around easily.

 

He also used a pigment from the same range to alter the tone of a vallejo metal color mix; keeping the same lovely flow and smoothness of the metal color range (and ease of airbrush use), but getting a very real looking gold with extremely strong coverage. This came up in the pro acryl discussion, and it's something I definitely want to try on custodes or sanguinary guard.

 

 

3 drops metal color gold

2 drops metal color copper

1/128th tsp GSW pure metal antique gold (dry pigment)

1 drop flow improver

Edited December 24, 2021 by Arkhanist