Discussion
dr_gn said:
Damn kids and their eyesight. Youth really is wasted on the young 
This may be preaching to the choir but:
He might find it useful to use a wet palette. Very easy to make, just take a small shallow sealable sandwich box, 2 or 4 layers of paper kitchen towel in the bottom, covered with a layer of (smooth) baking parchment. Add sufficient water to make the towel wet but not swimming. The top of the parchment appears dry but allows a tiny amount of moisture through which adds a small amount of water to the paint, allowing it to flow better and be applied with better control. It also allows you just to close up the box and leave it. The paint should stay liquid for at least a week. It hugely reduces the amount of wastage due to drying out on the palette and makes the consistency of the paint more.. er.. consistent. I'm a total hairy-brush acrylic painting noob and it helped me quite a lot. Pros seem to swear by it.
GW tutorials don't tell you this for 2 reasons. 1) They don't sell a wet palette 2) they make a lot of money on paint, more wastage is good. This is also why they supply their paint in horrible pots which seem to like drying out. I much prefer the Vallejo (etc) dropper bottles. Far less prone to accidental spillage too. Contrast paints seem to be aimed mostly at people who just want to slap some acceptable colour on and get the models on the gaming table without too much criticism. i.e. Paint for gamers, not paint for modellers and painters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOy6nCf7HZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2PYhY5tZQ (Ignore the title, he is throwing away his bought wet palette and making his own)
For anyone interested this weekend I’ll be attending an ITC event run by Hellstorm Wargaming at Sanctuary Gaming Centre. The event will be live streamed on twitch by The Honest Wargamer.
I’m taking a reasonably soft list and still new to ITC but hoping to go 3-2 again with my Black Legion!
I’m taking a reasonably soft list and still new to ITC but hoping to go 3-2 again with my Black Legion!
Zad said:
dr_gn said:
Damn kids and their eyesight. Youth really is wasted on the young This may be preaching to the choir but:
He might find it useful to use a wet palette. Very easy to make, just take a small shallow sealable sandwich box, 2 or 4 layers of paper kitchen towel in the bottom, covered with a layer of (smooth) baking parchment. Add sufficient water to make the towel wet but not swimming. The top of the parchment appears dry but allows a tiny amount of moisture through which adds a small amount of water to the paint, allowing it to flow better and be applied with better control. It also allows you just to close up the box and leave it. The paint should stay liquid for at least a week. It hugely reduces the amount of wastage due to drying out on the palette and makes the consistency of the paint more.. er.. consistent. I'm a total hairy-brush acrylic painting noob and it helped me quite a lot. Pros seem to swear by it.
GW tutorials don't tell you this for 2 reasons. 1) They don't sell a wet palette 2) they make a lot of money on paint, more wastage is good. This is also why they supply their paint in horrible pots which seem to like drying out. I much prefer the Vallejo (etc) dropper bottles. Far less prone to accidental spillage too. Contrast paints seem to be aimed mostly at people who just want to slap some acceptable colour on and get the models on the gaming table without too much criticism. i.e. Paint for gamers, not paint for modellers and painters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOy6nCf7HZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2PYhY5tZQ (Ignore the title, he is throwing away his bought wet palette and making his own)
Started a diorama style kill team game board. Base is a sheet from my daughter's old flat pack bed, all buildings/pipework etc, 3d printed (have an 'outpost' and 2 more barracks printing now).
Aiming to go for a 'martian' terraforming site, with quite a bit of theming and texture.
Following some videos by Lukes APS. Makes it look easy!
https://youtu.be/6-l_1v_EiZo
Sway said:
Started a diorama style kill team game board. Base is a sheet from my daughter's old flat pack bed, all buildings/pipework etc, 3d printed (have an 'outpost' and 2 more barracks printing now).
Aiming to go for a 'martian' terraforming site, with quite a bit of theming and texture.
Following some videos by Lukes APS. Makes it look easy!
https://youtu.be/6-l_1v_EiZo
Zad said:
Damn kids and their eyesight. Youth really is wasted on the young
This may be preaching to the choir but:
He might find it useful to use a wet palette. Very easy to make, just take a small shallow sealable sandwich box, 2 or 4 layers of paper kitchen towel in the bottom, covered with a layer of (smooth) baking parchment. Add sufficient water to make the towel wet but not swimming. The top of the parchment appears dry but allows a tiny amount of moisture through which adds a small amount of water to the paint, allowing it to flow better and be applied with better control. It also allows you just to close up the box and leave it. The paint should stay liquid for at least a week. It hugely reduces the amount of wastage due to drying out on the palette and makes the consistency of the paint more.. er.. consistent. I'm a total hairy-brush acrylic painting noob and it helped me quite a lot. Pros seem to swear by it.
GW tutorials don't tell you this for 2 reasons. 1) They don't sell a wet palette 2) they make a lot of money on paint, more wastage is good. This is also why they supply their paint in horrible pots which seem to like drying out. I much prefer the Vallejo (etc) dropper bottles. Far less prone to accidental spillage too. Contrast paints seem to be aimed mostly at people who just want to slap some acceptable colour on and get the models on the gaming table without too much criticism. i.e. Paint for gamers, not paint for modellers and painters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOy6nCf7HZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2PYhY5tZQ (Ignore the title, he is throwing away his bought wet palette and making his own)
The wet palette is the new big deal This may be preaching to the choir but:
He might find it useful to use a wet palette. Very easy to make, just take a small shallow sealable sandwich box, 2 or 4 layers of paper kitchen towel in the bottom, covered with a layer of (smooth) baking parchment. Add sufficient water to make the towel wet but not swimming. The top of the parchment appears dry but allows a tiny amount of moisture through which adds a small amount of water to the paint, allowing it to flow better and be applied with better control. It also allows you just to close up the box and leave it. The paint should stay liquid for at least a week. It hugely reduces the amount of wastage due to drying out on the palette and makes the consistency of the paint more.. er.. consistent. I'm a total hairy-brush acrylic painting noob and it helped me quite a lot. Pros seem to swear by it.
GW tutorials don't tell you this for 2 reasons. 1) They don't sell a wet palette 2) they make a lot of money on paint, more wastage is good. This is also why they supply their paint in horrible pots which seem to like drying out. I much prefer the Vallejo (etc) dropper bottles. Far less prone to accidental spillage too. Contrast paints seem to be aimed mostly at people who just want to slap some acceptable colour on and get the models on the gaming table without too much criticism. i.e. Paint for gamers, not paint for modellers and painters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOy6nCf7HZk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei2PYhY5tZQ (Ignore the title, he is throwing away his bought wet palette and making his own)
I like building models too - mainly plastic aircraft, but I’d never heard of them before so thanks for the tip. It’s always good to look at other genres for inspiration and new techniques.
Here’s a bit more of his progress:
He got distracted by a load of old 40k figures given to him in a massive carrier bag last weekend...
dr_gn said:
The wet palette is the new big deal
I like building models too - mainly plastic aircraft, but I’d never heard of them before so thanks for the tip. It’s always good to look at other genres for inspiration and new techniques.
He got distracted by a load of old 40k figures given to him in a massive carrier bag last weekend...
Excellent I like building models too - mainly plastic aircraft, but I’d never heard of them before so thanks for the tip. It’s always good to look at other genres for inspiration and new techniques.
He got distracted by a load of old 40k figures given to him in a massive carrier bag last weekend...
I must admit I hadn't heard of it until I watched some YouTube video tutorials and so many of them mentioned wet palettes. All the conventional model painting I had done in the past was either oldschool enamels, or in more recent years airbrushing alcohol based acrylics like Tamiya. The wet palette somehow gives more control and makes it feel more like "proper" painting.
Another thing I do is not fully build up the figure before painting (obviously not an option when re-painting old builds). I have a bunch of long BBQ skewers with croc clips wedged on the end. Many parts have an unseen mounting pin or similar that you can grab hold of. This lets you airbrush primer (Mig surface primer in my case) without missing any bits that are in shadow. Does he use Nuln Oil for shading, or does he do it manually?
Zad said:
dr_gn said:
The wet palette is the new big deal
I like building models too - mainly plastic aircraft, but I’d never heard of them before so thanks for the tip. It’s always good to look at other genres for inspiration and new techniques.
He got distracted by a load of old 40k figures given to him in a massive carrier bag last weekend...
Excellent I like building models too - mainly plastic aircraft, but I’d never heard of them before so thanks for the tip. It’s always good to look at other genres for inspiration and new techniques.
He got distracted by a load of old 40k figures given to him in a massive carrier bag last weekend...
I must admit I hadn't heard of it until I watched some YouTube video tutorials and so many of them mentioned wet palettes. All the conventional model painting I had done in the past was either oldschool enamels, or in more recent years airbrushing alcohol based acrylics like Tamiya. The wet palette somehow gives more control and makes it feel more like "proper" painting.
Another thing I do is not fully build up the figure before painting (obviously not an option when re-painting old builds). I have a bunch of long BBQ skewers with croc clips wedged on the end. Many parts have an unseen mounting pin or similar that you can grab hold of. This lets you airbrush primer (Mig surface primer in my case) without missing any bits that are in shadow. Does he use Nuln Oil for shading, or does he do it manually?
This is the video he’s been following:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vLsteSBHEcM
So it’s a combination of shading and nuln oil.
I couldn’t understand why he uses paper as a palette - surely it does the opposite of what you want ie soaks water up rather than keeping it wet. We used Ceramic palettes or I use Pringles lids because pretty much nothing adheres to them permanently.
Sway said:
Duncan uses a paper palette...
Of course, Duncan has the entirety of the Games Workshop head office to grab paint and supplies from!
I get that, but I’d never consider using normal paper as a palette for any kind of paint, it just seems totally unsuited to the job. Then again, it might be a special kind of paper (baking parchment?), but I don’t think he specified a type.Of course, Duncan has the entirety of the Games Workshop head office to grab paint and supplies from!
Still, the results were great.
dr_gn said:
Sway said:
Duncan uses a paper palette...
Of course, Duncan has the entirety of the Games Workshop head office to grab paint and supplies from!
I get that, but I’d never consider using normal paper as a palette for any kind of paint, it just seems totally unsuited to the job. Then again, it might be a special kind of paper (baking parchment?), but I don’t think he specified a type.Of course, Duncan has the entirety of the Games Workshop head office to grab paint and supplies from!
Still, the results were great.
I think the paper that Duncan uses for his palette is specially coated stuff, which has always seemed a bit odd to me. Almost like they want it to dry out. I mostly use Pringles lids for mixing epoxy on 
GW do seem to have endless ways to sell more paint to you. For example, dry paint can encrust the plastic hinge on the "new" style pots, which then lets air in and dries out the pot in 6 months or so, and of course leaving the lid open while you paint means it dries out anyway. I think my next project will be to get some dropper bottles from Ebay like the ones Vallejo use, and decant the paint into those, with a glass or stainless ball bearing for mixing. It is less likely to dry out if/when I forget to fully close the lid.
I'm on the look out for some cheap coloured inks, they apparently make good washes similar to Nuln Oil etc when thinned down with Klear or similar. Talking of which, I gather Klear does as good a job as Lahmian Medium when thinning acrylic paints, and costs a tiny fraction of the official stuff. No problems with pigment clumping etc.
GW do seem to have endless ways to sell more paint to you. For example, dry paint can encrust the plastic hinge on the "new" style pots, which then lets air in and dries out the pot in 6 months or so, and of course leaving the lid open while you paint means it dries out anyway. I think my next project will be to get some dropper bottles from Ebay like the ones Vallejo use, and decant the paint into those, with a glass or stainless ball bearing for mixing. It is less likely to dry out if/when I forget to fully close the lid.
I'm on the look out for some cheap coloured inks, they apparently make good washes similar to Nuln Oil etc when thinned down with Klear or similar. Talking of which, I gather Klear does as good a job as Lahmian Medium when thinning acrylic paints, and costs a tiny fraction of the official stuff. No problems with pigment clumping etc.
Gassing Station | Scale Models | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff