Paints, brushes and other tools of the trade
Not a lot happening in my world at the moment with regards to painting. Had a crack at epic Butchers trousers last night and i'm not completely happy with them so i'm gonna redo them sometime over the weekend. Beyond that, the assault kommandos are coming along nicely, with the leather bits being painted this morning and only the brass bits and bases left to do before I can call them done.
So, I thought i'd take the opportunity to give you a rundown on what I use in the way of paints and brushes. My collection of paints is pretty extensive, covering Citadel, P3 and Vallejo with a toe in the water of the Andrea acrylics with their silver set. At the moment i'm using a lot of the Citadel Foundation paints as these can be thinned down considerably and still cover beautifully thanks to the massive amounts of pigment in them. P3 also figures quite significantly in my painting at the moment thanks to their amazing ability to be thinned to the point of complete translucency without breaking up the paint at all. Vallejo still figure in my mix, but I mainly use them for basecoats or paintjobs where i'm not really trying because of their habit of breaking up badly when thinned too much.
I've been trying out the transparency painting technique used by a lot of very good painters and, although it's a very time-consuming technique, the results are fantastic and I can definitely see my paintjobs improving dramatically.
Another area where i've been experimenting is with the paint brushes I use. Like many people I started on the Citadel brushes which are fairly good, but have a tendency of losing their point quickly when painting with them. I quickly moved on to the Windsor and Newton Series 7 miniatures, which are excellent brushes in their own right and keep their point very well. However after a bad experience with several badly-made size 0 brushes, i've moved on to a completely different brand from France called Raphael. These are Kolinsky sable brushes that are absolutely fantastic. They keep a point incredibly well and the size 0 that I tend to use for practically everything is capable of producing the thinnest lines i've ever seen from a brush. They do take some looking after, but with that kind of investment, you're going to want to take care of them for as long as possible.