Paint Choice

[mocapman]

Hi all,

I have just got back into the hobby and am about to paint up my Saim Hann Eldar army. I have seen a great tutorial on Tale of Painters that I plan to follow. I just have a few questions about paint choice...

I was going to get the army painter pure red primer to basecoat/prime with in one step with and then the pure red paint to touch up missed areas with. Would it be better to get the GW white primer and mephiston red spray instead? Are the reds similar colours? I plan on using primarily GW colours as I can walk down the road and get them from the local hobby store but using one primer sounds ideal (though I would need white too to prime the heads of some models).

Also, could you point me towards a good matt varnish and a good gloss varnish? I have heard stories about some being misty/not fully transparent.

Cheers,

Wayne

[Quaade]

The Army Painter sprays and the GW sprays have different colourtones. Also you need to be really carefull when using the army painter as it can get a tendency to be really thick when applied and thus filling up details. Heat the Army Painter spraycan well before use.

[Cpt Codpiece]

i have used the army painter dragon red (a great red BTW, perfect for saim han. very like old mechrite red), as with all rattle cans test first.

always warm your cans (a bucket of warm water for a few mins) unless you live in equatorial zones or australia LOL (in which case you may need a mortgage to buy the paint), to allow the propellant to get active.

GW sprays are not primers they require a base prime also where as army painter does not, but it does require a lighter application to avoid as quaade said detail can be lost.

[Roberto67]

I use the army painter black for my army and I can still see the details. Why do you need to warm the spraycan? It will be more thinner when spraying? Never heard about this.
Roberto67

[mocapman]

Thanks for the replies folks. Its definitely helped

[DWest]

Why do you need to warm the spraycan? It will be more thinner when spraying?

I've always warmed my spraycans, it was a trick I learned from my dad who builds model cars, and is more applicable there than on wargaming models, but the way I learned it was that being petroleum-based paint, it can freeze up at the low end of room temperature. Heating up the can gets the various products to melt and flow together better (especially with gloss paints). For extra goodness, warm the model itself as well; spraying in cold weather and especially onto cold plastic causes the paint to shrink, giving you the dreaded "orange peel" effect.

[YourSwordisMine]

I've come to love Army Painter paints. Definitely follow everyones advice about using them.

Now, as far as colors.

I would recommend basing with Dragon Red. It is a darker red and is best as a base IMHO. touch up with the matching brush on.

Once you have a good base of Dragon Red, use Pure Red as your highlights color. You can even go up to Lava Orange if you wish, but with Saim hann, you probably don't need to.