Kosh's Korner - Wargaming on a Budget

There are a lot of different brands of paints and types of brushes out there. It can get confusing trying decide what to buy. I'll show you where I went to research paints and brushes and what I decided on getting for myself.

Brushes
There are bunch of different brushes out there. You don't necessarily need to worry about brand as much as you need to worry about what the bristles are made from. There's synthetic, camel hair, synthetic blend, squirrel, red sable, Kolinsky sable... it can be daunting. Here's a very good article that explains all the differences. The first thing you should do is not worry about any synthetic bristles. Some type of natural hair is usually better, with Kolinsky sable being the best. Kolinsky sable brushes are expensive though, about $10-$20 a brush. It's not that bad when compared to $8 for the GW brushes. Here's a few reasons why a Kolinsky sable brush is the best, this was taken from an article on the B&C written by Starks333.

-natural hairs keep their tips
-natural hair means they can hold moisture and oils better than synthetics which improves flow of paint
-natural kolinsky hairs are softer and less coarse, which means the paint comes off the brush smoother, less likely to streak
-good "snap" means the brush is less likely to fish hook from repeated strokes, or bend out of shape, it also means your strokes are smoother, less rigid(it slides along the piece instead of jumping around)

Yes, I was a skeptic at first, too. I went down to the local art store and took a look at them. They had two brands of Kolinsky sable brushes, Winsor & Newton and Raphaël. The W&N brushes were pretty splayed, so I took a look at the Raphaël brushes, specifically the 8408 Extra Pointed series. Let me tell you, I was surprised. Even I could tell that these were some nice brushes, they had a very nice point and they snapped right back into place after running the brush over the back of my hand. I was sold, the good news was they were 40% off. I bought a size 0 and a 1 for $22. You can also order these from www.dickblick.com. Sizes 0 and 1 should be good enough for now.

From the research I've done, if you take good care of these brushes they should last and hold their points at least a good 4-6 months. In the long run, they may be cheaper than buying $3-$5 cheap brushes every few weeks. I also picked up some brush soap for $5. Here's a good article on taking care of your brushes.

Paints
Citadel, Coat D'Arms, Vallejo, Privateer Press P3, and Reaper are some of the more popular brands of acrylic paints used for models. There are enamel paints out there for models as well, but a majority of people use acrylic paint. Acrylics can be thinned with water and you don't need a special type of thinner like you do with enamel. This site here has some reviews on some of the different brands I mentioned above.

My only experience is with the Citadel range of paints. These come in small pots with a pop top lid. I used them when they had a screw on lid several years ago. The Citadel paints I had dried out very quickly and this seems to be the main complaint about them still today. This was the main reason why I decided not to go with these paints... well, not completely. They do have some of the best metallic paints out there when compared to the others. So, for metallics this is what I decided to go with.

After doing some research, I decided to go with Vallejo Game Color paints for my colored paint. Their range matches Citadel only with different names, you can find a conversion chart here. The main reason I decided on Vallejo was the dropper bottles they come in, these bottles will let you measure your paint by drops when mixing. This makes it easier to keep color formulas when you mix your paints. The other thing I was hearing, was that they don't dry out nearly as fast as the Citadel range. Some folks even said they could last a couple of years in the bottle.

Before you actually buy the paint, you need to figure out what colors you'll be needing. I would suggest you get some neutral colors like black, white, gray, and brown. Maybe a couple shades of the gray and brown. As for main colors, I'd get 2-3 shades of those for highlighting, blending, and shading. I ended up getting 20 bottles of Vallejo for $59 and 5 bottles of Citadel metallics for $18.

One Last Thing
Since I went with the Vallejo dropper bottles, that means I'm going to need a palette since I can't just dip the brush into the paint pot. You can get a cheap small plastic palette for $1 at a hobby store. However, there is something better that will only cost you a few bucks more to make, a Wet Palette. Wet palettes are easy to make and they will make your paint last longer while on the palette, even up to weeks with the lid on. Here is a very good tutorial on making a wet palette. I found all the materials to make one at Wal-mart for $5. By the way, you definitely want to use Parchment paper and not wax paper for your wet palette.

In all, this weeks total was $109. I went over the $100 budget, but remember I brought over $20 from the last budget. It's a good thing I did, I kind of figured this week would be close. See you soon with information on primers and some pics of a few models I primed.