Testors paints?

[iconnor1]

My friend started painting his crew with Testors paint. he says they look good. has anyone tried these? Citadel paints get expensive really fast so I'm trying to find a cheaper alternative. What's the difference between acrylic and enamel paints? Can any recommend any other cheaper brands of paints that will work decent for malifaux?

we bought 12 older adikolor paints from a LGS for 50 cents a piece and they wont mix...

I'd rather not order offline if I don't have to, is there anything at Michael's, Hobby Lobby, or Walmart that I could try out?

Edited February 23, 2012 by iconnor1

[pandasauce]

I've found that enamel paints like Testors, will make your models look very shiny and very unrealistic. To be honest paints like Vallejo, P3, and the other more expensive paints will give you the best looking models. So in the long run paying that extra dollar or so a bottle will pay off and you will have models to be proud of. I do no recommend enamel paints because i find they do not mix well and do not have a nice finish and end up making models look more like childrens' toys rather than models.

[Fetid Strumpet]

+1 I agree with panda. Testors paints are not the paints you want to be using.

[iconnor1]

maybe I will have to splurge on decent paints then. I have my crew primed, and tried a little painting with the adikolor paints but they are very hard to deal with since they are so old.

[Bexley]

Well, to be fair, if your models painted with Testors paints are shiny, it's probably because you didn't read the label and used a gloss color instead of a matte color.

Enamel paints were the standard for many years (until the early/mid 1980s) and many people still use them (or other enamels, such as Humbrol) and produce fine work- primarily, larger scale historical figure painters. In fact, early on, one of the 'Eavy Metal painters (Fraser Gray) did all of his models with enamels. (I'm pretty sure GW would never allow that these days, and if they did, they'd certainly never let him say so on the pages of White Dwarf.) There's a Dust Tactics player on the FFG forums right now who lives in Argentina and can only get Humbrol enamels locally, and he's doing some outstanding work with them.

That being said, though, enamels require a very different painting technique than acrylics. They require solvent based thinners (such as mineral spirits or turpentine) for thinning and clean-up. Also, 99% of the information you'll find in the web concerning painting miniatures will only apply to acrylic techniques. One of the trickiest things with enamels is that unless they've dried for many days, solvents in fresh paint can re-wet previously applied paint, making layering very difficult. You can get some very nice blends, though, with practice, by applying two colors next to each other, and using a brush dipped in solvent to re-dissolve the area where the two colors meet and blend them together. But in the end, you are probably better off sticking to acrylics.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Bexley

[Red_Starrise]

For colors I go through alot of such as black, I prefer the cheap stuff from wal-mart which do just fine with a little thinning. I used to use enamels when I first started gaming as I had lots of them from models, but the drying time & how hard it is on brushes turned me off of it. I will say though that the coverage is good on the lighter colors & the precious metals are superior to acrylics IMHO.

[mrmenstrate]

I like testor paints they are nice but the reason why its all glossy and stuff is because it is most likely enamel paints...testor also sells acrylic which arnt glossy at all. Model paint is model paint its all the same just make sure you know what you want your model to look like...like everyone here i suggest you stick with acrylic paints, testors sells them for cheap when citadel paints are over priced. I bought a bulk pack of 246 pots of testors acrylic model paints for 60 bucks on ebay.

[Webmonkey]

testors enamel,... don't,.. do,.. it,...