Review: Army Painter Warpaints Inks

Finally some hobby time again. And to start off I will do a review which I postponed now quite a long time. With my slow switch away from Citadel paints, I was also looking into something which could replace my washes which slowly dwindle away. Since I didn't like the Vallejo Smokey Ink (and thus stepped away from all their inks), I ordered me some Army Painter Inks, because I heard only good of them. And whoop here they are :)

The Inks (or Shades) come inside those handy dropper bottles and contain 18ml of fluid. That is 1ml more than the Vallejo bottles (17ml) and 6ml more than the Citadel pots (12ml). Price-wise I can't really tell the difference, because I got them in a set and with a discount but a short look at one of my shops its ~2.75€ for AP vs. ~3.20€ for GW. For completion, Vallejo Inks are roughly at 2.50€. So there is a huge difference here. But price is not all, thus I switched into painting mode and prepared a test.
Fun fact: I also have some very old paints left (Chestnut Ink anyone?) which had 17.5ml bottles and where around 3 Deutsche Mark (today something around 1.60€). And that was already an expensive price at that time because I bought them at my LGS without discount or anything :)

For testing the paints, I took a very old Skaven shield sprue and primed it with my trustworthy Vallejo Gray Primer (a review you will find here). After that had dried I just applied a coat of each color to one shield. No diluting, no wet palette, nothing. Straight out of the bottle. And to be honest: I liked it. I have the feeling that they are a bit more diluted than my old Citadel Inks.
If they have less pigments, that could also explain the price difference, but I can't evaluate that. The Inks dry out dull, no shine to see, also not on the Strong/Soft/Dark tones.

With a special eye on the Soft/Strong/Dark tone I tried to compare them with the old Devlan Mud and stuff. They come pretty close, maybe event a perfect replacement. The only thing I see is that if you want to replace old Gryphonne Sepia with the Soft Tone you will miss the slight reddish tone of Gryphonne Sepia. But that could also be because of the gray primer (and no metal basecoat). Dark Tone is a good replacement for Badab Black and Strong Tone for Devlan Mud. Please don't ask me how these colors are named in the new Citadel range, I honestly have no clue and I don't care anymore :)

Following a more detailed view of the colors, without the bottles:

Green | Red | Blue | Purple | Strong | Soft | Dark | Pure Primer

Conclusio

To make it short: I like the Army Painter Inks. For me they have just the right consistency to play with. If you want to have it stronger, you can always shade twice. With the dropper bottles and the right price, I think they are the perfect solution for me. And if you use already Army Painter paints they match perfectly to this color range (and colored spray primers).
There if you are in search for a new Ink, give them a try.
Hope you liked that review, I am interested if you share my opinion, have different experiences or use completely different paints.


So long,
Paradox0n

Blood Red & Sunburst Yellow: My two arch enemies

Motivation is somehow back and I am starting to paint again. And having to face my two arch enemies: The (very) old paints from Games Workshop, Blood Red and Sunburst Yellow. Those two paints just will not create some reasonable layers, the pigments in them just flow around and give a uneven, semi-transparent, blotchy layer. Even doing multiple coats will not work with them. And painting them on anything else than a white (or light gray) primer gives you headaches. With the airbrush the colors work OK but I can't use my airbrush on all those small parts of the miniatures.
Either I am too stupid do use those correctly or these colors are really a pain.

The problem is, that I still have to use them, because my Chaos Dwarves will use the red, and my Skaven Slaves have yellow clothing...

So if anyone of you has a good tip how I can get those two colors to work I would be happy... Or is there a nice basecoat red and yellow color from other manufacturers like Vallejo? So that I can only use the GW ones for highlighting. I know that there are some basecoat colors from GW but I switched all new colors I own to the Vallejo ones and I am more than happy with them.

And to complete this post, a bad shot WIP picture of the thingy I am working atm: The Ramshackle Drill I got a looooong time ago as present from Labschi. The brown parts will later be covered with a brass/gold paint and the metal parts will be weathered and be more metal (its just the first drybrushed coat). The red parts will stay, I like the dirty look of that, the first time that its OK that the red didn't cover so good :)

This thingy will either be a proxy for a Skaven Doomwheel (if I ever need a third on in a game) or most likely be used as a Chaos Dwarf war machine. I am thinking of the Iron Daemon since I don't want to buy the Forgeworld one and all my Chaos Dwarf models so far are the Mantic Abyssal Breeds or proxy models from other companies.


So long,
Paradox0n

Sunday Afternoon WIP - Dark Elves: Witch Elves

2K primed Witch Elves

A day off, a delicious asparagus menu and a painting afternoon with a friend, what a wonderful and quite ending of a long weekend. And since I really managed to paint something I can show you some WIP shots of my Witch Elves for my Cauldron of Blood.

First I did a two component priming for a better definition of the lighting of the miniatures. You don't believe how tricky this is when it is a stormy weather like today. But after seeing of some pictures from Mr. Lee I know now that I can achieve this with my airbrush too. Therefore as soon as my aerosol cans are empty I will buy me a black primer from Vallejo since I am really pleased with their primers.

Review: Vallejo Surface Primer

Since priming is an absolute necessity when its about painting miniatures (oh these old sins when painting with Revell emaille paints didn't need that) I thought of trying out some primers myself. I have spray cans of Games Workshop (black and white for doing a 2k priming), a brown primer from Army Painter (too many Skavens to work with) and shortly after I bought myself an airbrush I also bought the Vallejo Surface Primer in grey. This is a waterbased Poliurethane Primer which can be directly sprayed from your airbrush or if you want painted on with a brush. It comes in three sizes: 17ml, 60ml and 200ml. At my hobbystore of trust the big one costs around 12€ which is pretty much the costs of the GW primer. The bottle is designed to let you pour the primer directly into the paintpot of your airbrush which is pretty neat since that is exactly what I have bought this stuff for.

Preparing my paint - "Agitatorkugeln"

Hello together,

today is a wonderful day, the sun is shinning, a blue sky and it is pretty warm. And the best of all: I have some spare time! Therefore I planned to get some paint on my marines. So I prepared everything: wet palette, shaking the needed paint pots, got some fresh water and readied my brushes. Then I dropped some elfic flesh on my palette and: AGGRO MODE! Even though I shaked the paint for more than two minutes the pigments were cleary seperated from the medium.
But lucky for you I accept the challenge and took the chance to show you a product I really got to love since I first saw it:
In german it is called "Agitatorkugeln" - plain, rustless steel balls which you can drop into your paintpot:

Agitatorkugeln