Citadel Paints or Vallejo...

[Redmanphill]

I thin with glaze medium from Vajello. Absolutely everything gets thinned with that stuff, I seem to buy more of it than any other paint. Bonewhite being a close second.

[RuneBrush]

On 27/08/2016 at 1:53 PM, Dez said:

I like both, but I've just invested in a ton of dropper bottles because my GW paints are drying up too. I also bought a ton of 6mm chrome bearings to use as agitators because Vallejo tends to seperate.

You might want to be careful with chrome depending upon what the base ballbearing is made of, chrome is actually porus and can rust.  I use a very high quality stainless steel - £15 for 100 so not cheap, but never had one taint the paint.

On 28/08/2016 at 0:24 AM, Corai said:

I usually wind up using a mix of all the ranges. 

I I like GW Metallics and shades (for over Metallics), army painter washes for shading cloth, P3 bones and whites, Vallejo brighter colours and whatever o have to hand for the rest. 

Beat at advice is don't feel constricted to just one pant range. Mix and match to suit your needs. 

Can't disagree with this.  Primarily my range consists of GW but I've also quite a few Vallejo Model Air, a few Model Color, some Scale 75 (flesh colours) and a few P3 bone colours.  I did buy the boxed set of VMC and VGC - I ended up selling both as I hated VGC with a passion (no two colours had a consistent finish) and only used a few VMC so they didn't justify the money invested.

All of the paint companies have upped their game on the metallic front recently and I'd suggest picking up some designed for the airbrush (they apply fine with a brush, just dry out on the pallette slightly more quickly).  Vallejo Metal Color are some of the nicest finishes I've ever used - they're almost too realistic!

[Cordova]

Vallejo paints are nice, and the bottles are neat, although I've had a few issues with them:

• They separate really quickly.  If you're shaking a reasonably full bottle, they develop an internal pressure, and paint will slowly ooze out of the tip once it's been opened.
• The consistency varies through the range - the yellows are very watery, yet some are almost like toothpaste (e.g. Off-White).
• The Washes will randomly dry white, no matter how thin it is and how little you use (the Burnt Umber one is nice, though).  The Inks don't do this.
• I've had some colour/consistency variability with a couple of the greys (2 bottles were very very watery, and too light), and my bottle of Game Air Gunmetal is 2-3 shades darker than my Game Colour one (it's about the colour of Game Colour Gunmetal after being washes with Nuln Oil).
• One bottle (Dark Green) turned into a solid lump of paint inside the bottle.

Generally, they'll generally need thinning 1:1 with thinning medium, and still have a high pigment load, so you may want to look at Vallejo's glazing medium to help do blending, and you'll probably find yourself doing more mixing than with the GW line.  The Game Air range is very thin and quite nice.

I've not had much experience with GW's current range, beyond the Retributor Armour and Liberator Gold paints (which are nice but really expensive), and some of their dry paints (which work well).  Their Washes are nice, but have a tendency to stain the area, rather than just target the recesses (flow improver can help, but had a tendency to make them go gloss).  With their previous ranges, I had an issue with them drying in the pots.

I'd say it's probably worth looking at Coat D'Arms paints as well, if you can find a supplier (e.g. Black Hat Miniatures in the UK) - they're the original GW line from the early 1990's, and I believe they also make the P3 line.  They come in 18ml flip-top pots, which have an excellent seal - all of mine from the early 1990's are still very usable, although the flip-top pot does tend to make your thumb sore!  The "Armour Wash" is really nice (it's a blue-black), although their washes reactivate on contact with water.

Dunno if that helps?