New adventures in paint and time

  You may remember a couple of posts ago I mentioned that one of my aims for the year was to update my paint set. For those of you that weren't reading this blog back in 2019 (I mean, why would you?) when I started to dip my pinkies back into miniature painting after an almost thirty year absence I decided to make My own paint set. The reasons for this were:

1) I had only just got the painting bug so didn't want to invest too heavily into paints and equipment. 

2) Mrs Sprinks is an arty sort who already had a massive selection of acrylic paints, seemed reasonable to think I could do something with things we already had.

These sort of paints, we have a bazillion of around the gaff.

3) miniature paints are very (and I do mean very) expensive for what you get. I am lucky to be in the position to be able to pay £3 for a thimble of paint but it soon adds up and I have far better things to spend that money on.

4) playing around with chemicals is fun!.

 Now up until then I had used Mrs Sprinks' paints straight from the tube and found them a bit thick and grainy, I tried thinning them with water but that just ruined the consistency and coverage.  not ideal but after a little research and mucking about I managed to come up with a good thinner formula that even I could handle that was giving the consistency and finish I wanted.

 Basically I saw this video and thought to myself 'im nicking that'...and I did!.

   I have been using this thinner for a few years now, making up bottles of pre thinned paints as and when but because I have been on a two year learning curve some of my paints are exactly as I want them but some...err...still need work to get the results I'm after.

  So having got to the paint where I can say I almost know what I'm doing. I decided to replace my frankenpaints with a new uniformly thinned set that would always be ready to go right out of the bottle. And that's what I have been doing.

  I decided to make the new set along the Wargames foundry triad system method, you make separate base, shade and highlight tones for each shade you want so you can paint in layers. 

This, basically I saw this and thought to myself 'im nicking that'...and I did.

  I think even if I decide not to paint with this method I will still have plenty of shades to play around with. 

    So I ordered far too many 15ml dropper bottles and set to swiping Mrs Sprinks' paints and knocking up a new paint set.

This one!.

Some paint triads made by a chimp!. I have written out the 'recipe' I used to make these Here if anyone wants to give it a go.

  It took me just over a day to mix and decant them all at a fraction of the cost of your average miniature paints. If you work off of an average cost of £3 per pot this lot would have cost  almost £350! And I had lots of fun mixing them, there is something very calming about the whole process, can't wait to get some minis undercoated to give them a whirl...

...'till next time ..