Paint Brand DOESN'T MATTER?!

the very first video i ever did on youtube was actually on the maniac channel where i compared a bunch of different starter paint sets and in that video i kind of all over the quality of army painter paints the quality of the paint honestly left a little something to be desired i felt like i was fighting it more than i should have so but does the paint brand you use really stop you from creating an amazing paint job today we're gonna find out [Music] there are loads of miniature paint brands out there these days and doesn't it kind of feel like they come out with a new one every other month and this kind of feels like it leads us into a cycle of feeling like the paints that we own aren't good enough and that the new paints are what we need to help us improve as miniature painters but is that really the case i'm kind of curious so today we're going to try to find out i'm going to try to paint the highest quality miniature i've ever painted here on the channel while only using army painter paints well why army painter well first of all they challenged me to do it and i'm not one to back down from a challenge and second of all my limited experience with this paint range has been less than pleasant also this paint is affordable readily available at just about any local game store and it's known for being a paint accessible for beginners but quite frankly looked down upon by serious miniature painters i'll be spending two 12-hour days of painting to get this chaos marine as close to golden demon quality as possible given only the constraints of time and paint quality and my own skill which i guess is my biggest constraint emotional damage i'm gonna paint the armor starting at a deep dark blue and rise up to a nice vibrant turquoise and i'm mostly choosing this color scheme because when i was looking through the optional colors these ones looked pretty speaking of which i'm using both the standard army painter range and the air range for this paint job mostly because they have different colors in the boxes the air range which is meant for through an airbrush is obviously thinner than the standard range but it's not so thin down that it doesn't work just fine with a regular brush immediately i noticed that this stuff needs more than just water added to it to thin it down and get it to an ideal working consistency so each time i put some paint on my palette i put in some magic mix by yosonja along with some water because this stuff has a really thick binder and just thinning it down with water makes it seem to separate more than i'd like but this stuff really keeps it into a nice workable consistency i found this step to be particularly important for the standard range the air range didn't really need it so much and it's kind of an important point to note because there are plenty of paint brands out there that don't require anything more than a little bit of water to create a silky smooth base coat and even with mixing in my own medium i wasn't going to get a smooth opaque coat with this stuff so i'm already at an impasse here i can either sit and complain about what these paints don't do well i can give up or i can understand that this is an area of struggle for the paint and i can try to identify an area in which the paint doesn't struggle and put my focus into using it that way and this really is an important point we need to come to grips with as painters no paint range is perfect each has things it does well in things it does not so well the more we work with the paint range the more we learn about it and become comfortable with how it acts jumping around with lots of different paint ranges before we truly understand how the one we already have works can really make our painting suffer you'll notice as i'm painting this armor i'm not using long smooth sweeping brush strokes i'm using a small brush and working in a stippling manner that means i'm creating lots of tiny little dots that are going to build up layer over layer to give me a nice opaque smooth coat because this paint needed some extra thinning and medium it doesn't give easy opaque coverage but we can use this to our advantage with stippling we want this gradual build up it gives us a ton of control over our color transition and blends and this paint includes a nice little bit of literature and while i was looking through it i noticed this really important sheet that told us about the medium and how it separates in the bottle during transport i think this is one of the reasons why people might have a bad experience with a particular paint brand if it's not correctly mixed it can act vastly different than it was intended to so i thoroughly shook up each of the paints with my vortex mixer prior to use and it felt like entirely different stuff than the stuff that i used back when i tested the paint starter set now this is another issue as new painters you shouldn't be expected to have to go out and buy a vortex mixer just to get your paints properly mixed the good news is a lot of companies are including little mixing balls in the paints when you buy them an army painter is doing that with their air range i do wish this was industry standard and all paints came with those little mixing balls including the standard army painter paints another area that i tried to lean in on for this paint was its ability to do just fine with glazes both thick and thin for cloth i built up some scratchy highlights and put on a heavy wash of red over the top blending those textured highlights together [Music] this process actually worked really well and i was happy with the outcome in fact if i was trying to paint this model quicker or if i was painting a whole unit of these models i'd paint every surface of the mini in this way since i was going full trihard mode on this paint job i decided i was going to paint all of the armor trim in non-metallic metal gold i tested out a color recipe on his belt buckle and was mostly happy with how it read as gold so i decided to just go for it if i was thinking i would not have picked a model that has so many bits of tiny little metal trim to do because this step took forever by starting with the thin dark brown paint over the black primer our shadows for the gold trim start very dark and this is really important for painting metallics because you want those really dark shadows as well as really bright highlights to build up that contrast i would build up a few layers of my base dark brown being careful to keep the dark areas dark and then i added more warmth and depth by mixing in a vibrant orange then some vibrant warm yellow and finally an almost off-white yellow for our brightest points this process of painting non-metallic gold had me quite nervous if i'm being honest with you but i thought it was a really important stress test for us to put this paint under yellow paint is notorious for having terrible coverage and for me to think about having the nice little tiny crisp details and shiny points on all this gold armor it made me a little bit worried about what this thing was going to turn out looking like and quite frankly as i added more oranges and yellows to my gold color it did not cover that well but i kept putting layer after layer on and the transparent coverage ended up working to my advantage because it would create some pretty smooth transitions as the colors slowly built up but i gotta say as the gold did start to come together i was seeing that this was actually working and this piece might end up just looking respectable as a display piece today's video is brought to us by the army painter and you may be saying john if they're sponsoring this video that just means you're going to say that their paint is good so we can't really trust what you have to say and that's a legitimate point but not only is that not how i operate the army painter told me they specifically wanted me to try my hardest to get my honest opinion and criticism of their products in hopes that they can make it better the army painter is known for being widely available and affordable which to me are the two most important factors for us getting new painters into the hobby but it's their honesty humility and desire to continually improve their products while still keeping them affordable that has earned my respect so thank you army painter for supporting the channel onto painting the face and i specifically chose a model that had skin because it can be a difficult thing to paint for most of us painters and it is a nice test of a paint range to how well it can paint human skin and as you can see i ended up painting this face mostly out of focus on the camera no big deal it's not like i had three hours of footage of me meticulously painting this face that all ended up blurry as so you can't tell all the hard work i did sorry about that i am more pissed off about it than you are but at the end of the video i do show some finalized shots of the face all nice and crisp i used the same stippling approach for the skin which worked great the problem with painting skin is we need to get pretty darn bright on the highest highlights and when you paint with a mix that includes a lot of white it can turn out chalky and ugly really easily but because i was just building up small dots and lines we didn't have this issue this was another area that i really stress tested the paint range and as long as i worked in very thin paint over many thin coats the results were kind of solid our chaos marine here has an eyeball on his knee pad because why wouldn't he so let's use this as an excuse to test out how well this paint can do fine little freehand details i went for a cloudy milky eye because that's creepy when you're doing fine details like this you want your paint really thinned and this paint can thin very well [Music] final detail we have to complete on our chaos marine is the magical flames on his fist and sword and the most important thing we need to do here is start by painting all of that black primer in pure white we want this to really glow from a bright white internal source gradually building up to a yellow then a fluorescent green and finally some of our darker turquoise to meld well with the armor color yeah this footage is out of focus too me i think i got so focused on painting this model as best that i could within the time limit that i completely spaced on the fact that i was recording things and i needed to keep the model at a certain point so it would stay in focus on the camera and with that our chaos sorcerer paint job is complete and quite frankly i'm kind of proud of this and it wouldn't take me that many more hours of smoothing the colors out with thin glazes and tidying up some of my mistakes for it to be worthy of entering into a golden demon competition i'm not saying he'd win i'm just saying i wouldn't be ashamed to have him in the display case while this video was focused on trying to paint to a high level with a paint brand that many look down upon i don't want your take away from this video to be whether or not i think army painter makes good paint what i really took away from this project is how i personally put unrealistic expectations on the paint that i use and the tools that i use pretty regularly instead of just listening to the tool and figuring out what it does well and leaning into that so i can get the most out of it what does the paint or tool struggle with well try to avoid that if you can and what does it do well well how can you maximize this because if you can lean into it you'll end up with a much less stress while you're painting and much less frustration throughout the process and you'll end up with a final product you're much more satisfied with so paint with what you already have paint with what you can get locally at your store or easily accessible online with cheap or no shipping and paint with whatever colors excite you doesn't matter what brand they are most importantly just paint if you made it this far into the video thank you you are a true champion and i appreciate you truly if you want to support me in making more videos there's a couple of easy things you can do first and foremost make sure you're subscribed it's crazy how many people watch my videos that aren't even subscribed next you can check out my affiliate links down in the video description i've got some great discounts on products that i use on a regular basis at no additional cost to you you actually help me in making more videos and finally you can check out the ninjon patreon as well that really is the biggest thing that you can do to help me keep the lights on for my family and you get some great rewards like access to my discord server where we can talk about mini painting or anything else as well as access to my weekly vlog and quick tip videos that are only accessible to my patrons i'm going to see you again real soon and sometime between now and then make sure you find time to slay the gray

Channel: Ninjon

Views: 145,967

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, painting warhammer, painting warhammer 40k, horus heresy, warhammer 30k, age of sigmar, painting age of sigmar, contrast paint, speed paint, citadel colour, citadel paint, best miniature paint, mini painting, miniature painting, mini paint, games workshop, space marines, army painting, speed painting, squidmar miniatures, miniac, is contrast paint good, vallejo, warhammer community, the army painter, miniature paint, scale 75, best mini paint

Id: HeX7ijTBuGM

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022