Darkstar Paints, and More....

In the past I have made a point of how few paints I actually use in my painting approach, where many modellers seem to think you need every colour in a range, and maybe multiple ranges (and for the most part would never mix two colours together unless explicitly told to), I've long professed to make do with only 40 or so colours.  

For the most part that is still true.  

But, not immutable.  I certainly benefited from switching to a wet palette a year or so back, and adding an airbrush shortly after is really starting to have an impact, but there were techniques catching my eye that I'd never tried before, and the shortcomings of some of my materials were becoming apparent too.

One of those being my metallics.

So firstly, metallics cant be used on a wet palette, I was told as such, but tried it anyway, and the result was a swift need for new sponge in the WP.  as a result you are still mixing them 'dry', and my usual brand was not really satisfactory in this regard.  Don't get me wrong, I'd used Vallejo Acrylic metals for over a decade, well enough; but as I was starting to work with more subtle details, they were showing their limitations.

One of the worst in the range...

Some of the pigments are super thick, some almost watery, and coverage was variable, with silver and gold some of the worst to work with.  Moreover, there was no way I'd run them through an airbrush.  Still there are plenty of options out there, and so after a little research I went with a brand I'd never heard of before, who specialise in metallic paints:

All the core colours I need

The Darkstar range (Link) contains 27 metallic colours, but for my purposes only 6 will be needed, replacing my old core set.  After some use I'm very happy with the quality, and at £3.50 for 17ml the price - given GW charges £2.75 for 12ml of a basic metallic, and £4.75 for a 24ml Airbrush-friendly version.  The paints have a great fluidity, but a strong pigmentation.  They also mix well together.  Whilst there is perhaps not the midtone steel in the three 'greys' I picked, it is easy to mix any shade from those I have available.  Moreover, the dropper bottles are a well made design and feature an agitator so all that's needed is a quick shake to get going.

So far I've been greatly impressed.

Another thing I've been looking at getting better at was glazing and washes.  And to augment this I invested in a selection of inks:

£20 well spent?

These were easy to pick up as a set online, and I have yet to experiment much, but I am looking forward to some experimentation.

So as you've been so patient in listening I will offer the small reward of some actual output.  Lockdown continues to gift time where company may have been asked for, but you make the best of what you have.  As a piece of practice I did some more work with the airbrush to do the bulk of the work on a set of Reaper 'Not-Space Marines':

I don't even know why I bought these, but hey ho...

I forget their proper title.  I'm slowly working out how far you have to push false highlights through the airbrush to get the right effect.  There is still work in learning it to do, but the practice is fun.  The rest of the model paintwork was a breeze, as only a select few details needed picking out.  

One handy trick I did try here was one recommended via YouTube; I painted the Yellow over a base-coat of pink, bright fuchsia pink, and by crikey it worked!  Instead of slogging through 5, 6, 7 layers of yellow to get a solid coverage, it looked spot on with two coats.  That halved the time on that one detail, I will try it on a full figure next.  

As for the metallics, well only the bayonets got any here, not really enough to tell a story about.

If you are frustrated with your current metal effect paints however, I would definitely recommend Darkstar.

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