Back in the day when I was first painting miniatures the minis were lead from Grenadier and the paints were enamels from Testors. There were some cool things you could do with enamels, especially if you wanted something shiny. Over time the lead went out of figures and I switched over to acrylic paints that could be worked with just using water instead of having to use chemical thinners to clean your brushes.
Why tell you this, other than to establish that I've been around a while and that during my youth I was exposed to potentially harmful chemicals? It will be relevant, I promise. But first another interlude.
Recently on a few blogs there have been posts about some of the neat things you can do with transparent acrylic paints.
They looked interesting, so I thought I'd try some out. I picked up a couple of different kinds.
I took a couple of old figures, primed them white, then put this stuff on them to see how it'd look. For these I then did some overbrushing with a silver to help pick out details. I sat back and looked at them, and came to a realization.
(Here's where that early story pays off.)
These things are basically acrylic versions of enamel paints.
I'm sure that there are differences, some things that you can do with one and not the other, but at least in some respects I think it's a valid comparison.
So if you miss some of the things you could do with enamels but don't want to fool with the cleanup and chemicals, give some of these a try. I look forward to doing some more experimenting with them myself.
Lol, I still use Testors enamels. They do everything I want them to, and I know how to make them do it. I just never bothered learning how to use anything else.
ReplyDeleteI just don't like having to deal with thinners. But enamels are certainly good paints.
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