Painting stuff; Vallejo Xpress & paint brushes plus a dollar store silicon 'painting well'

 

So, a few updates on the painting front, not so much any finished figures, although I have quite a fair number on the verge of completion, rather a talk about paint and equipment.

 

Vallejo has released the next wave of their Xpress paints and I have picked up a few of them. (okay almost all of them) Anyways, they are for the most part quite good, doing their job very well as one would expect from Vallejo paints. However I feel I should single out a couple as my new go to paints for certain tasks.

Mummy white does an excellent job for creating dirty white or off white shirts. Some of the other white contrast/speed/Xpress paints create grey or black shadows, but this paint creates a nice brown shade. It looks great as painted but I do sometimes do touch ups with P3 paints sickly white colour, a very nice off white colour.

Hosptallier black is a light shade of black, not grey but not dark black like say GW Legion black. It tends to create the effect of aged black. I find it great on hats that should show some wear and tear.

Willow bark is great for belts and other leather items. It produces a flat dark brown look that I feel really looks like leather.

I use Military yellow and Desert ochre for canvas/khaki and other such items. Military yellow also makes for a good buckskin colour, I have been using it for my Native American warrior.

I also want to give a shout out to the range of synthetic brushes that Vallejo has on offer. I have picked up a couple of packs of different sizes and I found them to be very good. It should be noted that I tend to destroy my brushes either through misuse or neglect, yet these brushes have, so far, survived my abuse. I plan to test out their non-synthetic brushes soon.

Last but not least silicon trays. I talked about silicon ice cube trays in an earlier post and I still think they are god, bit on a trip to Dollar Tree I found these items. 

They are molds for making coasters. They have the advantage of being smaller than the ice cube trays they have a good lip (to keep the paint from running away!) and are easier to clean as they are a flat surface,

After being used

After cleaning (I left some specs for proof)

Depending on the thickness of the residual paint, you can either just peel off the remains or a quick scrub with soap and water will see it all cleaned up. I am also thinking that I might use the irregular shape to make, uh, well, irregular shaped terrain. Maybe for odd shaped perilous zones or lava fields etc.