Replacing Paints

Years ago, I painted with Humbrol paints. When I discovered Armory Paints, I switched. I still have some of the Armory colors in usable shape many, many years on. as time went on, I added the Citadel paints since they became the only ones I could purchase locally. Some of these old Citadel paints, inks and glazes are still in my paint box as they never dry up if you close them; but they are getting low and all the backups are opened except one...I think I have a glaze in yellow or purple in my basement.

Over the years, I stuck with Citadel since there was a store around the corner that always had every color. The successive changes in lids over the years have gone from bad to worse to worst. The old snap top was great. As I mentioned, I have some of those paints, inks and glazes that have to be around twenty years old; I just retired an armor wash and a red ink because the lids physically wore through.

GW changed to a screw tops that stunk but they kept a seal. I have some of those. The second to last iteration of flip tops was OK but required a period check on the paint if you weren't using it to keep from drying out. I just gave away a ton of those to a starting painter because I knew the backups would be dead when I needed them and taking care of them was becoming a drain on limited hobby time.. paint a figure or check the paints and add water

Then came the latest flip top! It "felt like it was a return to yore. I was surprised as it didn't fit with the GW step away from the consumer; but I reconciled it with a change in the paint names and color matching. the seal on the bottle is an illusion; I have suffered more dryouts in the last year than in all my years of painting. And it's not just me as my friend Evil Bob posted on Facebook resulting in his rebottling all the GW paints due to dryout. I recently had a bottle dry out after using it once--note, I don't paint from an open bottle and I am careful to close my tops.

As the paint lids and color names have changed, local stores have added other paint lines. As a result, I have added a variety of paint systems. I now have Army Painter, Reaper, Vallejo, Liquitex, Foundry, GW, Armory and some others.

I do like the dropper bottle that many of them utilize. Thankfully, all of the local hobby shops and gaming stores are carrying these different lines. unfortunately as the retailer tries to become everyhting to everyone, there are too many lines for them to carry them all or in sufficient quantities not to have gaps. Having a back up (expensive and prone to mishap for some lines) is necessary unless you are good at color matching.

Dakka Dakka forum  has a great color match chart. Check it out. It's great. I also increasingly use the Army Painter color primers when I discovered they have a bottle that is a 100% match. And they now have Soft Tone, Strong Tone and Dark Tone Wash bottles of their Quick Shade system that allows you to do the paint on dip in small doses when you have les than 100 figures to dip.