Try Warship Hobbies on Ebay for White Ensign paints - both ships and armor.
Or try website at www.warshiphobbies.com
Good luck

I am having trouble with my Vallejo paint. It paints beautifully but it does not stick very well & is very fragile as it can be easily scratched off.
I am painting some resin British tank crew figures & they have been undercoated with Tamiya fine grey primer which was left to dry for a week.
Any help would be appreciated.

I'm using Vallejo colors since a while and have positive experience. Now I'm painting some resin figures, primed and lot of handling with bare hands, no scratches, peeling etc. I can handle the figures after 10-15 minutes of drying with no fingerprints. Of course wearing latex gloves are recommended

Regards

As for many people here my favourite are Vallejo paints. It really won't let you down. I can surely recommend it to you.

I also prefer Citadel acrylic paints for hand brushing in general, and figure painting in particular. They're for fantasy war-gaming miniatures, but don't let that fool you - they work equally well on military figures, and even armor kits. They're thick and creamy, and require considerable thinning, so last a long time. Also, the paint doesn't lose it's quality when thinned a lot. Unused portions are also easy to pour back into the wide-mouthed bottles - unlike Vallejo and Andrea squeeze bottles. Citadel acrylics are high quality, and work best thinned with ordinary tap water.

I prefer Vallejo model color or citadel. great stuff.

I don't hand paint often ,just on small details , but Polly O used to be good .

Just to be different I like Lifecolor. I find it to be a better coverage to Vallejo which are good...

ebergerud: Did Revell finally fix their "cluster bomb" approach to quality with the Aquas? I tried them a few years ago when they where rather new and it was "Hit, Miss, Miss, maybe a hit" with thinning (even using the original Revell stuff) and do not get me started on airbrushing (They are rated for that as well). Brush-Painting at least worked sometimes, airbrush was "clogging, clogging, clogging, to thin"

I would love to switch since they are easily available here in germany, are nicely priced and have a beautiful RAL6014 (Gelboliv - a must for late 1950s- mid 1980s Bundeswehr vehicles). But even two containers of the same color did not behave the same on trials. Same for the paint consistency anywhere from "goo" to "almost liquid".

No they didn't, I started building a few weeks ago and of course used Revell Aqua because they're easy to get. But other than the Blacks which are actually not bad the rest just feels like I either put water or Putty on my models.

I agree with Vallejo. Best paint I have ever used.

Just another vote for Vallejo. It used to be Tamiya, but the 'V' passed 'em out.

Humbrol Enamel forever....

Acrilics Life Color...

Hi folks. I'm new here. Such a nice source for brushing technique. I want to paint my sdkfz.222 with brush and I have only Tamiya acrylic paints and Tamiya brush. I have some questions;

What is the thinner ratio for Tamiya acrylics while painting with brush?
How do u apply matt and gloss clear coats with brush?

I would say roughly 50/50 but there will be some variation depending on the colours and pigment load in each colour. While brush painting with Tamiya paint is possible I would look at a better suited product your model. If you were airbrushing the model Tamiya paint is excellent.

Vallejo available here too. But I have a quiet stock of Tamiya cause of airbrushing. But I wanted to try out some handbrushing for my Sdkfz.222.

What about clear coats? Same?

Give Tamiya rattle cans a try when it comes to the clear coats. but you need to remember each modeller has their own favourites.

Since this question was posted a long time ago, I'm sure it's been answered many times, but here's my two cents: on my current build, I've switched from using enamel paints to acrylics (primarily using Tamiya, but also have some Model Master). For my brushes, I've been using a #7 round sable for large areas and a 3/0 round sable for details/small parts. One thing I like about using a round brush, is that the tip can be shaped into a point, or a chisel edge. The chisel edge comes in handy when trying to paint along a straight edge (similar to a painter's sash brush).

With the paints, I haven't had much trouble with brush marks.

In over 30 years of modeling nothing brushes for me like Humbrol enamels. They are nearly opaque. I understand that they can be difficult to find. Luckily I still have a LHS, remember those, who unbelievably has the whole range and for $2.50 a tin.

I've never been able to hand brush Tamiya Acrylics on any flat surface over a 1/2 inch without roll up. Although I love them for A/B.

Check the Model Color range by Acrylicos Vallejo, the best option for hand brush paint option...
http://cdn.acrylicosvallejo.com/2f3091938c6b7afb2c1b953bf6a1d8b2/CC070-Rev14.pdf
Best regards

I too agree that Vallejos are the best paints to use for acrylic handbrushing.

I have Scale75 paints, and while the colors are nice, I find that the Scale75 bottles are sealed shut so one has to poke a hole to open the eyedropper. The other issue I have with Scale75 paints is that they're filled to the top of the bottle, meaning there's almost no room to shake them up to mix the paint, hence they don't cover very well even after stirring the paint in the palette with a toothpick.

Vallejos cover in one coat whereas Scale75s require a few coats.

Most online hobby shops have sales every weekend or month (and especially at holidays and Christmas) so one can save a lot of money buying paint at those times.

Having excellent brushes is a must. I used to take the 40-50% off art store coupons (Michaels) and buy brushes on the cheap...no more. Buy sable brushes from the United Kingdom...a five-brush set could be had for $20-$25USD ($4-$5 a brush) and they work wonders compared to the cheap art store brushes, not to mention that they last a long time. Horrible cheap brushes obviously produce bad painting results and it has taken me literally years to learn this...don't bother with (cheap) art store brushes to paint figures and kits and use those art store brushes for groundwork instead.

Also buy Brush Soap to clean your brushes. Most brushes are ruined because paint dries up by the ferrule and clump up the bristles. Brush soap will dissolve all those dried paint clumps and return the bristles to "like new" condition.

I had only good results with revell aqua, they need thinning with water to brush, stirring with one of those battery stirrers helps a lot. For airbrushing I use ethanol to thin and I get great results although it seems to "fade" the paint a bit. No clogging issues whatsoever.

I've tried them all over the years and now prefer Citadel paints thinned with their own Lahmian Medium. It's a tactile joy to brush with and gives superb control. I usually thin anywhere from two parts Lahmian to one part paint for semi opaque coats right up to 10-15 parts Lahmian to one part paint for subtle shades and glazes. Even thinning to those extremes gives consistently excellent results. Yes you have to brush on multiple coats for opaque coverage (note that their 'base' paints cover better) but the Lahmian gives a super smooth finish and the resultant thin coats dry very fast. The colour range is brighter and more vibrant than normal military shades so you will need to start practicing mixing and blending techniques but I've found that this eventually leads to far greater confidence with use of shade and colour. As an example I recently base coated a braille scale Churchill tank with an approximation of OD that once dried looked way too blue. No probs, I quickly mixed up a 15/1 yellow glaze and brushed on successive coats until I'd adjusted the yellow saturation to exactly the colour I wanted, and in doing so also achieved a nicely varied non-uniform finish. With the fast drying time the whole process was completed in minutes. If you find brush painting a constant joy then stick with what you know, but if it feels like you are always fighting to achieve a good finish then it's time to experiment. Brush painting is a very personal skill hence different paints will work better for different people so you will need to experiment to find the answer that is best for you. It might take a while but you will learn so much along the way... Enjoy the journey!!

I have just in the last two years gotten back into modeling. I have a large collection of vallejo. Its my go to color for all airbrushing. however the vallejo that I have used thats not for airbrushing I do not feel is painting objects on vehicles good at all. I cant help remember using Humbrol as a kid and it always worked much better. I used to always take a tooth pic and grab the thicker part of the paint and put it onto a towel. then paint directly off the tooth pic and towel. Always seemed to work much better than any of the luck I am having with hand brushing valleo right now.

I am old school to the max. I have used Humbrol. Thinned down of course. Having said that Humbrol is out of business! Michaels sells an acrylic flat water based paint. They have the basic colors, brown green, etc. The green is a match for russian armor green. The price was less than a dollar a bottle. Model Master is my other choice for hand brushing.