Hi Armorama!
I'm doing a Hetzer right now and I want to hand paint the camo. I've heard that Taimya paints suck for brush painting and that Vallejos paint works better for this.

I'm wondering if I could use the Tamiya paints and Vallejo paints together?The're both acrylics, right?

// Henrik

Hi

Applied to the same model would be fine, with each coat dry. Although both marketed as Acrylic they are different in their composition.

I wouldn't try mixing Tamiya and Vallejo colours together to make another colour for example.

Tamiya can be brush painted but many find it, including myself, hard to do easily, it's best used for airbrushing. It quickly forms into a skin which when you apply more paint tends to pull off with the brush strokes. Vallejo Model Color is fine for both.

I believe thinning it may help with the "skinning" . Don't use the Tamiya thinners (X-20A) to thin the Vallejo paint whatever you do, it'll turn it to something like cottage cheese, lumpy and completely useless. Plain water or their own brand thinners.

Alan

Bonjour,

I always thin Tamiya paint with acrylic paint retarder (I use Liquitex). It really helps a lot.

I suggest trying this on a practice model first. I hope this helps.

Regards from Canada,
François

I tried painting with Tamiya by brush also, but far from succes. Small items are not a problem, but larger area's will result in terrible brush strokes.

Therefore i tried Vallejo. Much more succes! I thin it with demi water. For me this was better than tapwater. The result after 3 thin layers:

On occasion, I have used Tamiya acrylics as a base/primer for Vallejo ModelColor without any issues. However, I would be hesitant to apply Tamiya over Vallejo as the alcohols in Tamiya's paints may affect the underlying paint.

As mentioned above, I wouldn't try mixing colours using the two brands because their bases are quite different and likely to be incompatible.

What do you get when you mix hollandaise sauce with ketchup? A disgusting mess.
Don't do it, and don't mix Tamiya and Vallejo. The fact that they're both acrylic doesn't make them compatible.

But you can spray Vallejo over Tamiya.... maybe.

Well, is a denomination matter, which can make some mess. Boths paints are called "Acrilyc" but they don't have the same composition.

"Acrylic paints" is a (too) generic therm wich it means that the pigments in the paint are suspended in a polymer emulsion. You can have different kinds of emulsion, so...DIFFERENT KINDS OF ACRYLIC PAINT...

Tamiya and Gunze aqueous colors are Alcohol based acrylic paints, so you have to dilute them with rubber alcohol

Valleyo and Lifecolor are Vinyl based acrilyc paints (it would be better to call them "VINILIC PAINTS"), so you have to dilute them with water or with their thinner.

Mix the paints togheter just can make...a huge mess

cheers

Hi Henrik,

like most of the answer, it's better for you not to mix tamiya and vallejo...

why not used the color straight from the bottles..

here's one of my Hetzer...I handpainted the cammo usign vallejo paints... the base color is Tamiya Dark Yellow which was airbrushed on the model

Click Me

hope this help

Zaidi