Saturday, June 16, 2012

New Citadel Paints



I had a day off on Wednesday for what turned out to be a five minute appointment at Liverpool Crown Court to swear an oath in connections with the probate on my Dad's will.  I then had a couple of hours to kill before meeting a colleague for lunch so I popped in to the Liverpool branch of Games Workshop  to have a look at their new paint range.

The new system assigns paints into bases, layers, shades, dries, glazes, and textures.  There's no laid down links between colours in the various categories, though, so you don't get the explicit three-colour shade/colour/highlight family we're familiar with from Foundry paints.

After a pleasant chat with Rob the manager I decided to try a selection of colours that would work together.  Reds are traditionally hard to get right so I came away with Screamer Pink (a crimson-ish base colour), Wazdakka Red (a scarlet layer colour), Changeling Pink (a pale pink drybrush colour) and Bloodletter (an orange glaze).

I'm not sure the base and layer colours are different in texture. Possibly the pigment may be a little denser in the base paint but as I'm mostly working with them slightly diluted there's nothing to choose between them.

The drybrush colour is very different.  The Changeling Pink is powdery and thick.  Invert the pot and it doesn't move.  So far I've only used in very small amounts highlighting the edges of this Pantangian Pirate's coat, a purpose for which it isn't particularly well-suited.  I suspect a large red dragon or similar would be a better subject.

Finally, there's the glaze.  This is the most impressive find as far as I'm concerned.  It's very watery but a little goes a long way, giving a warm orange glow to the pirate's skin as well as tying together the various reds on his coat.  The glaze flows very well so I suspect there's some kind of detergent in there to lower its surface tension.

I painted the Pantangian over two sessions Thursday evening and Saturday morning.  As is so often the case I'm happier with him in the flesh than in the photos.


I don't think these paints are a game-changer but I'm certainly tempted to experiment with more of the glazes.

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