"Looking for the perfect not-tan-nor-grey colour" Topic

After years of hoarding miniatures I've recently taken up painting. One problem I'm stuck with is the base colour…

I game sci fi (so no "realsim" issues) and want to be able to ultimately make several different gaming boards (an arid/desert environment, a lush tropical/alien forest, a future city, a volcanic/lava field, a winter/artic world and so on; if Starcraft different planets come to mind, we're thinking alike).

I also want my miniatures to be based so as to be usable on any of those board).

The idea would be to find a not tan nor grey colour that I could use (changing the texture appropriately) for sand/dust from a desert, dirt or stone patches in among the three of a forest or showing through the snow, concrete in a city, volcanic stone… The whole board don't need to be that colour, not even most of it (except for the desert and urban wich probably will), e.g. the snowfield will be 90% white with only random patches of dirt/stone showing, but those patches will ensure than when I drop miniatures based that same colour they don't stand out too much.

Am I making any sense here?

And now the question…

I own a bunch of Vallejo Game paints but didn't find the perfect colour yet. It's either too grey (bluish) or too tan (yellowish). In fact I'm looking for two colours a dark base coat and another colour to drybush on. I sure could mix and get the perfect shades but as I intend to paint every single base with it for the rest of my life a readily available product would be easier.

I've looked through a crapload of paint brands palettes but what I'm looking at is not the paint but my monitor settings :(

So anyone got any good recommendations for me?

Thank you very much!

Have you tried Vallejo Game Color Heavy Warmgrey 72.148

That was quick…

Haven't tried the Heavy Warmgrey: on the online Vallejo colour chart (on my computer) it looks way too green (nearly a lighter olive) and other pics I've found on the net are nearly white…

I guess I'll pick one next time I go shopping ;)

Those color chips that they associate with the Vallejo paints online often bear little or no resemblance to what the color actually does look like

I would pick a medium tan. Then I'd just make sure to use that same color on my boards. I'd want to use a craft paint so i wasn't using $30 USD of Vallejo every time I made a sandy patch on my game board.

I think Green Ochre (despite the name) would look at home on any of those boards as either a dry sandy patch, a wet boggy patch or just dirt….

You might also look at Stone Grey (70884) or Deck Tan (70986).

Grizzly named the same colors that came to mind for me.

Green Ochre looks way too brown on screen… I'll look at the bottle next time I'm in the shop.

Stone Grey and Deck tan look promising.

Also the IDF sand grey primer (and that one comes in big bottles) and the Model Air Concrete (but that's airbrushing paint not sure if it's suitable for my purposes).

Bear in mind, Trojan (he says, having spent a lifetime explaining that what you see on screen is not what you see in reality, colour wise), that – even with what it looks like in the bottle, that won't be what the paint looks like in actual use.

That will change as it dries and change again depending on what you paint it over, and not just the colour of what you paint it over, but the texture too.

If I were doing it in the UK*, I'd go to a paint retailers, get some of the huge range of paint chips for emulsions, find one I liked and ask for a tester pot in that colour (or maybe a couple of different ones either side to get a mixture and/or some variation – ground is, after all, rarely a consistent colour). If that – or one (or more) of them – worked out and the paint testers weren't enough, volume wise, for my needs, I go back to the shop and get them to mix me a up litre. A litre cost me £17.00 GBP A bargain in any terms, even craft paint terms, never mind modelling paint.

On recommendadion from Matakishi (of Matakishi's Tea House) I went the 'mix it up' route for some replacement 'Basetex' (glue, sand and paint mix) and it was the right approach.

John T

* I assume similar things hppen throughout the western world…

Thanks for the input John…

The price is certainly a factor when talking about painting square meters and square meters (or whatever body part you guys use for measuring ;)) of game boards…

I assume you're talking about the kind of paint used on inside walls in houses, right? What about texture and other physical properties? What should I look for (just browsed on Levis – the major house paint manufacturer here in Belgium – website and lots and lots of option, none of which rings a modelling bell)? I'd like something I can apply with the same ease as acrylic model paint (I could stand the whole solvant and cleaning routine when making a whole new 4'x4' board, but not every single time I base a couple of 15mm miniatures)… In order for this to work I should be able to use the same product on both the boards and the model bases (otherwise I'm back to square one trying to find a model colour that matches my boards).

Curious about your Basetex concept! Do you premix those three stuff and apply it in one (brush) stroke? What kind of glue? Plain PVA? What proportions? How do you apply it? Do you mix a small quantity each time you need it or do you have a large batch you store in between uses? How do you store it?

Thanks very much for your ideas!

If you want a good 'Universal' ground cover, I use the following…

Brown undercoat, usually just some el'cheapo Brown paint from the hardware store.

Iraqi Sand and Stone Grey (hardware store equivalents) mix of approximately 50/50 , mixed with some sand to give a textured paint. I also use spacfiller in some instances, but either way, use an old, dead paintbrush!

Add in a dash of brown to get it looking warmer, a dash of black to look burnt/blasted, a dash of OFFwhite (not straight white!) to get it looking winter mush.

Finally, depending on what I wanted, I use either Stone Grey for a universal light overbrush, or an light dusting of whatever just looks right, either a black grey/ black brown for burnt/ damaged, Green Grey for an area going to get flock on it, more stone grey for open/ungrassed terrain, or Iraqi Sand/ Ochre for more sandy/wasteland look.

Trojan

The replacement 'Basetex' homebrew was Matakishi's idea. Following his instructions, I mixed up 2 litres of the stuff so I'm unlikely to get to the bottom of it before it goes hard… But them's the breaks :) I did this not particulalrly to save money (maybe – in the long run – I will) but simply because I found the commercial product so hard to get a hold of.

To make it I bought a litre of emulsion paint to the colour I wanted (about £18.00 GBP I think), a litre of PVA glue, a bag of budgie sand and two, 1 litre, air tight cheapo 'tupperwear' style pots from the pound shop to put the stuff into*. I'm guessing that cost around £30.00 GBP (the PVA was around £10.00 GBP). I mixed it all up at once but one could easily do smaller amounts by buying the paint and resealing the tin carefully and then decanting into smaller pots.

Emulsion paint is an acrylic that takes water to wash your brushes in and so works just as well as model paint or craft paint with some provisos:

Firstly, I'm not sure that the colour pigment is as finely ground as the model paint and I'm not sure how kindly it treats very fine brushes,

But for making scenery and base boards and even basing miniature figures, it's absolutely fine and will mix with craft and model paint to create slightly different shades for doing highlights on bases and so forth.

I buy small 'match' pots or test pots all the time when I'm doing scenery as they stock a fine collection of muted browns and greens and sand colours in my local hardware stores. I probably wouldn't paint figures with it, mind you.

John T

* Though – if I'd thought it through – I could have bought only one and used the 1 litre pot the PVA came in as well. But I didn't think it through…

If I must pick one single one colour I would take:
Tamya "Fieldgray"
I painted 25procent of my whole collection with is and it is perfect for yellow/ green / gray and white terrain.

Try it… The one perfect colour…

Greetings

This is an excellent thread.

I'm about to start a Winter/Arctic Campaign, but I'd love to be able to reuse the boards again for future campaigns in different seasons/locales, and I'd like my bases to be somewhat universal as well.

As always, the ideas and suggestions are wonderful.

A couple of great answers there… Thank you very much!

I'll start looking into 'mix it up' avenue. With a eye on terrain building, it certainly make economical sense.

I'm also keeping the Tamya Fieldgray and the Iraqi Sand/Stone Gray and Deck Tan/Stone Gray mixes in mind.

Thanks again!

Buy yourself a pot of craft acrylic black such as DecoArt or similar. Then choose a list of yellows and sand/buff colours and mix each one with the black. You will find that you end up with a whole range of khaki greys.