"Vallejo Paints" Topic

Hello all!

I'm taking my first foray into purchasing Vallejo paints. I've currently been using GW, Testors, and the like and I'm just getting frustrated with the lack of ease of use—so I'm just going to jump in and get the Vallejo case:

thewarstore.com/product43244.html

I'll be painting 15mm SYW. Are all the paints contained within this case sufficient, or are there other colors that I should supplement with?

Thanks!

Looks like a very expensive way to get started with Vallejo and there are colours in there you will never use (fluorescent orange?????). I have British, Hessian and Brunswick SYW figures and probably use about 10 basic colours. I do have others because I also paint WW2, Napoleonics and League of Augsburg, so have about 40 colours altogether. Not sure that Vallejo varnishes are that great value either; bigger bottles of artists acrylic varnishes are vheaoer in the long run. Research the armies you want to paint, buy those basic colours and build up.

What Dave said and double for the varnish. Vallejo is very good paint and I do buy it – but selectively.

Agree – buy what you need. One of the great things about the Vallejo range is that you can buy the single colours one-by-one as you need them unlike say the Foundry triads.

You might try some of the Flames of War sets to start with, they are Vallejo IIRC.

Hmm, if you don't count the case and three brushes that deal comes out to $3.33 USD a bottle for the paints. And the War Store sells them individually for $2.99 USD. I would have no need of a case so I know what I would do. Individual all the way!

You will love Vallejo. Their paints are far superior to the GW line.

Thanks for steering me in the right direction! The next question is: which colors do I get?

Hangar--look at these, link for starters. And what Dave said about varnishes.

@Hangarflying:

Depends which nations you want to do but I find the following are the main ones I use:
Black, white, Prussian blue, a red, brown, ochre/ tan sort of colour, medium flesh, midgreen, bronze, a deep yellow, silver (I add a touch of black and bluecto get a gunmetal colour or you can buy the gunmetal). I use cheap white artists gesso as base coat.

Should be enough to get you started. If you are painting British, add a touch of brown to the red for ordinary infantry, use it clean for officers.

Saved you $200 USD, just think how many Eureka 18mm SYW you can buy with that!!!!

@Hangarflying:

Depends which nations you want to do but I find the following are the main ones I use:
Black, white, Prussian blue, a red, brown, ochre/ tan sort of colour, medium flesh, midgreen, bronze, a deep yellow, silver (I add a touch of black and blue to get a gunmetal colour or you can buy the gunmetal). I use cheap white artists gesso as base coat.

Should be enough to get you started. If you are painting British, add a touch of brown to the red for ordinary infantry, use it clean for officers.

Saved you $200 USD, just think how many Eureka 18mm SYW you can buy with that!!!!

@Hangarflying

If you can let me have your email I'll send you a list and colour swatch that details the core colours in my painting palette. I use these colours for ECW, Pirates, Naps, WW2 and Sudan. However, I mix all my tones and sometimes add the odd extra one if I'm after a very specific colour. This was published years ago in Battlegames magazine.

The email is easy, just add @yahoo.com on the end of my s/n. :-)

As far as which nations, I plan on doing the big 5, though I'll likely start with Prussia and Austria first.

EDIT: though I already have Jacobites in my possession, so
I suppose I'll paint those up first. Nothing like doing the most complex stuff right out of the blocks, amirite?

@Dave: thanks for the heads up. That's a good starting list.

@Jeffrey: thanks for the link, those packs do give a good starting point.

I just make it up as I go

You'll want some greys, browns, buff, and a mid-blue (bonnets!) for Jacobite Scots, too!

@Timmouk,

Who says you can't buy Foundry paints one by one??? They've been available as single paints OR triads for like forever:

link