"Fifty Shades of Khaki" Topic

Looking over my paint rack today, I realised I'm almost as much a paint collector as a figure collector. I probably have around 100 pots and bottles, although several have seen very little use!

I have a Vallejo "Old Rose" I needed for the facings of a single Napoleonic regiment & never used again & more pots with various shades of "dirt" that WW2 armies wore than I can believe. Game Colour Leather Brown is used on most figures I seem to paint.Vallejo Steel is another constant paint source.

A few questions for the painters here:

Roughly how many paints do you own?
Excluding black and white, which colour do you use most?
Which colour gets used least?
Do you mostly use paints straight from the bottle, or do you routinely mix your own shades?

I have a couple of hundred Humbrol enamel pots (14ml) and the ones I use most are 93 (sand) and 100 (Red-brown) My least used ones are the metallic blues,greens and reds which are for specific thingumajigs. I tend to use them plain so I can reproduce the same or similar figures time after time.

"Loads" is the answer, and I rarely mix. Maybe 150 bottles and tins? I'm essentially a rubbish painter so keeping things as is, unmixed, makes it a whisker easier to recall where this or that mediocre paint job came from, and I don't keep a paint mix list.

However, I do make paint swatches. I cut artist mat board into small rectangles, the same size as a sports collectible card, and paint the front side, adding the name, number and brand of paint. I then write in the back anything I've used it on. I keep them in sports card sheets, six to a sheet, organized – very loosely, by colour. Gives me a quick reference on which blue looks different enough to use on the next Napoleonic uniform and which reds or greens I just know will need two coats.

I guess I have 30-40 paints, but some colors don't get much use. I paint straight from the bottle. My collections span a significant period of history, so the color I use the most depends on what I am painting. Maybe blue, red, and various greens and browns get used the most.

I haven't counted yet, but lots. Somehow there is always one I am missing, especially different flesh colours at the moment.

My most often used was a dark red (Airfix enamel ancient red leather) which ran out years ago and has now morphed into a Hobbycraft acrylic craft dark red, almost the same colour but with less dense pigment, creating its own subtle highlights and shadows automatically.

From Romans and Carthaginians, half of my Greeks, Medieval Welsh, to a fair proportion of my Normans and Saxons.

Probably around 200, counting old paint I switched away from but did not throw away. I like the Reaper triads, which make shading and highlighting easier. I do mix paints sometimes, but not often.
One day when I was painting a Mexican bandito, trying to get his outfit that coral color one sometimes sees on banditos, he started complaining to me about what a lousy job I was doing. I eventually got the color right, and he shut up.

Grelber

I have a pile of paints, well over 300 bottles. Some have been used on one unit but others come out all the time. Reds, blues and greens get the triad effect and even on top of speed paints or contrast paints.
So that's standard colors along with the "single coat" systems. Black is the only paint that is 100% constant.
I think when I find a manufacturer I like, I buy almost the whole range or a set of key colors. P3, two thin coats, reaper, AK, army painter, Vallejo, scale 75, GW contrast, speed paints and Tamiya are all well represented in figure paints and washes. Then for terrain I have about 100 colors of craft paints. Delta Cermacoat, Americana and others from Hobby Lobby and Michael's.
Now reflecting on what I wrote I too must be a paint collector on top of a miniatures collector. 🤔
Well good luck this summer painting fellas! I'm off to use several reds in layers on some 30YW Danes.

Roughly how many paints do you own?

I have 20+ Vallejo and Vallejo-style paint bottles, and a few Citadel inks and washes, and maybe 10 cans of spray paint.

Excluding black and white, which colour do you use most?

Probably some shade of brown.

Which colour gets used least?

I think orange. Maybe purple. I'm not sure I even own purple.

Do you mostly use paints straight from the bottle, or do you routinely mix your own shades?

I always mix acrylics with water (except for dry brushing, of course).

Otherwise, I don't know what I do "mostly". I do use paint from the bottle (especially for a base coat). I do routinely mix with white or black to get a lighter or darker color. I do routinely mix color with other colors.

I recently found a pack of acrylic paint pens sold as 20(?) different shades of skin color: light pinks to dark browns. It is my new favorite pack of paints. Aside from that, I have craft paints dating back to around 1998 -- most are still good! I likely have 100+ in my wire-frame paint rack spindle I was gifted from Michael's, around 20 years ago.

The skin color paint pens are amazing for the variety of not only skin color applications, but more importantly, for me, is the variety of brown's and tan's I can use for leather. In RL, I've noted the near infinite variety of shades of tan and brown, found on leather items. These paint pens are amazing… Cheers!

I'm relieved to discover I'm not the only one who's almost as much a paint collector as a figure collector!

One thing that has surprised me is how many people paint straight from the bottle. I expected far more mixing. I guess that's because of the vast range of colours available. Browns also seem to be winning by a comfortable margin as the most-used colours.

I'm also thinking my paint collection would probably be much bigger if I were starting from scratch today. When I began, it was basically base colours, a few washes (or none at all) and away you went.

Now there are Contrast and Speedpaints, triads, dedicated highlights and shadows, glazes, effects paints and every conceivable shade in between. For example, I only have eight pots of Contrast but if I was building a collection today I'd probably own many more.

The hobby has certainly given us far more choices than it did a few decades ago!

Gosh. TONS! Here's pix of my "active" paints and also my "reserves" and "spares" and "replacements" in tubs under my paint table. It should be a lifetime supply but I keep running out of essential colors or they go out of production, so I hoard all the time.

There are a couple of other smaller tubs elsewhere in this area. This MUST be the most of anyone. My insanity is champion. I win!!

Thanks for making me feel better. I only have 4 RUBS of Foundry paints (which are sadly dwindling), 60 Airbrush paints, 1 box of airbrush primers & craft paint, 1 14g tub of hobby spray paints & primers, and 2 of the Paintier paint carousels with TTL, Vallejo, reaper, and Contrast paints.

I would be absolutely lost without those Paintier carousels. It's been years since I had only a horizontal surface on part of a card table to place all my paints on. If I couldn't go UP, vertical, I'd perish. Those carousels are the greatest wargame invention since polyhedral dice, IMHO. It's a shame they seem to be out of production. Can someone please make them available again? I'd buy more just as a safeguard! (Plus, once you have one, you always find a way to fill it up, even beyond capacity, as my photos clearly document.)

My "immediate action" paints live in a shoebox, so maybe 60? More live in a drawer.

My most essential colours are Humbrol Natural Leather which I've used for decades as the base for rifle stocks and spear shafts, along GW Bestial Brown which is a red brown perfect for brown leather boots, belts etc.

The main colours which get used the most are Khaki, which used to be Humbrol but now VJ, Humbrol Army Green and Humbrol Sea Grey, although I recently found a Coat D Arms equivalent.

I used to mix colours when I was a serious modeler but rarely bother for wargaming pieces. The closest I come is using washes over a base coat to stain the underlying colour eg VJ Panzer Grey works much better as a wash over a mid grey base as it is almost black out of the bottle.

My oldest functioning pot of paint is a pot of Humbrol Gold which I bought in the late 90s and is still half full.

I have all 150 of the coat d'arms paint range (plus spares in 3 boxes) but then I used to own them…

Apart from that, 60 x Speedpaint in dropper bottles and about 20 tubes of acrylic for painting scenery.

I have probably about 100 but use about 20 on a regular basis

Let's see: A drop-bottle rack of 108, a Plano box of about another 50 GW pots, maybe half a dozen of those unstable GW tall speedwash bottles I'm trying to phase out, metallic pens, and after that it's duplicates, craft shop bottles for bases and buildings, and tube acrylics for buildings and horses. Say 150-200 actual wargame paints, not counting spares of heavily-used colors.
Not sure about most heavily used. Probably caucasian flesh, red brown, medium brown and dark brown would be the strongest contenders after white and black.
Least, like yours, would be some pot purchased for one use--purple, maybe?--which will be dry the next time I need it.
Seldom mix. I've got a pretty good range, and it's too hard to match later. What I will do is use maybe 3-4 dark blues on a Prussian battalion, so if I need to add a figure later, he won't stick out.

I would say 200. The invention of speed style paints has like tripled the number.

First off, I'm an army Painter so mixing as I go is not a thing. There are recipes with colors written down. Display and arteeest painters don't need to recreate a unit etc.

I also like to experiment so I have White Scar, White Star and Bold Titanium White. To be honest, they are all good an different uses of "white"

180-200 from a quick count. Basic Flesh or Flat Brown the most used. There's probably a few that have never been used.

Once I retired and started painting more often, I made an effort to use as many of the paints I have as possible for the RPG and one off projects I paint for friends. That said there are still a few unopened.

Picked up two sets of paint pens to experiment with recently. not sure if those count.

Vallejo Deck Tan and Ivory get used a lot in blending or quick highlights.

The Paintier carousels are really nice – wish I had bought three or four. Loaded with hobby paints (especially associated colors or triads) you can double their normal load.

- Roughly how many paints do you own?

Not going to confess, but 100 is an amateur number

- Excluding black and white, which colour do you use most?
Browns
As someone else said, the famous highlight/shade colours : German camouflage dark brown, ivory, deck tan Iraqi sand etc

- Which colour gets used least?
Vallejo "Old Rose" for the same reason. Lots of paints I don't like (not all yellows are made the same)

- Do you mostly use paints straight from the bottle, or do you routinely mix your own shades?
Almost always mix shades and highlights
I often take a WW2 color and add Iraqi sand to get a lightened base coat. After washing, it ends up just right

As someone said, speed/contrast paints have expanded the "collection". The newer paints, such as Pro Acryl and AK 3rd generation are starting to replace my Vallejo

John

I've got approximately 200 different paints. The number shot up when Contrast paints got introduced, because I ended up with duplicating a lot of things in both Contrast-style paint and traditional acryilc.

My most used individual paint is a raw sienna I use for basing. But in terms of colours on figures, it's got to be brown. Many figures have bit or a lot of red or blue or grey on them, but almost all have some amount of brown. (Some but not all skin colours would count as brown.)

I suppose purple is the colour I use the least.

I mostly paint straight from the bottle.

Definitely browns and flesh tones are used the most by me, plus black, then white or off-white.

Greys would be the runner up. Cause I use them to wash whites a lot, and highlight many blacks, and for some bases, and buildings, along with the usual grey clothing things.

Ditto purples (and pinks) being my least-used colors. And orange. But still essential to have on hand!

I use a lot of pink, if Caucasian skin tones count. If not, it's far down the list.

Quick math says I have over 500 bottles of hobby paint, but less than 600. I refuse to bother with an exact count.

Roughly 150ish of them are acrylic inks and speedpaints. I've been a fan of acrylic inks since the mid-1990s. A couple years ago I tried out the AP Speedpaints (2.0) and was very happy to add a huge variety of colors to my acrylic ink repertoire. They're basically the same thing.

I've been on a mission for a while to reduce redundant colors, but that hasn't been as successful as I wanted. I bought nearly all of the AP triad system, but they are missing several categories of "in between" colors – browns, greens, blues. I still have a lot of non-AP paints to fill in those gaps for specific historical colors. I also still have a fair number of paints just because the paint was so nice – good coverage, good flow, right color/tone/hue, perfect match for a spray paint, etc.

I would like to have only 3-4 steel colors, an aluminum color, a brass and a bronze… but somehow I'm always getting more metallics because they all have problems or only work for specific applications.

I guess I can say the same about reds. I have too many reds because so many have poor coverage, change hues during application, etc.

One thing that has surprised me is how many people paint straight from the bottle. I expected far more mixing. I guess that's because of the vast range of colours available.

Why does this surprise you? We're gamers, not artists. Mixing paints is both a skill and a talent. I've tried to develop the skill, but I'm missing the talent, and after 35 years I'm still utter crap at mixing. My color mixing books and color wheels were a waste of money. If I can't buy the right color, I can't have the right color; I might get a khaki by accident while aiming for purple or teal or something, but I'm never going to get the "right" khaki on purpose.

I still do have some custom colors – nearly always made by following somebody else's recipe. I have a few where I got to the color I wanted with slight adjustments, but I couldn't count how many whole bottles of paint I ruined by experimenting with such adjustments.

My least used colors are probably purples or oranges, hard to be sure.

PS: I wasn't counting brush-on primers, Gesso, or varnishes.

I'm not counting spray paints either. I don't even have an estimate – whatever fits in 3 crates and 3-4 boxes.

I switched to artist acrylics a while back which have less broad a range than hobby colors. Excluding blacks and whites, but including metallics, I'm guessing I have 35 colors.*

One of the reasons was to force myself to learn to mix. I won't say I do that routinely but I do mix when I need a shade I don't have in a pot or tube.

My most used color by far is burnt umber; second most is raw umber. I've bought these in the tube as well as pots. I prep with white primer then a brown stain, and most of my basing has a dark brown base coat.

Least used? Maybe magenta or lavender, although I paint fantasy so I try color triads that bring them in.

*- I'm not counting the banker's box of hobby and craft paints I never open any more but didn't throw out.