Acrylic paint brands

Hmmm...

Flexibility, ease of use, availablility...TAMIYA

Overall quality...VALLEJO

First and most importantly:

Your mileage may vary.

 and

There's no disputing a matter of taste. (They all taste bad! )

My preferences are Tamiya, for long term stability, brushing (I warn you, AFAIK, only Bill Grigg and I like brushing Tamiya.), hide, and adhesion. Second place, by a water molecule, goes to Polly Scale. It's main shortcoming is hide when brushed—Tamiya usually covers in one coat, Polly always needs at least two. For ease of airbrushing though, Polly Scale is actually better than Tamiya. Tamiya is formulated for both types of application, Polly Scale is formulated for air brushing, although it is not pre-reduced.

I don't use Gunze Sangyo, but that is merely personal preference. It is a superior paint, I just don't like working with it—see second bold comment, above.

I haven't tried Vallejo. I have two bottles of Mister Kit but have not tried them yet. 

I stick to one manufacturer of paint, as I'm convinced that it makes my life simpler not to have to remember differences in thinning. And it looks neater on my shelf having the same size, shape and kind of bottle.

I chose Tamiya for the simple fact that when I got back into the hobby it was cheaper than MM Acryl. Which I have tried and found wanting for both air and hand brushing. The LHS only stocks a handful of colors of Polly Scale (all railroad colors), and Vallejo requires ordering online. I refuse to buy paint online as it's such a pain to run out and then have to wait.

Mister Kit is completely unknown to me, and I don't know of a LHS nearby that stock Gunze, which I hear can be used without problem with Tamiya. Same shape bottle, too!

Also hand brushing Tamiya takes care of my masochistic tendencies!

I also prefer Tamiya after being introduced to it by my buddy Greg (Plasticmod992).

1st place- Tamiya Acrylics for brushing and airbrushing. I converted to Tamiya Acrylics after Bill suggested them. They require less coats when you brush paint, which I do often, such as when the airbrush is down like it is now.

2nd place- Humbrol Enamels...Never airbrushed them, But if i'm brushing enamels, this is pretty much the only paint I use. Hard to find, only place I get it is off Squadron, but I like it.

If only the original early-mid-80's formula Tamiya acrylic was still available...

This was a paint which had amazing coverage and self-levelling properties. You could one-coat, brush paint a model straight out of the bottle and an observer would be hard-pressed to tell it wasn't airbrushed without close examination. Those who can remember it will know that this is no exaggeration. Even that most difficult of colours, gloss white, could be slopped on (to an extent) and you could count on it levelling out to a glass-smooth finish.

The current formula can still be brushed, with care, but works better in an airbrush. Tamiya paint has a fair amount of latitude when it comes to thinning for airbrushing - I have gone up to 6 parts thinner to 1 part paint with no appreciable degradation in paint adhesion - it just works. Their flat paints dry absolutely dead flat.

As others have mentioned, it has an incredble shelf-life and I still have some bottles from the early-mid 80's.

On the downside, they have a limited colour range, most of which aren't matched to any particular paint colour standards, and though still listed as available, they seem to have done away with the larger 23ml bottles, which were great value for money, and replaced them with the "mini" 10ml bottles, while still asking the same price (thats what they did here in Aus anyway).

Gunze have a wider range of specific colour matches and airbrush very well. Brush painting is about on par with the current Tamiya formula, and the same rules apply. Like Tamiya, it tends to "skin" very quickly, so don't brush back over a previously painted area, or you risk "roll-up" When fresh, it's thinner than Tamiya, so brush painting usually needs more than one coat. It can be airbrushed straight from the bottle, but does work better with a little thinner. Shelf-life I would rate as good as Tamiya's, I have some unopened bottles which go back to the late 80's which appear to be as good as new.

Here in Aus, Tamiya and Gunze acrylics are about even on size, price and availability and you can often find them displayed side by side. It pretty much comes down to personal preference (I'm more familiar with Tamiya's properties) or which brand has the ideal colour match for whichever project I'm working on.

I give Tamiya my vote for first place, they are easy to use and I get great results. My second choice is MM but only because the more exotic brands are not locally available.

And for NMF I use my own brand.

m1garand wrote:

I used to use Tamiya exclusively due to the fact that it was readily available.  Now I have started working with MM acrylics for my armor and Vallejo for skin tones.  I like MM because it offers LOTS of choices!

I agree about the choices of MM Actryl my friend but I just could not get it to spray consistanly well through the airbrush regardless of the thinner used. I really wanted to make it work too so I could prove the naysayer's wrong.

It's a toss up between three conternders with me: Tamiya, Gunze and Polyscale.

Both Tamiya and Gunze are pretty much "error free" (my famous last words) and spray beautifully. Tamiya is more readily available at the LHS, but Gunze colors are more clearly labeled for use, especially military colors (i.e. RLM 70). These seem to clean up nicely with Windex

Polysclae has THE best military line with regards to broad range of products. A fresh bottle of Polyscale is as good as Tamiya/Gunze in my opinion...it just doesn;t seem to last as long once opened. Their "flat clear" is hands down the best available. Polysclae is also a little harder to clean and I get more cases of Dry Tip with Polyscale. Still, their pros outweigh the cons and the colors look fabulous.

I would like to try the LifeColour and Xtracrilix line just to see what they are like.

I mostly use PollyScale, with Tamiya a close second. Though I am starting to like spraying Tamiya better now that I use their thinner and I get more tip dry from PollyScale as well. Here lately Tamiya has been spraying beautifully lately. After Tamiya would be Gunze. Gunze sprays like Tamiya but I have gotten a good bit of lift off when masking over them. But that maybe due to masking too soon after painting or the tackeness of the tape I was using.

The brand I hate the most is MM Arylc. It and my airbrush do not get along. I can get it to spray but its always a hassle. There is only one color that I get in this and its Chromate Green. I can't seem to find this color in any other brand.

I haven't tryed the others mentioned. I would like to sometime to just see how they go. I am going to try the New Talon Arylic NMF colors from Hawkeye. I have read some good things about them. It would be nice to have a good NMF arylic paint range. Anyone tryed them?

i took a 15 year break from the hobby and was quite surprised to find that the 23ml jars where no longer available.up untill 3 or 4 years ago (when i got back into it) i was used to only buying the 23ml size.was actualy quite disapointed that they are no longer available.

zenpunkchef

i took a 15 year break from the hobby and was quite surprised to find that the 23ml jars where no longer available.up untill 3 or 4 years ago (when i got back into it) i was used to only buying the 23ml size.was actualy quite disapointed that they are no longer available.

 

The LHS here stocks both sizes of Tamiya paints. Last time I checked the Tamiya website, both sizes were still listed for sale.

Tamiya paints mostly due to them being available at my LHS. Find them more apartment friendly than enamels and they have good airbrushing properties.  Also have some vallejo model color that I sometimes use for figure painting cant decide if I like them though.

stikpusher

 

zenpunkchef

i took a 15 year break from the hobby and was quite surprised to find that the 23ml jars where no longer available.up untill 3 or 4 years ago (when i got back into it) i was used to only buying the 23ml size.was actualy quite disapointed that they are no longer available.

 

 

 

 

The LHS here stocks both sizes of Tamiya paints. Last time I checked the Tamiya website, both sizes were still listed for sale.

 

I noticed that on their website, but i have not seen their 23ml jars for years. I guess it must depend on the country and they feel the UK doesn't warrant the larger ones.

Same here in Australia. They stopped stocking the 23ml bottles about 12 or so years ago and sold the 10ml bottles at the same price.

I suppose the retailers may have something to do with it as well. Many of the newly released colors are only available in the 10ml bottles. The 23ml bottle line is more limited. That necessitates two display racks to carry the larger 23ml bottles, and the larger color line up of the 10ml line. 

stikpusher

I suppose the retailers may have something to do with it as well. Many of the newly released colors are only available in the 10ml bottles. The 23ml bottle line is more limited. That necessitates two display racks to carry the larger 23ml bottles, and the larger color line up of the 10ml line. 

 

Maybe but it did seem to happen all of a sudden and even the on line stores don't have it. And the differance in the range is not that great. The Mini's have 12 more flat colours than the larger ones.