My free swatches for all 5 "one coat" paint ranges: taleofpainters.com/2023/11/top-tip-visual-comparison-of-all-61-contrast-23-speedpaints-24-gsw-dipping-inks/ My hand-painted 5-in-1 "one coat" paint swatch: www.patreon.com/stahlytaleofpainters/shop My free Skaven Clanrats tutorial: taleofpainters.com/2024/08/tutorial-how-to-paint-skaven-clanrats-from-skaventide/ Affordable portable airbush I can recommend: geni.us/portableairbrush (affiliate link)
Hi Stahly, you quickly became my go-to channel when it comes to paint reviews and comparisons. I got few dipping inks bottles after watching your videos and I'm fairly content with them.
What I like the most about Vallejo Xpress Colors is that they thin down with water really smooth. They are great to apply as glazes or filters which makes them really versatile
I find Speedpaint metallics work perfectly for things like chainmail and tank tracks. Covers quickly, especially when batch painting, and you’ll be putting washes, drybrushing, and weathering on top anyways.
Army Painter's Glittering Loot and Hoplite Gold are metallic speed paints that I quite like, though they like to dry really fast and form a plasticky film at the edges of the paint and in your bristles as they do so.
*AIRBRUSH* I had never used an airbrush before. I did a lot of research and settled on the Harder and Steenbeck Ultra. Now, I know some of you are going "You don't need that!" Well, yes maybe but we're not talking about one of their flagship models that can run four to five hundred dollars. The ultra is a little over one hundred dollars but I was immediately successful with using it to prime, zenithal, base coat miniatures and vehicles. I watched Vince V tutorials on how to use, clean and maintain your airbrush. Voilà, I know how to use an Airbrush! So why the H&S Ultra? Training wheels. Yup. Training wheels. There is a rotating selector that allows you to control the amount of paint with settings for prime, base, detail etc. I was abled to learn the basics of control without splattering my models with paint. I highly recommend getting one along with a quiet single piston compressor.
Stably always raises the bar! This time with adding the O symbol to his swatches 🌟 On the topic, I personally I prefer Xpress Colours as well for their consistency and their versatility (I can dilute them with water and have shades and glazes, so having 3 products in the price of one).
We can only hope that miniature paint brands start adding grades of opacity just as artists' paint brands do, not to mention practical paint names, the actual pigments used, etc. It's not gonna happen, but a man can dream, right?
i've grown to really like the Vallejo Xpress paints. i prefer the fact that they aren't super thin / watery and will apply nicely to even more surface detail with ease. they don't run away from raised areas like contrast can, and make excellent power sword glow over silver, or plasma glow over white. i wound up buying more of those than i should recently!
Ride or die for Vallejo. While they don't often have "the best of the best" paints, what they are is consistently good. And that consistency is what I like, as I don't replace paints often, so having a formula/range changed every couple of years is a turn off for me for a lot of brands.
Have you tested Golden’s High Flow Acrylics for slap chop? Most of the range is transparent or semi transparent, with some opaque hues. Likewise many inks, though they should be mixed with a little medium to avoid coffee staining. Would love to see your review of high flow acrylics and inks (Daler-Rowney, perhaps Liquitex too) in a slap chop context plus other uses you can identify. Thanks for your work!
If anybody decides to pick up an airbrush from this, please do some quick research on airbrush safety first. You don't want to inhale any type of fine dust particles, even acrylic paint. To do it cheaply, pick up a particle mask or respirator and spray into a cardboard box with a desk fan or something running behind it (keep the back side partially open, too). If you can do it near an open window, then that probably helps. Also, make sure nothing you value is on the receiving end of the overspray :)
Well, generally if you want to slapchop or speedpaint then you avoid Scale 75 whatsoever. They produce fine quality paints but none of their products are suited for fast jobs. S75 is for careful layering and building volumes, even their "one coat solution" Instant series is more like heavy washes and glazes rather than contrast/speedpaints. So if you want to paint that army fast then look for some Army Painter or Vallejo, S75 is when you want that army to look fabulous, but be warned it'll take some time.
I use Contrast, Speedpaint, and Xpress Colors. I think Contrast and Speedpaint are very well matched, and are my top choice. Strong coverage while letting through the zenithal is what I want. Generally I choose between the two on a per colours basis based on who has the best pictures/video online, and then buy the other brand if I get it wrong. I find the lack of pigmentation in Xpress Colors a drawback. I'm not using slapchop to do multiple layers. It's also present in some colours in the other brands, just not as often. Xpress Color do have some paints I really like such as Gloomy Violet. Some others I got great used out of in traditional layer painting as a wash. I found Plague Green worked better on my green Tyranid carapace than my old Army Painter Green Tone.
If you ever find the time to do it, could you make a video on which paints make for the best glazes? More specifically, I mean like the oldschool glaze paints GW used to make. I think Two Thin Coats has a bunch of glazes now and you can also get very similar effects by thinning down the sort of paints you used in this video with their respective mediums in a 1:2 mix, or just a 1:1 mix for the brighter and/or more transparent paints. It would be great for all the people out there who miss the aforementioned GW glazes, because honestly, I feel like the glazing properties of these one-coat style paints are kinda slept on. Great video as always.
Hello Man, i recently found your videos and they are frickin amazing, i am new in paint amd customizing figures, i have a question for you, what brands of paint can you recommend for custom painting vintage Gi Joe figures? Thank in advance
I love your videos and how there is so much information and focus on acrylic paints, keep it up. Also curious if you're ever planning to review products like wet pallets, brushes, or maybe even enamels or oils?
Stahly, content idea for you a bit out of the ordinary. How about a comparison video on paint markers. AK came out with a new range a while back but I would love to see a comparison to other quality brands.
Slap job is an incredible painting technique. Yet if I wanted to paint multiple clanrats as fast as possible (and this is coming from somebody who painted 240clanrats at this point) it is much easier to stick with a spray paint that takes care of the fur paint and 2-3 base coats for your cloaths and weapons, with an agrax earthshade finishing up everything. For speed painting multiple clanrats, that’s a lot faster then painting every clanrat with the slap job method. Still though with rat ogres, ogres in Particularly, and bigger models like the giants, I think slap job is definitely the way to go
I live in an apartment I do not have space for an airbrush, and no one's happy about me doing it outside so especially not with the amount of heat and rain we have, not a big of them, but a lot of that is because I am unable to use them myself.
As long as you use waterbased paints, a mask (I use an FFP2 mask and not even an exoensive respirator) and do it in front of an open window you are fine. But remember: only waterbased acrylics. As soon as you use enamel or anything else you NEED thorough ventilation. I recommend watching the poorhammer video on airbrushs
I keep seeing people rant and rave over the Xpress color range and I never understood it so I'm giving them a try now. I don't use these types of paints to just slap over a white prime and I only ever use them over a zenithal or slapchop pre-shading. I've tried the speed paint metallics and people love them but not me. They're too runny for me so I'd rather just use normal metallic paint, my favorite being the pro acryl ones, and then shading them with a well thinned contrast or just any shade paints
I paint medium size to big sculpts, I never used Xpress Colors as intended. Paint your skins as you do normaly, then apply the xpress colors with an aribrush in the shadow areas and you feel like a better painter XD (I use Fairy skin and Dwarf skin tones)
Any chance we can get some hobby glue reviews? So much to choose from out there, and they're a bit more difficult for the average person to test a variety of.
@@stahly_taleofpainters Thanks! Far as I can tell, no one has made a comprehensive comparison between all the plastic glues, and given how important it is for your models to *not break* before, during, and after painting; figuring that out would be great, since everything has different viscosity, working time, curing time, application bottles, etc. I love to put models together in expressive poses and kitbashes, so finding the right glue for the job is generally important.
If it's two layers plus a wash, I may as well just use a standard paint. I'm disappointed in the vallejo xpress line which seem to cheap out on the pigment density.
Man, If you ever try to paint sculpts, give these a try not as paints but as airbrush glazes. The skin tones are amazing as shadow tones. you can achieve gradients easier, I will try with other colors over clothed sculpts.
Have you tried thinning the metallic speedpaints with SP medium? I think that will bring out the shading underneath, but it's probably necessary to experiment in order to find the proper balance
If you are minipainting in the 1700s, yes. But most of us are doing it in the 40.000s, so "Slapchop" is fine. Besides that, french is an abomination of a language, anyway.
Only if you are working with greys for your undertones, what if I've decided to use dark blue highlighted with ice yellow as my undertones. It's still slapchop but it's no longer grisaille.
@@FreshCoatKustoms Just to rub it in a bit more what about verdaille (greens) and brunaille (browns) 😉At the end of the day zenithal, slapchop do the same function of putting down an underpainting before applying a glaze, wash or contrast. What colours you use for the underapinting is only for a desired effect; I use complementary colour underpainting to achieve realistic shading and highlighting.
why? because slapchop was last years influencers trend. or as we say "die sau die sie durchs dorf getrieben haben". doest work for me, i want nice minis, not "looks ok on the table". im a painter, not a player and airbrush zenithal looks 5000x better
@@stahly_taleofpainters but zenithal isnt slapchop stahly. slapchop is drybrushing hard. and this looks often not that good, except youre that artis opus guy. slapchop is for the "oh Airbrush is so hard and annoying and expensive" faction. and yes i watched your Video, dont skipped the amazon add, gave a thumbs Up and commented, so thank me later. your title is "slapchop" and then i See Airbrush. and slapchop is dead. you have to do smth with gw proxies or Infinity at the Moment like the 5000 other influencers who do all the same content 😬
My free swatches for all 5 "one coat" paint ranges: taleofpainters.com/2023/11/top-tip-visual-comparison-of-all-61-contrast-23-speedpaints-24-gsw-dipping-inks/
My hand-painted 5-in-1 "one coat" paint swatch: www.patreon.com/stahlytaleofpainters/shop
My free Skaven Clanrats tutorial: taleofpainters.com/2024/08/tutorial-how-to-paint-skaven-clanrats-from-skaventide/
Affordable portable airbush I can recommend: geni.us/portableairbrush (affiliate link)
I've found Vallejo Metal Color Airbrush Paints are essentially Metallic speed paint, excellent video as always
I am interested in those but have never seen a good swatch to see what they look like.
Thank you for all your contributions to the community Stahly
Hi Stahly, you quickly became my go-to channel when it comes to paint reviews and comparisons. I got few dipping inks bottles after watching your videos and I'm fairly content with them.
What I like the most about Vallejo Xpress Colors is that they thin down with water really smooth. They are great to apply as glazes or filters which makes them really versatile
I just paint a big sculpt using the fairy skin and dwarf skin tones as shadows. I still make the dark undertones, but this make the finishing easier.
@@israelrobles681 Do dwarf skin and fairy skin work well as human flesh colours?
I find Speedpaint metallics work perfectly for things like chainmail and tank tracks.
Covers quickly, especially when batch painting, and you’ll be putting washes, drybrushing, and weathering on top anyways.
IMHO, army painters work the best for that. Although shout-out to scale instant for making some really good reds and dark browns.
Got back into 40k recently and just bought the full range of army painter speed paints they are amazing
Army Painter's Glittering Loot and Hoplite Gold are metallic speed paints that I quite like, though they like to dry really fast and form a plasticky film at the edges of the paint and in your bristles as they do so.
*AIRBRUSH*
I had never used an airbrush before. I did a lot of research and settled on the Harder and Steenbeck Ultra. Now, I know some of you are going "You don't need that!" Well, yes maybe but we're not talking about one of their flagship models that can run four to five hundred dollars. The ultra is a little over one hundred dollars but I was immediately successful with using it to prime, zenithal, base coat miniatures and vehicles. I watched Vince V tutorials on how to use, clean and maintain your airbrush. Voilà, I know how to use an Airbrush!
So why the H&S Ultra? Training wheels. Yup. Training wheels. There is a rotating selector that allows you to control the amount of paint with settings for prime, base, detail etc. I was abled to learn the basics of control without splattering my models with paint. I highly recommend getting one along with a quiet single piston compressor.
Such a legend! Fair-minded, rigorous, educational.
Stably always raises the bar!
This time with adding the O symbol to his swatches 🌟
On the topic, I personally I prefer Xpress Colours as well for their consistency and their versatility (I can dilute them with water and have shades and glazes, so having 3 products in the price of one).
We can only hope that miniature paint brands start adding grades of opacity just as artists' paint brands do, not to mention practical paint names, the actual pigments used, etc. It's not gonna happen, but a man can dream, right?
i've grown to really like the Vallejo Xpress paints. i prefer the fact that they aren't super thin / watery and will apply nicely to even more surface detail with ease. they don't run away from raised areas like contrast can, and make excellent power sword glow over silver, or plasma glow over white. i wound up buying more of those than i should recently!
Ride or die for Vallejo.
While they don't often have "the best of the best" paints, what they are is consistently good. And that consistency is what I like, as I don't replace paints often, so having a formula/range changed every couple of years is a turn off for me for a lot of brands.
Excellent work and professional as ever.
Stahly rocking the painting world with the best reviews!
Wooo!! Always love to see a new video!
Have you tested Golden’s High Flow Acrylics for slap chop? Most of the range is transparent or semi transparent, with some opaque hues. Likewise many inks, though they should be mixed with a little medium to avoid coffee staining. Would love to see your review of high flow acrylics and inks (Daler-Rowney, perhaps Liquitex too) in a slap chop context plus other uses you can identify. Thanks for your work!
Not yet, but they are on my to do list :)
I just got that same airbrush kit and I love it. If you are debating if you want to or not, get this kit. Not much money to find out if you like it.
Welcome back Stahly. Any plans to conduct a best range for historical miniatures? For example, AK 3rd generation vs the new Vallejo model color.
If anybody decides to pick up an airbrush from this, please do some quick research on airbrush safety first. You don't want to inhale any type of fine dust particles, even acrylic paint. To do it cheaply, pick up a particle mask or respirator and spray into a cardboard box with a desk fan or something running behind it (keep the back side partially open, too). If you can do it near an open window, then that probably helps. Also, make sure nothing you value is on the receiving end of the overspray :)
Well, generally if you want to slapchop or speedpaint then you avoid Scale 75 whatsoever. They produce fine quality paints but none of their products are suited for fast jobs. S75 is for careful layering and building volumes, even their "one coat solution" Instant series is more like heavy washes and glazes rather than contrast/speedpaints. So if you want to paint that army fast then look for some Army Painter or Vallejo, S75 is when you want that army to look fabulous, but be warned it'll take some time.
I use Contrast, Speedpaint, and Xpress Colors. I think Contrast and Speedpaint are very well matched, and are my top choice. Strong coverage while letting through the zenithal is what I want. Generally I choose between the two on a per colours basis based on who has the best pictures/video online, and then buy the other brand if I get it wrong.
I find the lack of pigmentation in Xpress Colors a drawback. I'm not using slapchop to do multiple layers. It's also present in some colours in the other brands, just not as often. Xpress Color do have some paints I really like such as Gloomy Violet. Some others I got great used out of in traditional layer painting as a wash. I found Plague Green worked better on my green Tyranid carapace than my old Army Painter Green Tone.
If you ever find the time to do it, could you make a video on which paints make for the best glazes? More specifically, I mean like the oldschool glaze paints GW used to make. I think Two Thin Coats has a bunch of glazes now and you can also get very similar effects by thinning down the sort of paints you used in this video with their respective mediums in a 1:2 mix, or just a 1:1 mix for the brighter and/or more transparent paints.
It would be great for all the people out there who miss the aforementioned GW glazes, because honestly, I feel like the glazing properties of these one-coat style paints are kinda slept on.
Great video as always.
More vallejo xpress slapchop videos please!
Stably-Time for a new video friend. Anyway, have you thought of a new comparison of paint primers like your many patroon samples? I would welcome it!
Stahly: Are you planning just one video a month? If so, that is too bad as we would enjoy seeing more content.
I know, I wish I could do more. But you can visit me on taleofpainers.com, we've got three articles per week there!
Hello Man, i recently found your videos and they are frickin amazing, i am new in paint amd customizing figures, i have a question for you, what brands of paint can you recommend for custom painting vintage Gi Joe figures?
Thank in advance
I love your videos and how there is so much information and focus on acrylic paints, keep it up. Also curious if you're ever planning to review products like wet pallets, brushes, or maybe even enamels or oils?
Yeah you can find such reviews over on taleofpainters.com
Saw it somewhere else, but painting black or brown under the Metallic Speedpaints tends to help them look much better when applied.
Stahly, content idea for you a bit out of the ordinary. How about a comparison video on paint markers. AK came out with a new range a while back but I would love to see a comparison to other quality brands.
Yes, I'll do a review for AK's markers when they come out!
They already have, 34 colors.
Try thinned down oils for slapchop.
You have to shake metallic speedpaints more than you did!!
Slap job is an incredible painting technique.
Yet if I wanted to paint multiple clanrats as fast as possible (and this is coming from somebody who painted 240clanrats at this point) it is much easier to stick with a spray paint that takes care of the fur paint and 2-3 base coats for your cloaths and weapons, with an agrax earthshade finishing up everything.
For speed painting multiple clanrats, that’s a lot faster then painting every clanrat with the slap job method.
Still though with rat ogres, ogres in Particularly, and bigger models like the giants, I think slap job is definitely the way to go
I live in an apartment I do not have space for an airbrush, and no one's happy about me doing it outside so especially not with the amount of heat and rain we have, not a big of them, but a lot of that is because I am unable to use them myself.
As long as you use waterbased paints, a mask (I use an FFP2 mask and not even an exoensive respirator) and do it in front of an open window you are fine.
But remember: only waterbased acrylics. As soon as you use enamel or anything else you NEED thorough ventilation.
I recommend watching the poorhammer video on airbrushs
Warcolours Antithesis paints are also noteworthy as an option.
I didn't like those at all, did you try them yet?
I keep seeing people rant and rave over the Xpress color range and I never understood it so I'm giving them a try now. I don't use these types of paints to just slap over a white prime and I only ever use them over a zenithal or slapchop pre-shading. I've tried the speed paint metallics and people love them but not me. They're too runny for me so I'd rather just use normal metallic paint, my favorite being the pro acryl ones, and then shading them with a well thinned contrast or just any shade paints
I paint medium size to big sculpts, I never used Xpress Colors as intended.
Paint your skins as you do normaly, then apply the xpress colors with an aribrush in the shadow areas and you feel like a better painter XD (I use Fairy skin and Dwarf skin tones)
Your comment about petrol colored paints made me think of something. Have you tried Ghost Tints from Badger?
Not yet
Any chance we can get some hobby glue reviews? So much to choose from out there, and they're a bit more difficult for the average person to test a variety of.
Not planned atm, but my recommendations would be Revell plastic glue, Gorilla superglue, and some random PVA you can find.
@@stahly_taleofpainters Thanks! Far as I can tell, no one has made a comprehensive comparison between all the plastic glues, and given how important it is for your models to *not break* before, during, and after painting; figuring that out would be great, since everything has different viscosity, working time, curing time, application bottles, etc.
I love to put models together in expressive poses and kitbashes, so finding the right glue for the job is generally important.
For me dipping inks are the best for slapchop while vallejo are super patchy and mate
Just a heads up, the link for a portable airbrush in the description is broken, have to remove an * from it :) Thanks for the video.
Fixed
The link to the airbrush isn’t working for me?
You gotta yeet the * at the end of the link, then it works. I think Stahly accidentally put that there while writing the description.
Should be fixed
If it's two layers plus a wash, I may as well just use a standard paint. I'm disappointed in the vallejo xpress line which seem to cheap out on the pigment density.
Man, If you ever try to paint sculpts, give these a try not as paints but as airbrush glazes. The skin tones are amazing as shadow tones. you can achieve gradients easier, I will try with other colors over clothed sculpts.
God I hate instant color. I gave mine away.
I agree with you. They were water thin in most cases. I gave away or sold basically all my Scale75 stuff, including the Instant paints.
@mjames70 yeah I sold my scale colors to a friend as well. I kept some of the fantasy and game paints. Those I like.
Have you tried thinning the metallic speedpaints with SP medium? I think that will bring out the shading underneath, but it's probably necessary to experiment in order to find the proper balance
Not yet, but I suspect this will reduce the metallic effect as well
...what is slapchop painting 😊?
*Grisaille.
If you are minipainting in the 1700s, yes. But most of us are doing it in the 40.000s, so "Slapchop" is fine. Besides that, french is an abomination of a language, anyway.
Only if you are working with greys for your undertones, what if I've decided to use dark blue highlighted with ice yellow as my undertones. It's still slapchop but it's no longer grisaille.
@@FreshCoatKustoms Just to rub it in a bit more what about verdaille (greens) and brunaille (browns) 😉At the end of the day zenithal, slapchop do the same function of putting down an underpainting before applying a glaze, wash or contrast. What colours you use for the underapinting is only for a desired effect; I use complementary colour underpainting to achieve realistic shading and highlighting.
why? because slapchop was last years influencers trend. or as we say "die sau die sie durchs dorf getrieben haben". doest work for me, i want nice minis, not "looks ok on the table". im a painter, not a player and airbrush zenithal looks 5000x better
Did you actually watch the video? I basically zenithal the Clanrat.
@@stahly_taleofpainters but zenithal isnt slapchop stahly. slapchop is drybrushing hard. and this looks often not that good, except youre that artis opus guy. slapchop is for the "oh Airbrush is so hard and annoying and expensive" faction. and yes i watched your Video, dont skipped the amazon add, gave a thumbs Up and commented, so thank me later. your title is "slapchop" and then i See Airbrush. and slapchop is dead. you have to do smth with gw proxies or Infinity at the Moment like the 5000 other influencers who do all the same content 😬
You forgot to say “ACKshually”. It really helps your audience know that you’re being condescending.
do you watch all videos that come up on your feed and comment how they don’t apply to you? not sure why you’d even watch if it’s not your thing
Stahly's model looked great, not ok. It also didn't require an airbrush.