Did this last night as I'm so fed up of dried paint wasting away my money, so glad I did it, I used just the flow aid and it worked perfectly, I like to add my thinner to the airbrush cup before the paint and when I'm using a brush I like my paints to sit up a bit on my palette so they don't dry out but its not only so much better to use it also looks so much nicer on my paint shelf having the bottles match the rest of my paints.
Really informative video! I’m transferring Citadel paints now, and I keep coming back to the video for tips on the types of paints, and it has really helped!
Transferred all of my base and layer paints, but left the contrast, metallics, and shades in pots. I definitely prefer droppers for most of my paints. Good vid! 👍👍
You don't have to cut the lid off. It's more precarious with liquids like washes and layer paints, but with thick paints like bases it won't spill. Just get your fingernail or something underneath the plastic bottom ring at the back and lift it. It should pop up. Then follow around the sides of the ring and it should come off quite easily. Again, your hand has the tendancy to lose its grip and jerk the bottle, so cutting the lid off washes, layers, contrasts, and some technicals will be needed. Wouldn't want your jeans to be Illuminating with tesseract glow.
I mostly recycle my old pots, or keep a few around for holding mixes of airbrush paint, so preserving the lid/ring connection isn't a high priority for me, which is why I just cut them all. I do seperate the rings how you describe, after washing the old pots out, before they go into the recycling bins.
You’re angle shot to your cutting mat at 3:00 is such that my eyes are playing tricks on me. The perpendicular lines look like they’re extending directly down into the cutting mat making it look 3D.
I hadn't noticed that I lined that shot up with the angle cutting lines until you pointed it out. It definitely has a bit of an optical illusion going on. I also used a different camera/lens for those shots, so they also have a stronger depth of field effect, which enhances the popping out feel.
If you are wanting to maintain the original consistency of the paints, manually transferring them like this is probably the way to go. The fact that I am thinning the paints a bit doing it the way I demonstrated is an intended side effect.
@@D00M3R_MAVS yeah bit of a pain, using an old large brush and thin flat metal stick (sculpting tools help). The slightly runny paints can initially be directly poured into the dropper bottle ... but very slowly (watch out for air bubbles blocking thr dropper bottle and making a mess). Finally I use the brush to scrap the gw pot clean. Remove the gw pot lable and wrap it around your dropper bottle
I’m getting some Adeptus Mechanicus figures soon , do you have any tips for me ? 😁 I watched your vids when doing both the death guard and Intercessors paint set , you are the only reason they turned out well 😅
I haven't painted any AM, but looking at the sprues and example paint jobs I can give some suggestions based of similiar models. If you have any of the models with the cloaks with a white interior I would recommend partially assembling, then painting that interior portion before completely assembling, because painting around legs can be annoying. Since there is a lot of metal & matte areas, I would recommend having two different water containers, one for metallic paints and one for normal paints, to avoid getting any metallic flakes on the matte bits and making Adeptus Sparklicus. For the grey/steel metal, try using Gloss Nuln Oil instead of regular Nuln Oil, it can give a more oily appereance. You will probably will want a highlight grey metal like Ironbreaker or Stormhost Silver. For the Red, Mestiphon Red -> Agrax Earthshade -> Mestiphon Red -> Evil Sunz Scarlett probably would work well.
They should be hematite, which is an iron oxide, thus shouldn't rust further, though may chip over time. Stainless steels come in a variety of compositions, some more resistant to oxidizing then others, so may be prone to rusting over time depending on the specific type used. If you are very concerned about rusting, something like a ceramic or glass bead would avoid the issue entirely, though generally at a high cost.
@@SleepyWhatsIt ok thank you very much with your speedy reply, also adding in other options that could be used as agitators. I assume you haven’t had any problems with hermatite beads then?
What I do is, I use a small paint mixer (Badger for example). I pour 5 to 10 drops of Liquitex Flow Aid then use the mixer. Then pour into dropper. Should I throw some Vallejo Thinner into the droppers?
I like the Vallejo Thinner medium since it has a little drying retarder in it. If you are happy with the drying time for the paints it isn't strictly needed.
I agree that Vallejo Game Colour does good colour matching for the Citadel line and makes a solid alternative, but for many people their local hobby shop has a limited selection of ranges, and GW is almost always an option. For something like Scale75 I have either order it online, which with conversion/shipping makes it siginificantly more expensive, or I have to drive to one hobby store in the area that I know carries their stuff, which is in another city about 1.5 hours away. Also a lot of people, especially those that play 40k or AoS, start out using Citadel paints, so probably have some pots of it even if they want to switch brands. So this video is more about making the best out of what you have at hand vs what is the best possible option.
Vallejo is too thick and goopy. I don't like vallejo paints. They cover nicely but I have to thin them down quite a bit. And they seem to dry out quicker then citadel paint, even on a wet pallette. Scale 75 are great paints. I like how matte they are.
i gotta cheap and easy idea for agitators, airsoft bbgun pellets, you can buy them in various materials and you get like a few thousand for maybe $5 £4 and probably could buy smaller amounts too
I think those definitely have a strong possibility especially at those price points. I would just double check that specific ones you are looking at are not made with something that will break down easily or react with your paint, since it looks like some are designed to break down over time or have non-plastic cores.
My immediate thought would be to take off the lid and pull the nozzle off the dropper bottle and let some of the water evaporate out. You just want to be careful to not knock it over while it is open like that and keep an eye on how much it thickened. The other option I can think of is getting some heavy body acrylic medium from an art store and mixing in a touch of that to counteract the excessive thinning, though I haven't actually done that, so I cannot recommend specific products.
I normally just use the water from my wet pallet. Do I still need to add the airbush flow improver? If I don't have an airbrush/// will this make it to thin to use on a wet pallet with your method?
I personally use a wet palette, so it should work fine. I prefer how Citadel paints behave with a flow improver. Flow improver vs water is more of a personal choice, you mostly need to thin it down from pot consistency. If you prefer using water that should be fine just watch the consistency closely, since water will probably thin it a bit more for the same amount of liquid.
Thanks. I have heard from some sources that Flow Improver messes with the paint properties, and that I shouldn't use it for this. Have you noticed any issues after having your paint sit in the new bottles, after using flow improver, please?
Flow Improver, by definition, affects paint properties, but never in a way that I would describe as messing or ruining them. It is going to thin the paint a bit and make it move more easily, so overall have a lower surface tension. Basically becomes a thinner bodied paint than it was originally. To me this is desired, since I find most of Citadel's line, especially their base paints, significantly heavier bodied than I would like. I don't think I have noticed any adverse reactions from paints that I have thinned sitting in their bottles.
@@SleepyWhatsIt I thin them for most things, but I'm worried about dry brushing specifically. I just spent a lot on an artis opus D set, so don't want to make my paints not behave like they should for this purpose.
I personally still use them for dry brushing, they are a bit thinner, so might need to sit for a minute or two on a dry palette to thicken up to be optimal for dry brushing, lest I am wiping a lot of liquid off the brush. The consistency I get out of the bottle is comparable to a Reaper paint, so still well with in the range of brush painting vs airbrushing.
Thanks for the vid, i transferred GW paint and used the same airbrush flow improver in the video. When you shake the paint in the dropper bottle to use does it bubble up out of the top of the dropper bottle for you? Did i do something wrong? Thanks for the help.
Hmmm... I occassionally get bubbles when shaking paint, if they have been sitting for a long time and have seperated. The bubbles tend to go away after the paint is mixed, I think they are caused by the seperated medium layer, which is thinner/watery, getting shook. Either getting thicker from the pigment getting mixed in or the pigment breaking the surface tension I think is why the bubbles go away. So maybe your paint has seperated? or possibly was over thinned? For paint coming out of the top, I normally only get a bit of that when I am being absent minded and shake a bottle up & down. Since there are agitators in my bottles, to mix the paint by hand I just need to hold the bottle at the top and kinda snap my wrist back and forth to get things moving, instead of doing the whole arm up/down motion. Though honestly I have a vortex mixer on my desk that I use for most of my mixing, since I really don't need to develop more/new RSI.
The citadel paint pot choice is so stupid for such an "expensive" paint. I never buy for that exact reason, they want you to mess up and waste their product so you're forced to buy more. Shady business practice.
what a revolting company. We have been begging them for this shit for over a decade. I just stopped buying their paints. Vallejo was a game changer. Also a lot cheaper and therefore you can buy more paints.
The fact you put your lables at the bottom of the bottle and not in the middle drives me nuts. You add A LOT of different additives. I only used 15-20 drops of flow improver and i found the paints were thin enough. Yours seem like they'd take all day to cover.
I used to place them in the middle, but I keep them in a drawer by my desk, so I tended to grab them by the top section of the label and the labels started to peel from being handled, which is why I moved them down. The drawer is also why I dabbed the lid in the paint, so I can see what colour it is from above better. I personally haven't had much issue with coverage. I am at most doing a ratio of 3:1 paint to additives, probably more like 4 or 5 to 1. Paint consistency is really a personal preference, I started painting with Reaper paints so I have also found Citadel paint to be very thick and thin it heavily on the pallet. I honestly prefer using air brush paints 😅
Did this last night as I'm so fed up of dried paint wasting away my money, so glad I did it, I used just the flow aid and it worked perfectly, I like to add my thinner to the airbrush cup before the paint and when I'm using a brush I like my paints to sit up a bit on my palette so they don't dry out but its not only so much better to use it also looks so much nicer on my paint shelf having the bottles match the rest of my paints.
Really informative video! I’m transferring Citadel paints now, and I keep coming back to the video for tips on the types of paints, and it has really helped!
Glad you have found it so useful. I honestly come back to it when I get new paints to transfer also 😅
Transferred all of my base and layer paints, but left the contrast, metallics, and shades in pots. I definitely prefer droppers for most of my paints. Good vid! 👍👍
The shades and contrasts were actually the first I transferred, after spilling a couple of them 🤦♂️
Sleepy WhatsIt oh dang. That’s brought to make you transfer them all for sure. Those larger bottles like the contrast paints are so easy to tip over.
Very nice video thanks just started using GW Citadel paints, not a big fan of pots , your video was what I needed to organize my paints
Glad the video helped you
Yes, very informative. I am a new painter and this will help me. Thank you.
I am glad that you found it helpful 🙂
I love the little transformation sequence at the beginning :D
I am glad it was worth the time to dig up the software used to make Animorphs covers and make that transformation
You don't have to cut the lid off. It's more precarious with liquids like washes and layer paints, but with thick paints like bases it won't spill. Just get your fingernail or something underneath the plastic bottom ring at the back and lift it. It should pop up. Then follow around the sides of the ring and it should come off quite easily. Again, your hand has the tendancy to lose its grip and jerk the bottle, so cutting the lid off washes, layers, contrasts, and some technicals will be needed. Wouldn't want your jeans to be Illuminating with tesseract glow.
I mostly recycle my old pots, or keep a few around for holding mixes of airbrush paint, so preserving the lid/ring connection isn't a high priority for me, which is why I just cut them all. I do seperate the rings how you describe, after washing the old pots out, before they go into the recycling bins.
You’re angle shot to your cutting mat at 3:00 is such that my eyes are playing tricks on me. The perpendicular lines look like they’re extending directly down into the cutting mat making it look 3D.
I hadn't noticed that I lined that shot up with the angle cutting lines until you pointed it out. It definitely has a bit of an optical illusion going on. I also used a different camera/lens for those shots, so they also have a stronger depth of field effect, which enhances the popping out feel.
Just noticed. Hahaha cool
I Love your voice... reminds me of early 90s education videos 📹 😅
I should put a VCR filter on the videos 😂
I transferred all 60 of my citadel paints with just and old brush and flat stick, for very little hassle. Afterwards I dropped in a couple agitators.
did you not use anything to thin them?
@@D00M3R_MAVS nothing at all for the normal paints ... just take your time and small scoops
If you are wanting to maintain the original consistency of the paints, manually transferring them like this is probably the way to go. The fact that I am thinning the paints a bit doing it the way I demonstrated is an intended side effect.
@@gavinduplessis6385 thanks. so you actually physically scoop the paint out of the pot?
@@D00M3R_MAVS yeah bit of a pain, using an old large brush and thin flat metal stick (sculpting tools help). The slightly runny paints can initially be directly poured into the dropper bottle ... but very slowly (watch out for air bubbles blocking thr dropper bottle and making a mess). Finally I use the brush to scrap the gw pot clean. Remove the gw pot lable and wrap it around your dropper bottle
I’m getting some Adeptus Mechanicus figures soon , do you have any tips for me ? 😁 I watched your vids when doing both the death guard and Intercessors paint set , you are the only reason they turned out well 😅
I haven't painted any AM, but looking at the sprues and example paint jobs I can give some suggestions based of similiar models.
If you have any of the models with the cloaks with a white interior I would recommend partially assembling, then painting that interior portion before completely assembling, because painting around legs can be annoying.
Since there is a lot of metal & matte areas, I would recommend having two different water containers, one for metallic paints and one for normal paints, to avoid getting any metallic flakes on the matte bits and making Adeptus Sparklicus.
For the grey/steel metal, try using Gloss Nuln Oil instead of regular Nuln Oil, it can give a more oily appereance. You will probably will want a highlight grey metal like Ironbreaker or Stormhost Silver.
For the Red, Mestiphon Red -> Agrax Earthshade -> Mestiphon Red -> Evil Sunz Scarlett probably would work well.
Sleepy WhatsIt thank you 😊
The agitators that you’ve linked in your description for the U.K., are made from iron won’t they rust? Shouldn’t they be stainless steel?
They should be hematite, which is an iron oxide, thus shouldn't rust further, though may chip over time. Stainless steels come in a variety of compositions, some more resistant to oxidizing then others, so may be prone to rusting over time depending on the specific type used. If you are very concerned about rusting, something like a ceramic or glass bead would avoid the issue entirely, though generally at a high cost.
@@SleepyWhatsIt ok thank you very much with your speedy reply, also adding in other options that could be used as agitators. I assume you haven’t had any problems with hermatite beads then?
Nope, the only issue I would anticipate having is if a bead breaks, though I haven't had that happen yet.
Hey!
I had the same idea but your video gave me so much more details and addition to create a good process. Thanks :)
Glad it could help!
What I do is, I use a small paint mixer (Badger for example). I pour 5 to 10 drops of Liquitex Flow Aid then use the mixer. Then pour into dropper. Should I throw some Vallejo Thinner into the droppers?
I like the Vallejo Thinner medium since it has a little drying retarder in it. If you are happy with the drying time for the paints it isn't strictly needed.
Simple advice: Use other paints like Vallejo or Scale 75...save you troubles, money and precious hobby time!
I agree that Vallejo Game Colour does good colour matching for the Citadel line and makes a solid alternative, but for many people their local hobby shop has a limited selection of ranges, and GW is almost always an option.
For something like Scale75 I have either order it online, which with conversion/shipping makes it siginificantly more expensive, or I have to drive to one hobby store in the area that I know carries their stuff, which is in another city about 1.5 hours away.
Also a lot of people, especially those that play 40k or AoS, start out using Citadel paints, so probably have some pots of it even if they want to switch brands. So this video is more about making the best out of what you have at hand vs what is the best possible option.
Not to mention, that advice is pretty useless for people that already own a load of them and are wanting to switch them to a better container.
Vallejo is too thick and goopy. I don't like vallejo paints. They cover nicely but I have to thin them down quite a bit. And they seem to dry out quicker then citadel paint, even on a wet pallette. Scale 75 are great paints. I like how matte they are.
@@txta786 typically I would add 2 to 3 or so drops of water to thin them, then shake the bottle
i gotta cheap and easy idea for agitators, airsoft bbgun pellets, you can buy them in various materials and you get like a few thousand for maybe $5 £4 and probably could buy smaller amounts too
I think those definitely have a strong possibility especially at those price points. I would just double check that specific ones you are looking at are not made with something that will break down easily or react with your paint, since it looks like some are designed to break down over time or have non-plastic cores.
I think I thinned out my paints too much in the transfer, is there a way way to thicken the paint while it’s still in the dropper bottle?
My immediate thought would be to take off the lid and pull the nozzle off the dropper bottle and let some of the water evaporate out. You just want to be careful to not knock it over while it is open like that and keep an eye on how much it thickened.
The other option I can think of is getting some heavy body acrylic medium from an art store and mixing in a touch of that to counteract the excessive thinning, though I haven't actually done that, so I cannot recommend specific products.
I normally just use the water from my wet pallet. Do I still need to add the airbush flow improver? If I don't have an airbrush/// will this make it to thin to use on a wet pallet with your method?
I personally use a wet palette, so it should work fine. I prefer how Citadel paints behave with a flow improver. Flow improver vs water is more of a personal choice, you mostly need to thin it down from pot consistency. If you prefer using water that should be fine just watch the consistency closely, since water will probably thin it a bit more for the same amount of liquid.
Thanks.
I have heard from some sources that Flow Improver messes with the paint properties, and that I shouldn't use it for this. Have you noticed any issues after having your paint sit in the new bottles, after using flow improver, please?
Flow Improver, by definition, affects paint properties, but never in a way that I would describe as messing or ruining them. It is going to thin the paint a bit and make it move more easily, so overall have a lower surface tension. Basically becomes a thinner bodied paint than it was originally. To me this is desired, since I find most of Citadel's line, especially their base paints, significantly heavier bodied than I would like.
I don't think I have noticed any adverse reactions from paints that I have thinned sitting in their bottles.
@@SleepyWhatsIt I thin them for most things, but I'm worried about dry brushing specifically.
I just spent a lot on an artis opus D set, so don't want to make my paints not behave like they should for this purpose.
I personally still use them for dry brushing, they are a bit thinner, so might need to sit for a minute or two on a dry palette to thicken up to be optimal for dry brushing, lest I am wiping a lot of liquid off the brush. The consistency I get out of the bottle is comparable to a Reaper paint, so still well with in the range of brush painting vs airbrushing.
@@SleepyWhatsIt Thanks.
Thanks for the vid, i transferred GW paint and used the same airbrush flow improver in the video. When you shake the paint in the dropper bottle to use does it bubble up out of the top of the dropper bottle for you? Did i do something wrong? Thanks for the help.
Hmmm... I occassionally get bubbles when shaking paint, if they have been sitting for a long time and have seperated. The bubbles tend to go away after the paint is mixed, I think they are caused by the seperated medium layer, which is thinner/watery, getting shook. Either getting thicker from the pigment getting mixed in or the pigment breaking the surface tension I think is why the bubbles go away. So maybe your paint has seperated? or possibly was over thinned?
For paint coming out of the top, I normally only get a bit of that when I am being absent minded and shake a bottle up & down. Since there are agitators in my bottles, to mix the paint by hand I just need to hold the bottle at the top and kinda snap my wrist back and forth to get things moving, instead of doing the whole arm up/down motion. Though honestly I have a vortex mixer on my desk that I use for most of my mixing, since I really don't need to develop more/new RSI.
@@SleepyWhatsIt Thank you!
I wish I watched this before the instructions from midwinter minis. I think I may have messed up about 100 pots of paint!!!
The citadel paint pot choice is so stupid for such an "expensive" paint. I never buy for that exact reason, they want you to mess up and waste their product so you're forced to buy more. Shady business practice.
More spoilage and dry paint in jars. This is why citadel for decades still uses jars than bottles. Its economics and business.
what a revolting company. We have been begging them for this shit for over a decade. I just stopped buying their paints. Vallejo was a game changer. Also a lot cheaper and therefore you can buy more paints.
The fact you put your lables at the bottom of the bottle and not in the middle drives me nuts.
You add A LOT of different additives. I only used 15-20 drops of flow improver and i found the paints were thin enough. Yours seem like they'd take all day to cover.
I used to place them in the middle, but I keep them in a drawer by my desk, so I tended to grab them by the top section of the label and the labels started to peel from being handled, which is why I moved them down. The drawer is also why I dabbed the lid in the paint, so I can see what colour it is from above better.
I personally haven't had much issue with coverage. I am at most doing a ratio of 3:1 paint to additives, probably more like 4 or 5 to 1. Paint consistency is really a personal preference, I started painting with Reaper paints so I have also found Citadel paint to be very thick and thin it heavily on the pallet. I honestly prefer using air brush paints 😅