Paint for Scale Models – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…

Hi, all! Welcome to the latest edition of “There’s another paint fail…”

I’ve documented my recent searches for a good model paint.

In my model building years, I started (as did most modelers in the 1970’s) with either Testors PLA Enamels or the Pactra equivalent. I stuck with Testors, since it was what I could find at most of the local places that sold models and supplies for them.

When I discovered modeling magazines and dedicated hobby shops in the late 1970’s, I also discovered the Pactra Authentic International Colors. I used them in 1981 to paint an Otaki F6F Hellcat, and I was smitten. I found that when thinned with Aerogloss Dope Thinner, the paint laid down very thin, dried very quickly, and gave an almost eggshell finish. Of course, that meant that the paint was on its way out—indeed, Pactra had discontinued the line. No matter, a change was coming…

When I went off to college and resumed my model building activities during my second semester, I decided to give my dorm neighbors a break and switch to something more friendly. At the time, there was only one acrylic paint for models, that being the OG of modeling acrylics, Polly-S. I continued to use Polly-S (with one exception) until that line, too, began to be phased out. Polly-S was a strange paint—it was a latex paint that could be brushed without leaving brush marks, but it was tricky to airbrush. You could thin it with water or alcohol, but it took some trial and error to see which one and how much would do the job. It seemed to me that no two bottles were the same, so I got used to making changes on the fly. In hindsight, it was merely okay, nothing stellar, but I had decided to be kind to my neighbors, so I was stuck with that decision...

For those of you who just “gotsta know”, the exception was in 1983, when I built the then-new Monogram 1/48th scale F-105G. Since the Polly-S representations of the SEA colors weren’t available to me at the time, and because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, I used the new Testors Model Master paints. I used them also on a Monogram 1/48th scale F-100D and a kitbashed ESCI/Monogram A-7D. They worked really well, but they came with all of the issues of a solvent-based paint—namely, how do you dispose of the thinners used to clean out the airbrush (I used an empty thinner can) and what to do with the thinned paint (not a good idea to return it to the bottle, as it would cause the paint to jell more times than not)…

In the meantime, two new acrylics came into view—Tamiya Acrylics and the then-Gunze-Sangyo (now GSI/Creos) Aqueous Color Range. The paints were similar in chemical composition, and early on I could get them to work quite well. But back in the day, there were frequent changes in the paint chemistry for the Tamiya paints, and accordingly I had to learn how to use it all over again with each change. In the case of the GSI Aqueous paint, I liked the way it sprayed, but it seemed to take a lot of paint to cover, and that a jar didn’t seem to go far.

I took a side trip into the 1992-era Floquil Enamels for about six months, then Floquil/Polly-S graced the world with a new acrylic paint: PollyScale. I loved this stuff, and couldn’t (still can’t) understand the negativity surrounding the paint. It thinned with distilled water (it said so on the jar AND in the literature available for the paint), sprayed nicely, and dried to a tight layer of color. It feathered out well, too, and I could mask it with no peeling/lifting issues whatsoever. I have a feeling that those who had problems with the paint were busy playing home chemist and using some strange concoction to thin the paint, which caused all the problems mentioned. Hint: Windshield washer fluid is good for removing dirt and bugs from glass. I doubt it was designed to thin paint. As I said in previous paint discussions, use the thinner recommended by the manufacturer—in this case, that thinner was distilled water, period. I was reminded of this sometime later, when I would add Future to the paint and thin with either alcohol or the Testors Acryl Thinner—the paint would give me fits. Once I went back to plain old distilled water added to just the paint, those issues went away.

Of course, in time RPM International (the parent company to Testors, Floquil/Polly-S, Bondo, Zinsser, and a handful of other companies) killed off both the Floquil enamels and PollyScale lines (and the Aeromaster Warbird Colors and Acrylic Warbirt Colors, which were checmically identical and manufactured by Floquil/Polly-S).

In response, Testors introduced a new acrylic line that was supposed to combine the best features of PollyScale and the Pactra Acrylic line (that was also fairly nice paint—I only used it once or twice, and I don’t recall any issues). This new line was called the Testor Model Master Acrylic line, and it was the Shop Vac of suck. The pigment settled hard at the bottom of the jar, so it took a powered stirrer and a good deal of shaking to mix the paint. It would clog the airbrush at the drop of a hat, it didn’t cover well, and when you could get it to spray, it would dry with a rough, chalky finish.

Another pair of new acrylics that popped onto the scene briefly were the Niche Paints (they had two lines, one featured WWII Luftwaffe colors and the other was a line of modern Soviet colors) and the Monogram ProModeler paints.

The Niche paints were rumored to be custom shades of regular eggshell finish interior house paints. I’ve only used it a few times, but I can almost buy the rumor. It wasn’t around long…

The ProModeler paints came along in 1999-2000, and were touted as the first hobby paints to be certified Non-Toxic by some US government entity. I used it once. The paint took forever to dry—if it dried at all. Again, they didn’t last long…

Anyway, I had to find another go-to paint line in the early 2000’s. Since PollyScale went away, I have tried the following:

• Testors Acryl

• Vallejo Model Air

• Lifecolor

• Hataka Orange Line

• Mission Models Paint

• AK Real Color

• ICM Acrylics

In addition, I have renewed my acquaintance with the chemically similar GSI/Creos Aqueous and Tamiya Acrylic line.

So, what did I experience?

Testors Acryl

When I first used it, I wasn’t too thrilled—PollyScale, back in the day, was a superb acrylic paint that could be thinned with distilled water, airbrushed well, hand brushed well, and had good adhesion. As I started to switch from PollyScale to Acryl (the writing was on the wall—RPM was discontinuing PollyScale), I learned to work with it, as I have done with every single brand of model paint I’ve used since way back in the early 1970’s. After a while, I reached a point where I was comfortable in how the paint behaved. It became my go-to paint brand for several years, until RPM once again decided to cut back on their product line and killed the Acryl line off.

Verdict: It is a shame that RPM killed it off, since it was head-and-shoulders better than the previous Model Master Acrylics. The color fidelity was good, and the paint performance was good and predictable.

Vallejo Model Air

With the demise of the Acryl line, my next stop was Vallejo. The learning curve was steeper, since it really didn’t like to spray to my liking. Once I learned to use their thinner, things went better. I wasn’t thrilled about using a paint that required a primer—and I did use it without primer many times—but my bigger gripes were with color accuracy and shelf life.

Vallejo’s idea of color accuracy is to get it somewhere within city limits; i.e. FS36622 gray will be gray. Whether it comes close to FS36622 or not is a matter of personal choice, but usually it did not. Which is okay, I can mix colors. But when I use a small amount from a bottle and close the bottle tightly, I don’t expect the remaining paint to turn to thick goo in a month. Also, they almost always required a primer, and the “hotter”, the better, which sort of defeats the purpose of using an acrylic paint, no?

Verdict: Not a full fail, and their Metal Color paints are still my go-to for bare metal finishes. And I’ll still use it for hand brushing. But for airbrushing camouflage schemes, nope, this ain’t it. And their shelf life is still hit/miss.

Lifecolor

I used Lifecolor for the orange patches on the Sea King I built several years ago, and I was impressed. It laid down smoothly, with no orange peel or other issues. I was so impressed that I bought their ship colors and their version of Air Superiority Blue for when I get around to building my original-issue Revell 1/72nd scale F-15 as one of the prototypes. It does require you to use their thinner, but I’m good with that. See my take on PollyScale above…

Verdict: I like this based on one use. We’ll see how other colors behave, but I’m optimistic.

Hataka

My experience with the Hataka acrylics was not good. They clogged the airbrush, no matter what I did. I used their thinner alone. I added some flow aid and retarder to the mix. It would still clog the airbrush. I wound up using the colors I had to paint terrain, where I could use a brush.

Verdict: Fail.

Mission Models Paint (MMP)

This stuff was being pimped as the greatest paint ever* (*IF you use their primer, their reducer, their poly-mix, and strictly follow their application procedure to the letter). I painted two 1/72nd scale F-16s with it, following their instructions to a ‘T’. And when I went to apply the decals, as soon as I put a wet decal on the surface of the model, the paint began to run like watercolors.

I ran some further tests on styrene card. No matter what I did, the result was the same—a fragile paint that would run when a little water was placed on top of the paint.

Verdict: Fail. Big fail, given the advertising hype. And yes, I know people who have been able to make it work. The bigger point here is that I shouldn’t have to go through a Graduate-Level course on how to use their paint and get it to yield a permanent, durable finish...

AK Real Colors (AKRC)

I was reluctant to use this product for two reasons—one, nobody could tell me whether it was miscible with AK’s acrylic thinner as well as their “High Compatibility Thinner”; and two, AK has, in the past, stepped on their ding-dongs with golf shoes in their advertisement department—promoting the Holocaust and other forms of forced slavery to sell books and then, when getting called on it, brushing it off as it was not a big deal.

But when I needed paint for my Hasegawa 1/72nd scale A-10A, I decided to give it a try. I had, by this time, been thinning Tamiya acrylics with lacquer thinner, so the first issue was mooted. I still wasn’t thrilled with their advertising gaffes, but I figured I was buying the paint from someone who had already paid AKI.

From a performance standpoint, thinned with either Tamiya lacquer thinner or Mr. Color Leveling Thinner, the paint sprayed very nicely, laid down smoothly, and dried quickly.

From a color accuracy standpoint, there were issues. Their idea of what 34102 and 34092 looked like weren’t in line with what was indicated in the FS595a fan deck I keep handy. It wasn’t close to something I had painted earlier with the PollyScale acrylics. The 34012 was too brown and not olive enough, the 34092 was almost turquoise rather than a deep green with a blueish cast. The 36081 gray was also too light—even if you subscribe to the scale color theory (which I do), it was still far too light.

Verdict: Fail. Not a hard fail, because they performed well. But they failed where it matters most—the paint should be close to what the label says. Talking with friends, this is a hit/miss thing with AK. Some colors are spot on, others are not correct.

ICM Acrylics

I’m building the “Ghost of Kyiv” release of ICM’s 1/72nd scale MiG-29 Fulcrum C. It was given to me as a gift along with the ICM paint set specifically intended for this kit. The kit gives you the gray “pixel” camouflage as decals, but I scanned the sheet and created masks on my Cameo 4.

As I began to paint the airplane, I noted that the paint said when airbrushing, thin “with water or thinner”, the thinner being unspecified. I’ve read a few accounts of folks using X-20A. I also noted that it said to use a primer. So, I primed the model with a coat of Tamiya X-18 Semigloss Black and allowed it to dry for a few days.

I began with the lightest of the gray colors. I used distilled water to thin the paint, and it seemed to go down fairly nicely. I did note that the surface was a bit chalky, but nothing that couldn’t be buffed out when the paint was dry with a microfiber towel.

I let that color dry for a few nights. I then airbrushed the next darker shade of gray on the underside. This time, I used Tamiya X-20A thinner. Again, it laid down okay, but with a chalky finish. Again, it was allowed to dry overnight.

When I resumed painting, I noted some dust that wouldn't simply wipe off, so I dampened a Q-Tip with a wee bit of distilled water—the swab was barely moist. As I tried to wash the dust off, I noted that the paint was dissolving—almost like a watercolor. As I continued, the paint wiped off the model. I did the same thing in several other locations on the model to make sure it wasn’t a localized issue. Nope, the paint—whether it had been thinned with water or X-20A—dissolved and wiped off of the surface.

The final confirmation was when it took a little over 10 minutes’ scrubbing with a toothbrush under the faucet. The paint simply wiped off.

Verdict: I hate to say this, because I think ICM is hitting it out of the park with their kit releases over the past few years, but the paint gets a Hard Fail. I will do some more tests with the paint I have left to see if it wasn’t a “me problem”, so stay tuned. But for the MiG, the paint got stripped and the model will be painted with Tamiya Acrylics, thinned with lacquer thinner. That combination has not let me down for as long as I’ve been using it.

Which brings us to the GSI Aqueous and Tamiya Acrylics.

As mentioned earlier, I used both when they first arrived in the scene. As other paints were available that worked better for me, I didn’t use them that much. But was the other acrylic lines died off, I took another look.

The initial impetus to revisit them was a pair of 1/72nd scale Phantoms in British colors I built, Academy’s F-4J as a 74 Sqn F-4J(UK) and the Fujimi FG.1. British Standard colors are hard to come by in acrylic paints, and I had already stockpiled some of the required colors, so I gave them another go. This time, I used X-20A thinner (this predated my use of Mr. Leveling Thinner buy a few months), and found they worked much better than my previous efforts. The only issue I had was with the decal application on the FG.1, which did weird things to the paint. I blame this not on the paint, but the decal adhesive, as the same paint/clear coat combination worked with no issues on the F-4J(UK). I imagine the paint would work even better with the use of that magic elixir known as Mr. Leveling Thinner, MLT, or simply “Unicorn Tears”…

And so my search ended at the Tamiya Acrylics. I guess I learned that the paint could be thinned with lacquer thinner in the late 1990’s. At the time, I was trying to remain as “hot solvent free” as I could (the exception was using Testors Metalizer Sealer as a clear coat before decals and weathering, as it was nearly bulletproof), so I steered clear. However, as the acrylic lines continued to shrink, I saw what some of my AMPS club buddies were achieving with this combination. So, I bit the bullet and tried it. As far as the fumes were concerned, I crack a window and wear a respirator. I use alcohol to clean the airbrush. So far, the results have been good—and they are repeatable. I’ve painted an Airfix 1/72nd scale Bristol Blenheim I and the Hasegawa 1/72nd scale A-10A (after I abandoned the AK Real Colors paints) with them. I painted all three of the Vermont ANG F-16’s using this mix. I had no surprises down the road when the decals went on.

I’m convinced, and it will take something Earth-shaking to change that opinion.

For those who want to know about the Andrea, Ammo by Mig, Citadel, Games Workshop, or the AK Interactive acrylics, I can only speak on the Citadel paints—I use them for detail painting only. Like the Vallejo Model Air and Model Color, they brush on well and I have no complaints. I had pondered using the AKI 3^rd Gen acrylics, but the other factor on paints, for me, is local availability. If I run out of a color, I’d like to be reasonably sure that I can buy a new jar/bottle locally and not have to put together a larger order with one of the online shops (I almost used the phrase “Mail Order”--kids, ask your parents). And in my area, I can get Tamiya Acrylics at several shops. So why would I want to venture too far away from that?

And yes, I said I also liked the Lifecolor paints. But I believe their use will be in limited, specific scenarios such as the Air Superiority Blue for the early F-15A, or the ship colors (unless I mix those, too, from Tamiya colors) because these too will need to be ordered online.

A final word on the GSI/Creos Aqueous line. I’d use them more IF I could find the H3XX and H4XX colors anywhere—these are the colors matched to AN/ANA, FS, RAL, and BSC paint specifications. I’ve scoured the various online shops, and all of them show stock on colors up to the H9X numbers. I contacted GSI/Creos, they say the colors in question are still being made (good thing, since most Hasegawa and Fujimi kits use their color call-outs). Knowing that, I would figure that Hobby Link Japan would have them, but recent searches have come up empty. If anyone can tell me what’s up here, I would appreciate it. And yes, I know I can use the Mr. Color lacquers (or the Tamiya Lacquer Paints, for that matter)—but their smell is much sharper, and lingers much longer, than that of either the Aqueous or Tamiya Acrylics thinned with MLT or lacquer thinner does.

As for the new breed of acrylic lacquers (MRP, SMS, etc.), I have not tried them for the reasons listed above. Some friends have used them, and they think they’re the best thing since bottled beer, sliced bread, apple pie, and Mom. Getting them can be an issue, which defeats the “locally stocked” availability question.

Postscript. A few weeks ago, Ammo by Mig announced a new acrylic line called “ATOM”. They are supposed to combine the best features of an acrylic paint with the best features of a lacquer. Several online shops are showing them as preorders. Just for giggles, I may have to try the line to see whether its performance is that much better than my current Tamiya/MLT mix. I don’t envision any of the local shops rushing out to start stocking ATOM, so it will have to be that much better than my current go-to to make me switch.

This opens another can of worms, one that some friends and I discussed several years ago, when MMP became available and folks were flocking to it. At the time, it seemed there was a new paint line announced every month, and modelers were flocking to them the way the 5-year olds playing soccer all follow the ball rather than playing their position. They never stick with one product long enough to become competent with it, before they run to the next shiny new paint line. I suppose you could say that I did the same thing during my recent search for a replacement for PollyScale and Acryl. I don’t think I fall into the same category, since my go-to lines were going away and I was trying to find a line that worked for me.

The other player at work are the manufacturers themselves. They change the formulations of their paint so often that a user doesn’t really have time to become properly attuned to them before they are gone, replaced by this year’s new darling.

And this is yet another reason I came to the conclusion I did—Tamiya Acrylics have been around since 1983 or 1984, and I don’t seem them going anywhere any time soon…

I have friends who still wish they could go buy some good, old, Dio-Sol/Xylene-laden Floquil paint. Sorry, gang, those days are long gone. With the recent demise of the Model Master paint, the same laments can be seen far and wide on the various modeling boards. Yeah, you can pine for them all you like, but they ain’t comin’ back...

There you go, my take on the State of Hobby Paints.

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I mentioned the 1/72nd scale models (a Hasegawa A-10A, an Airfix Blenheim, and ICM MiG-29), here are some happy snaps of the models. The Blenheim and MiG will be part of a “Small Forces” display at our show in June...

 

 

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The Tamiya 1/48th scale A-10A is almost done, look for a feature shortly.

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As always, thanks for reading.  Be good to one another, and I bid you Peace.