Modern paint for brush painting?

General Discussions General Painting
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I’m restarting my involvement in model building, and am wondering if anyone can let me know which, if any, of the new hobby paints can be brush painted without issue. I do have airbrushes, but there are some things I would rather apply by brush. And yes, I guess I am a Luddite since I prefer enamels and lacquers over acrylics. But don’t hold that against me.

Thanks in advance for any advice and shared wisdom.

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I’ve been using Tamiya paints lightly thinned with MLT to good effect lately, but I don’t have much experience. If you already have Tamiya paints, you might try that. I haven’t tried with Mr Hobby or AK real colors, but I have a hypothesis they might work similarly.

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AK Real Colors are excellent lacquer paints and they brush paint and airbrush equally well. AK Real Colors also offer a huge range of specific matched colors. Thin them with Mister Color Leveling Thinner if needed.
I used enamels ages ago, had bad experiences with acrylics, and now AK Real Colors is my go-to paint of preference.

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I brush paint with Vallejo acrylics and other brands like Scale75 etc. For paints like Tamiya the technique is a little different to not get brush strokes. Maybe MLT is the key. I found this helped me.

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So the AK real colors brush paint much the same as Tamiya’s when thinned with MLT? With perhaps a little more thinner?

What do you do about metallics? I’m not keen on any brush-on metallics…

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They brush paint much better than Tamiya. Just add a little MCLT to avoid brush marks.
For metallics, I use Mister Metal Color lacquer metallics.

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AK INTERACTIVE 3RD GENERATION are very good too.

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What they said.

Mr Color Leveling Thinner is the magic Elixir :tophat: well worth using it.

FWIW - Old school enamel & lacquer here still spraying Floquil etc. I think these sorts of paints work best for the airbrush part etc in my experience.

However, for detail painting with HairBrushing there some merit to acrylic paint. With acrylics (Vallejo) if I screw up the detail the paint is easy & safe to remove the acrylic with brush dampened in water or acrylic thinner if the base is cured enamel or lacquer. Works wonders for adding tools to model tanks and painting afterwards.

Basically, trying to say with the unique property of the three paint types it can be exploited to your advantage. The draw back is you’ll end up buying more paints.

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AK 3rd gen for brush painting are my favorite lately. For metallics-Gunze Mr. Metal color or Vallejo metal color (the 30ml bottles). Vallejo are very good for acrylic metallic, easy with the brush painting.

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Thanks everyone for the tips. I will be picking up some MCLT next. I did just purchase my first AK Real Colors lacquer paints for my first kit build in over 20 years so will add MCLT to my painting repertoire.

Another question - anyone have experience with Hataka Orange Line lacquers?

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Yes! I have used their IJA tank set and they shoot outstanding right out of the bottle. Excellent color authenticity too. They brush paint well with no thinning. Also compatible with MCLT.

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Thanks. Looks like there are two metallic series from them, one is the MC series, the other is the GX series. Which of these do you have experience with?

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I have the MC series paints. They are very good.