Monday, June 11, 2012

Lahmian medium

Ah hell no. A GW product thats worth the money?
Yep.
Lahmian medium is my new best friend. And I LOVE mediums. My additives tub is fit to bursting with six types of matt medium, varnished, glaze mediums etc. And I have been mixing my own special sauces for a while using windex, talc and other household items... But this is great right out of the bottle.
It allows layered glazing without gloss, and dulls shine like dullcoat. Exactly as it sez on da bottle. At six bucks australian, its still pretty pricey, but the convenience is worth the dollars I think.
I experimented using it to mix with windsor &newtown inks and they matt down like old citadel washes, leaving a pleasant tint.

I blasted through a night horror devils shading tonight thanks to the stuff and am surprised by just how much I like it.
As far as the new paint range here is my thoughts...
Dry: cute, Necron metal is extremely good- very fine metal grains make it brush on finer than most metallics.
If you want to save some cash, I found if I mixed a fat load of industrial talc into regular acrylics I got something similar in performance.

Bases: bluhg! Too glossy. Loved foundation paints with all my heart for their smooth opaque matt finish. Every one in the batch I had dried shiny. No good for base coating :(
However, I fixed mine by adding lots of industrial talc as a matting agent, a little dish soap to break surface tension and windex to thin and make it evaporate and dry on the model quickly but not on the brush.
Layers: medium thinned paints. Not bad for out of the bottle painters -I can see what they where thinking, but for more serious painters... Hmmm.
I am sticking with coat darms, p3 and vallejo model color, and thinning and adding medium myself.
Textured paint? Not very effective for the size and price. I ended up make my own using sandy paste, heavy structure gel, grits, talus, flock and ink. Much better and I get it bulk.

One last word on mediums. I recommend grabbing a bottle of Jo Sonjas magic mix. Its a matt finish medium with flow aid and retarder in juuuuust the right mix for blending types to go ga ga over.
Pics of that night horror next issue!


1 comment:

  1. Hi, which range of W&N inks do you use? I've seen several people recommend the inks but there seems to be both "Drawing Inks" and "Caligraphy Inks". Love your blog, I've been reading through all posts starting with the first and has been great fun!

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