In Part 1 I said that a wargamer only needs a dozen artists’ pigments instead of scores of hobby paints. In Part 2 I said that pigments behave quite individually, and that you need to get to know them. This time I will describe the pigments I actually use. I will organise the 33 pigments in my collection these into three groups of 11: the Premier League – that top ones I use all the time; the Second Division (I know, I know, that’s not how the football league works) of the pigments I use occasionally but could probably do without if need be; and the Also Rans – the ones I have bought but don’t actually use these days.

But first I need to talk about replicability. One reason people might stick to ready-mixed hobby paints rather than mix their own is that they are worried that each time they mix a fresh batch it will look a bit different. This why I try to stick to a two pigments plus white rule for mixing. This way it isn’t too hard to replicate an old mix. Otherwise if a third pigment is used this must in a small quantity for a tweak. And anyway a little variation doesn’t matter – there is variation in life, after all. At one point I tried juggling three main pigments (in my initial efforts to get German Dunkelgelb), and this was indeed a nightmare. That affects the palette choices.

The next point is that unless I say otherwise, all the pigments I describe are from the Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic range, where I use tubes of 59ml. I have found these to be constantly good and reliable paints – but the killer feature is that they come in the best designed tubes. The screw-top lids last for ever. Unlike Winsor & Newton or Daler Rowney, where eventually I tend to lose the whole tube because the top malfunctions, or I have some other packaging failure. This has never happened with the Liquitex Artists range – though this doesn’t apply to their Basics student-quality paint, which comes in cheaper tubes. Unless you are into bulk processing, a 59ml tube should last forever. My Cadmium Red Hue is over 40 years old, I think, and has been in regular, if sparing, use. I have had to renew only a few of my Liquitex paints (Titanium White and raw Umber, for example).

The Premier League

These are the pigments I can’t be without. If one of these gives out, I immediately replace it – though with Liquitex paints this has happened only a few times.

Titanium White. Almost everything needs a bit of white in it – only bits of detail that need to stand out, like facings perhaps, should be saturated. This is often where hobby paints go wrong, though I think that some manufacturers may be wising up to the problem. The scale effect – the idea that the colour needs to be paler the smaller the scale – is not uncontroversial, but the fact is that saturated colour is for advertisements, not representing gritty reality. So you need white pigment. Titanium White is the most versatile on offer – it is bright and opaque (a virtue in the hobby context, if not always for artists). There are alternatives, but they don’t make the Premier League. Incidentally I almost never use this by itself, as it is too bright. To represent white on a miniature it needs to be mixed with a touch of something (I use raw Umber most often) – unless for small dabs where strong contrast is needed.

Prussian Blue Hue. This is a lower-chroma blue, but actually a bit too bright to use directly for Prussian or French uniform coats. It is a mid-register blue, that mimics the colour from the standard indigo dyes well. This Liquitex paint is not pure pigment but behaves really well. It is the only blue to make it into my Premier League as it is the only one you really need. Mix with white to get paler, sky blue colours. Idantherene Blue is a decent alternative and is what I started with – and is in my Second Division.

Raw Umber. A low chroma mid-brown that I use all the time. Mix with Prussian Blue to get greys, and as close to black as you need. This is the place to start for most browns. I also use it a lot in primers, mixed with white gesso, and terrain (but not the artist quality stuff).

Yellow Oxide. This is the industrial age version of the ancient pigment of Yellow Ochre. Yellow is a difficult pigment, which often comes out thin and horrible. Yellow Oxide is bit duller and veers a little bit orange, but it is robust. It is my go-to yellow, even for facings (including for Swedish uniforms). It mimics the available pre-industrial yellow dyes well. It is also useful for more modern camouflage colours, from German Dunkelgelb, to Olive Drab (and the similar French Napoleonic artillery green).

Cadmium Red Medium Hue. Alas pigment with this name is not in the current Liquitex range – they have Cadmium Red Medium and Cadmium Free Red Medium. I think what I am using is the latter. It is the only high chroma paint in the palette, and is a lovely opaque pigment . You don’t need much – but sometimes you want your red to really pop, and this does the job. Otherwise you tone it down with a bit of green.

Raw Sienna. This is a beautiful orange-brown. When you need more chroma for than Raw Umber offers, this is where to go for yellower browns. I also use it as a basis for khaki.

Burnt Sienna. This is redder than Raw Sienna, and useful when you want a red tint to things (Caucasian flesh for example). I use it quite a bit for horses.

Permanent Sap Green. I’ve had more trouble with greens than any other hue, and I still do. This lower-chroma mix isn’t too blue and I have found it quite useful. Funnily enough I don’t need green that much, away from the olive colour that I get from Yellow Oxide.

Mars Black. Recently promoted to the Premier League. Monet always said that black should have no place on a palette. Totally saturated black rarely happens in nature – things just look black in context. The near-blacks we get by mixing Raw Umber and Prussian Blue, say, look fine on a miniature. And when mixing with true colour, it distorts the hue. But I have been finding more uses for it – especially mixing with Yellow Oxide to produce a wide variety of colours that are useful in the WW2 context. And sometimes you want a black very quickly – and you can just mix a bit of any unsaturated colour in to lighten it up a bit. Also you might want a neutral grey (e.g. for US WW2 aircraft) – best reached by mixing black with white. Mars Black is very potent, though – one of my most frequent mistakes is putting in too much in, which then forces you to put too much other pigment in.

Iridescent Rich Silver. I’ve not found metallic artist acrylic paint all that satisfactory for miniatures. I even experimented with a hobby paint – but that was worse. I have also found that silver doesn’t last as long as other paints in the tube. But it is very useful – usually mixed in with something else to give it a bit of body, except when representing polished metal, like sword blades.

Iridescent Bright Gold. As with silver, not wholly satisfactory – and often needs to be mixed with Yellow Oxide or Raw Umber to give it bit of oomph. But still necessary for most horse and musket miniatures, and doubtless earlier eras too.

Second division

The second division are pigments that I use regularly. Some I use quite frequently but could substitute with something else – or I might replace them with something different if they die. Others I are harder to substitute but I only use rarely.

Burnt Umber. The last of the quartet of classic earth pigments (the two umbers and siennas), it is redder than raw umber but also dark. It can fulfil the same general role – mixing with blue. But I don’t think it is quite as well-behaved, and mixes with Titanium White quite can come out looking not very nice. I used to use it quite a bit for horses, but I have since changed my method, using oil colours – where I use Van Dyke Brown instead. But that’s a whole other story.

Idantherene Blue. As noted above, this used to be my go-to blue. It’s a bit darker than Prussian Blue, but I recently bought a replacement tube (my old one was from Winsor & Newton and suffered a tube failure). I now use it for French uniforms, while retaining Prussian Blue for the Prussian ones. I don’t really think it makes enough difference to be worth it, but it keeps me amused.

Venetian Red (Winsor & Newton). I have already said that I like to work with lower chroma pigments. But my go-to red, Cadmium Red Hue, is high chroma – and Burnt Sienna is a bit on the brown/orange side. Venetian Red is an old-fashioned dull red pigment that I have found to be quite useful, and which is more crimson than the Sienna. Apparently the old masters used to use it for flesh tones – but it is in fact too red for that for miniatures. Alas Liquitex don’t make it (or at least not under that name) and I have and my old Windsor & Newton is suffering from cap failure and is slowly dying as a result – so I find myself avoiding using it. When it finally goes I’m tempted to try and find something to replace it.

Payne’s Grey. This is a classic mix, now, according to Wikipedia, often made by combining Burnt Sienna with Ultramarine Blue. It isn’t hard to mix this yourself, but the ready-mix is convenient on occasion. For miniatures it is popular to use for horses, either as an undercoat (it approximates to horse skin colour) or for black/grey horses – and this is where I mainly use it these days. Mine is an ancient tube from Winsor & Newton, which is about to die through cap failure. I used to use this quite a bit as a black, and to tone down blues – but nowadays I have other ways of acheiving this. Liquitex do a version these days, but I don’t think I will replace this tube after I throw it out.

Cadmium Yellow Medium. Occasionally I want a yellow that is higher chroma and with a truer yellow hue than Yellow Oxide – and this is what I use. It is probably the best of the brighter yellows – which tend to be thin and horrible. Its opacity is still pretty poor by the standard of most pigments. Using a mix largely based on this on WW2 aircraft can take several coats. It is probably better to use a true yellow when mixing greens too – though I’m no expert on this.

Azure Blue. This is a mixture from Daler Rowney. I bought it because I thought it would be useful to have a pigment closer to primary Cyan. I haven’t used it much – I get sky blues by mixing white with Prussian Blue. I have sometimes used it when trying to adjust greens – where I have found it to work well, to my slight surprise. I think there are several alternatives. I didn’t see anything that looked quite right in my preferred Liquitex range – though Cerulean Blue might work as well, as might their “Brilliant Blue”. I dislike Cobalt Blue (see below), which is a bit darker and redder.

Transparent Mixing White. Otherwise known as Zinc White. I use white a lot to reduce saturation, and this is mostly Titanium White, as do most artists. Zinc White is an alternative where opacity is not an issue – which it usually isn’t if white isn’t the base colour. I can’t say I have noticed much difference – except my impression is that it has a bit less punch – which can be a good thing. I’m not sure I would replace it if it died. I do use Zinc White as my standard white for oil paint which I use on horses, where opacity is not an issue.

Viridian Hue. I bought this because it was the recommended green in one of the first books I read on painting with acrylics. I found it a horrible pigment to work with – runny and thin, as well a being a bit to blue for most uses. I then read that it was a very good mixing pigment, and since had a tube in stock, I started to use it to mix with reds to get grey-greens (such as German Field Grey or Israeli Sinai Grey), where it works fine. So I actually use it quite a bit, but I wouldn’t buy it again, so it doesn’t make the Premier League.

Iridescent Rich Copper. I had an idea that I should be able to mix metallic paints rather like the normal ones – and copper provides the red. I do use it sometimes, but not very much.

Neutral Gray. This is straight mix of black and white. I used this quite a lot in the early days, but then stopped when my colour mixing got more sophisticated. I have started using it again for convenience – in mixes which require both black and white – and adjusting accordingly after the initial mix. There have been three applications: with Yellow Oxide to get Olive Drab (though typically needing more black), as a base for Neutral Grey on US aircraft (funnily enough – though it needs a bit more white if I recollect correctly), and with Prussian Blue for Prussian Napoleonic artillery – it’s a bit less faff than using white and Raw Umber. This was useful enough for me to replace the tube recently.

Unbleached Titanium. This is a recent acquisition when I wanted to top up a recent order – and I haven’t used it yet. Since reducing saturation is a constant, I thought this might be an interesting alternative to using white (after reading a write-up on the Jackson’s blog) – requiring a bit less sensitivity when mixing. It might even be light enough to use as a dirty white by itself.

The Also Rans

These are the pigments that are still in my studio but which I no longer use regularly, and which I could have saved myself some money by never acquiring.

Cadmium Orange Hue. (Presumably Cadmium Free Orange in today’s Liquitex range). The orange-blue axis is the most important mixing spectrum for horse and musket miniatures. I thought it would be useful to have a high chroma orange whenever the orange dimension needed a lift. But it’s rare you need anything brighter than Raw Sienna, and if you do, you can mix up an orange using Cadmium Red and one of the yellows very easily. This one stays in the box these days, but it’s possible I will use it occasionally. It handles in a perfectly friendly way.

Ultramarine Blue (Red Shade). On the same logic this was my high chroma blue. It’s a very powerful pigment and mid range to reddish bright blue – a delicious colour and quite a user-friendly paint, but in fact Prussian Blue is almost always bright enough miniatures purposes. And if I want to use a blue to create or adjust a green, I prefer to use something closer to Cyan – i.e. Azure Blue in my palette.

Quinacridone Magenta. After I got religion when I was first introduced to the art of colour mixing, I thought a powerful primary magenta would be useful. This is a modern organic pigment, and seemed to fit the bill. I have almost never used it. It might be quite fun to mix it with greens, but I’ve never seen the need. If I ever needed to mix Polish Pink I might start with this, as I have it already – but there are other ways to do this.

Phthalo Green. This Daler Rowney pigment was yet another result of my enthusiasm for high chroma colours on the various segments of the colour wheel. Like most of the others it now languishes. I could use it in place of the Viridian, but its higher chroma would probably make it harder to manage.

Permanent Yellow (Arylamide). My first yellow, from Daler Rowney, which I bought in the very early days. It’s a horrible pigment, thin and runny with very little opacity. Cadmium Yellow is much better – and if you are happy with lower chroma (which I usually am), then there is Yellow Oxide or Yellow Ochre.

Dioxazine Purple. Another pigment bought when I was looking for bright pigments to represent the main hues. Purple itself has very few applications in miniatures painting – and if you do need it, a workable lower chroma version is easy to mix. I found it quite difficult to handle when I tried mixing it with Oxide Yellow to dull it down, and gave up. I use Mars Black these days – after trying to mix a red and blue pigments to get something more controllable. However, when creating my own colour wheel I did get a beautiful, rich dark yellow-brown when mixing with Cadmium Yellow.

Cobalt Blue. This Daler Rowney pigment was one of my early ones – for use when I needed a rather greener and brighter hue of blue than Idanthrene. I found it to be a horrible pigment to work with, and used it less and less until I stopped.

Opaque Oxide of Chromium. Another one of my early Daler Rowney pigments – this is a lower chroma mid-hue green. It has an interesting consistency – quite dense, but easy to apply with a brush, and wonderfully opaque. It’s an ideal pigment to apply straight from the tube, which is what I did a lot of in the early days – this worked well on French dragoon coats, for example. But I haven’t opened it for years. Its consistency means that it is a bit harder to mix and the old fashioned cap is a bit intimidating. Incidentally the blue colour on the label is the result of aging – the yellow component of the ink used clearly wasn’t light-fast.

Cobalt Green. I bought this Windsor & Newton pigment when I was casting around for greens that I could use straight from the tube, subject to the odd tweak. It didn’t work for me. This was so long ago I can’t actually remember why – probably a bit on the blue side, and high chroma. There may have been a problem with the texture too. If my Viridian gives out it will probably work as a substitute.

ACRA Red Orange. Now sold as Quinacridone Red Orange. I bought this when looking for pigments that I could use with only small adjustments – I was looking for a red that could be used as a base for uniform coats. I actually used it quite frequently; it’s a bit dark for uniform coats, but this was readily rectified (at the time I mixed in a bit Yellow Ochre). I have since stopped using it. Its lower chroma means that it remains potentially useful – but the normal earth pigments seem to be cover this area well enough, without bringing in fancy modern ones.

Pyrole Red. I bought this at the same time as the Acra Red Orange, when I thought it would be useful to have an alternative to Cadmium Red. It proved pretty much indistinguishable, and so I have almost never used it. It turns out that this pigment was developed for Ferrari for use in its famous bright red cars – its virtues being its brightness and stability; its downside being expense. And I do remember it being quite pricy – but then so were the Cadmium Reds, including the “hue” version. Actually these days it is slightly cheaper than the other bright reds, but still expensive for acrylic pigment. As and when my faithful Cadmium Red Hue gives out, this pigment should be a perfectly decent substitute. It may yet have its day in the Premier League.

Finally there are a couple more pigments that used to be in my collection, but which have now expired – and which I won’t be replacing.

Daler Rowney Pale Olive Green. Olive is a useful colour in the hobby field, and this was one of my very first pigments. I got a bit of a shock when I opened the tube, though. It is very bright: it needs a lot of cooling down to be anything close to usable. I didn’t know how to do that in the early days – and later on, when I did, the question was why bother? The description “pale” is a misnomer. More recently I tried this out as a student grade paint for use in terrain – but found the same problem. I was a bit puzzled until I saw the modern Yellow-Magenta-Cyan colour wheel – which show the high chroma greens as being much lighter than in the traditional colour wheel – in the sense that yellow is lighter than blue.

Winsor & Newton Graphite Grey. I used this quite a bit when I realised that black was too dark to use directly on miniatures – how do you lowlight it? It was my usual substitute. Eventually it suffered cap failure and died, and there was no need to replace it. Now that I use a wet palette it is a trivial matter to mix something into Mars black, or create a dark grey from a blue-orange or red-green combination.

A bit of a long post today – but I hope it is of value to hobbyists thinking of using artists’ colours. It’s also a bit of a window in my evolving understanding of using artists paints.

Next time: Part 4: Painting Horse & Musket miniatures