I am increasingly interested in pimping my xwing rides. I don't have time or money to invest in paint materials, but I do have nail polish galore!

Has anyone used nail polish before? I figure thin polishes that require several coats would be least intrusive. I'll hunt for an airbrush machine as well. Will polish hurt the models?

a local player near me did use nail polish I beleive on her PinkBacca squad (bluBacca) so on some Bwings and the falcon, she may have done others, they were fairly basic, but worked out just fine.

I would rather use cheep Wal-Mart hobby paint to nail polish. At least if you make a mistake you can wash it off. With Nail Polish, I would be afraid the nail polish remover would eat the plastic of the ship.

Now, if you want to get serious about it, there are several companies out there who make great paints for miniatures. Companies like GW, Privateer Press, Reaper, and so on. While these paints are the most expensive for so little, they are also the best!

I would go down the route of GW my self, great paints, great washes, and a great finish overall.

TBH its more hassle than its worth

Laquer/oil type paints will damage any brushes you have over time and you're better off getting a basic set of acrylic paint.

foundry do an excellent starter set of 10 most used/bought colours in large pots of acrylic paint.

You can ,as you probably know, wash your brushes with water with acrylics and also shape you brush point by licking you brush (you dont want to try that if you're cleaning paint off your brush with turps)

The built-in brush will be brutally horrible. The polish itself will be super thick. If you really want to try it, start with the under surface of a falcon or some test surface. I don't think it's going to end well.

A decent brush and a few colors is about $20. Way cheaper than an airbrush.

here you go £25 for 10 large pots of paint (twice as much in them as GW pots and they dont dry out as quick)

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/paints/foundry-painting-system/sample-paint-set/

I use foundry paint, gos on lovely. strong pigment but thins well for washes.

To give you an idea of how much you get in one of those pots... i do wwii reenactment. I repainted a german infantry helmet in their 'slate grey' and only used half a pot... you'll never use it all up in a lifetime if you're just repainting xwing models!

Incidentally i'll add that as a kid i painted plastic aircraft kits with oil paints and some of my first lead wargames minis with humbrol enamal paints (and even some car touch up paint).

Cue loads of messy figures, paint bleeding into each other, fingerprints as it took forever to dry and my mum yelling at me for wrecking my clothes about once a month.

Discovered acrylics and not only can you wash them off things if you get them before they dry but they dry in about ten minutes tops.. so you're not waiting three hours for the paint to dry like you can be if you've been heavy handed with a gloss paint.

appreciate you may already have a decent pool of nail paints but you should spend few coins on acrylics for models, for the cost of a small ship you coudl get white, black, silver, red and blue... that should let you do a lot of 'spaceship schemes' as acrylics also blend well.

Use the right paint for the right job.

You wouldnt paint your nails with citadel acrylics... likewise you dont want to be painting ships with nail paint.

I would advise against painting with nail polish. Your enthusiasm is good, but it doesn't replace the right medium, and acrylics are really what you want. The things nail polish is designed to help fingernails do: resist chipping, deal with being bit, being used as a screwdriver, etc; are all things that thicken the liquid and smother details. Models hate paint like that.

In the end you'll be happier with your models, have less [ie: zero] brushes ruined, and be a better painter with practice.

If you plan on hunting for an airbrush, you can easily afford all the paint you could ever need. Citadel or Vallejo are brands I'd recommend but you can get by just fine with flip-top paints you find at craft and dollar stores.

Washes are another easy way to add spacegrime and shading to your models, and they're probably the cheapest thing of all. Dab of paint [black, blue, brown, grey...] on your brush, clean your brush in a bit of water. That coloured water is now a wash!

Note that an airbrush deposits paint like a scaled-down can of spray paint. As a rough approximation, if you'd be comfortable spray-painting an X-Wing the size of a shoebox, then airbrushing an in-game X-Wing should be about the same.

Obviously, people do it. I just wouldn't expect it to work out flawlessly the first couple of tries. My airbrush skills certainly aren't up to it yet.

I have a Badger Rebel, and have been pretty happy with it, though I don't have anything to compare it to. I have to be really diligent about cleaning it, and then making sure it's dry before packing it away, though.

I've never felt the need for airbrushs at this scale. I used to use one when i did 1/35th modelling as the last thing you want is brush strokes showing on large scale models but for anything at 1.48 or smaller sable brushes are fine.

This is all really great feedback, thanks!

I'll keep the polish on my nails and find a paint solution for my minis.

I'm in the same boat and have been tempted to touch up some of my models with my nail polish but never got round to. Let me know how you get on!

You can ,as you probably know, wash your brushes with water with acrylics and also shape you brush point by licking you brush (you dont want to try that if you're cleaning paint off your brush with turps)

Even using Acrylics I wouldn't recommend using this method to reshape the brush. If you go with reasonable brushes you should be able to re-point them by wetting them and then tapping the ferrule. Using soap, solid hand soap after painting keeps them in better condition as well.

Advice, have a look around the internet for brush care info. There are quite a few good sites out there.

Some of the best brushes are made by Rosemary and co if you're prepared to swallow the £7, approx $10.50 postage charge to the states.

In fairness, licking/sucking the brush tip back to shape is something the studio painters did while I was at Games Workshop so if it works for them....

I repainted a bunch of my minis with a minimal investment in materials, I spent around $18 in paints (reaper and vallejo) on miniaturemarket.com

If you think you can mix colors well enough all you need is red, blue, yellow, black, white, and a wash (some brands call these Shades). With these five paints you can create any non-metallic color, and you could alway hold off on buying the wash and just use extra thinned paint. I was able to match the base color of an x-wing with just black, white and yellow, but if you plan on doing something like that, test a small dab of the color on a small spot underneath the ship or on its cannons, and let it dry a bit before proceeding.

You don't need a primer for x-wing miniatures, but you do need to wash them before you paint, dish soap and warm water works fine. It's very important to thin your paints, and apply multiple coats, otherwise it will end up thick, and lumpy with visible brush strokes. You'll want some kind of acrylic coat to protect them once they're done. I like semi-gloss best for x-wing. There's a variety of products you can use for this process.

This is all really great feedback, thanks!

I'll keep the polish on my nails and find a paint solution for my minis.

Thank Goodness.

Your models will thank you.

In fairness, licking/sucking the brush tip back to shape is something the studio painters did while I was at Games Workshop so if it works for them....

My understanding is that flow improver is incredibly toxic (way more so than the paint), so don't use it if you're a brush-licker.

I read it on the internets! It must be true!

In fairness, licking/sucking the brush tip back to shape is something the studio painters did while I was at Games Workshop so if it works for them....

LOL.. true enough, been doing it since I was a kid.. back in the 80s or so when I got into painting figures for my RPG characters. a little spit goes a long way.. haha..

I have to agree with a lot of what people here have said.. lots of good advice here.

I repainted a bunch of my minis with a minimal investment in materials, I spent around $18 in paints (reaper and vallejo) on miniaturemarket.com

If you think you can mix colors well enough all you need is red, blue, yellow, black, white, and a wash (some brands call these Shades). With these five paints you can create any non-metallic color, and you could alway hold off on buying the wash and just use extra thinned paint. I was able to match the base color of an x-wing with just black, white and yellow, but if you plan on doing something like that, test a small dab of the color on a small spot underneath the ship or on its cannons, and let it dry a bit before proceeding.

You don't need a primer for x-wing miniatures, but you do need to wash them before you paint, dish soap and warm water works fine. It's very important to thin your paints, and apply multiple coats, otherwise it will end up thick, and lumpy with visible brush strokes. You'll want some kind of acrylic coat to protect them once they're done. I like semi-gloss best for x-wing. There's a variety of products you can use for this process.

I've never washed any of mine, just painted right over. I agree no primer is needed a couple thinned coats shoudl cover nicely.

and for a wash, you can make your own a 4 or 5 part water to paint mix should be fine.. depending on how heavy a wash you want.. you may want 3 to 1.. I have a couple of washes and inks and I still thin them a little. I have a couple I need to put on the Repaint thread I used them on, straight out they are heavy, so I repainted my colors and thinned them and washed again.. I lost no real detail and they look ok for what I wanted so I can live with it.. lol.. the pics aren't as good as real life on these but they were fun to paint.

I am an avid plastic model builder i build 1/72 scale jets only and currently have around 300+ different kits from around the world.. That said i use an air brush on just about every thing except small detail parts.. then i use a high quality brush and thinned

enamel or acrylics purchased at my local hobby or craft store. if you google a bit you can find lots of info on which type of paint is better and why... but for the ultra small scale of an X-wing miniature. I would think ether of the paint types would work but they would have to be super thin and built up with several coats to preserve the detail. On a personal note i have noticed that acrylic paint doesn't "Stick" as well as enamel when i am masking a part off it sometimes pulls the paint off the subject. although the thinner the paint the less of a problem it should be.. It was a problem on a 1/72 scale B-52 i was building.. I am currently building a 1/72 Hazagawa Mig-27 and a 1/72 Zevda Mig-23.. The Zevda kit required lots of sanding and putty but over all is a more accurate kit. but i digress.. I am going to repaint some of my miniatures eventually. best bet would be to ask and or read the post of those folks on here that have all ready done it and have the pictures to show their works.. I know of several on here that i really really like and have some serious paint skills because as the scale goes up the harder it is to paint!!! a trained monkey can make a 1/32 scale kit-look good!! lol I plan on paint a few of my shuttles grey as i just don't like the white. It doesn't look "Military" enough for me!!! might try to do one in splinter Russian camo like on their new stealth fighter...

as an example, this is largely foundry acrylic. I usually paint flat colours of the base, drybrush up to a shade or two lighter. Paint any extra colours i.e panels and give them a glaze or a wash to control where the shading goes.

Some bits are blended up.

I usually mask any cockpit areas to keep the gloss look but its easy to replace with gloss varnish

I occasionally use citadel washes/inks to get some effects but the 'used future' grime is just foundry acrylic black mixed to the same consistancy of semi skimmed milk and then dragged off with tissue paper before it drys or pools.

I'm quite pleased with the effects.

I think i've used a total of about ten colours on all of my repaints.

HWK painted to match my Z95s

The HWK took an hour or two to do tops.

Kath Scarlett Firespray painted for my wife

Before 'grime' black wash

and after

usually i just add to the existing scheme, mainly engines

Y wings given more contrast between the 'gold' and white

Lastly engine glow on my lambda

Last bit of advice if you're doing repaints is to paint in daylight or get a good day light bulb, at the very least use daylight to match your shades. I painted my HWK first and matched the colour to my z95s one evening and it was a perfect match under artificial light, in the day it didnt have the same 'green' to the grey so i did it again in daylight... wierdly it looks off under artificial light, i think its the way FFGs paint catches the light. I've got daylight painting bulbs but this one was a pig to match as it looks fine now in natural light and a bit off under normal house bulbs.

It wont matter for doing xwing models but *never* do causcasian flesh tones under artificial light, they either go orange or brown

In fairness, licking/sucking the brush tip back to shape is something the studio painters did while I was at Games Workshop so if it works for them....

I've done this also, but I use Humbrol enamels. You want to make sure you clean and dry the brush thoroughly or after painting a few dozen tanks your tongue is green and the only way you can tell your coffee from you turps is by colour alone.

I only use acrylics these days with the exception of clear gloss to make visors shine, for that i still use enamel

But... i have been known to use my tea to wash my brush before

I make sure my coffee cup and my dish for washing my brushes are different shapes.. lol.. Haven't washed a brush in my coffee yet.. lol

I painted my HWK first and matched the colour to my z95s one evening and it was a perfect match under artificial light, in the day it didnt have the same 'green' to the grey so i did it again in daylight... wierdly it looks off under artificial light, i think its the way FFGs paint catches the light.

A common problem in photography, and printing, when you want to match colors... It's called color metamerism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_%28color%29

Awesome job on the repaints by the way