Need an opinion on paints…

I honestly like the duncan ceramic paints because of the obsorbtion into the sculptures….

a lot of people here use different paints…

I’ve heard most people talk about golden acrylics….but the ones I’ve gotten haven’t been very good but I did buy them from Michael’s and it seems they don’t keep their stock current so most of their paints are old….and don’t work as well…

Nam has some good hints in her post….check that out…

and I’m sure a lot of people with share their opinions on paint….I know a lot have said they like liquitex….my least favorite is delta….doesn’t blend well and it’s hard to get things to stick on top

I use a mixture of paints I have folk art, and game paints right now, and I just ordered some golden paints too.

No problem!

When I was ‘hired’ to write the tutorial early last year, I had to test a bunch of different kinds of paint so we knew what to recommend. I tested both high end ‘artist’ grade paints, and ‘craft’ grade paints, since we knew that everyone operates on a different budget and different paint availability.

I tested Golden brand, Liquitex, Delta Ceramcoat, and a combo of Folk art and Apple Barrel brands.

Here’s a photo I took last year when I was doing these tests. I’d select the same colors from each brand and paint a griffin the same way so I could compare. I found that I could get ALL the paint brands to apply to the PYOs and they all looked okay at the end. There is a marked difference in lustre, hue, and vibrancy in the paints though. The Golden paints had the most vibrant and glossy color and deepest lustre. They went on well but often needed several coats. The Liquitex paints (SOFT BODY! It’s important to mention this- if you get stiff paints, painting them on a PYO might be a nightmare! Look for soft body paints) went on like butter, and were of very good color, vibrancy, and lustre. They were pretty on-par with the Golden (Golden’s only advantage is that they come in interference colors as well). The craft grade paints (Folkart, Ceramcoat, Apple Barrel) were all pretty close in quality… they DO look okay and if you are not planning on doing more than one or two PYOs there’s no reason to invest in expensive paints. But the truth is that they tend to be a lot more ‘flat’ in color. If this doesn’t matter to you, go for it!! I found that Folkart and Apple Barrel paints went on a little smoother than the Ceramcoat paints.

Here’s a photo of a griffin I did in Liquitex soft body paint, next to one I did with either Folkart paints or Ceramcoat paints. I can’t remember… I did so many of them. I’ll tell you that the three I did in the ‘craft’ paints all turned out nearly identical so you can use this as an example.
The came colors of each brand were used on each griffin (shows how much each brand’s colors can deviate from one another!) The ONLY thing I did differently was the beaks, I added some grey to the Liquitex one.

As you can see, both griffins look okay, but the quality of the colors is better on the Liquitex one. The craft paint one looks more ‘chalky’. If you’re not picky then this is not a problem!

I hope this was helpful! The pieces of mine you see on eBay were all painted using Golden brand, this is because we’re tying to sell you the highest quality piece we can when Windstone sells their pieces.

These are 1st generation ‘soft feather’ griffins and in general didn’t antique as well as the current griffins., so any antiquing errors are mine, not the paint. 🙂

Thanks Nam! That’s really interesting info. I had always wondered how the cheaper and more expensive paints differed.