Army Painter Mega Paint Set, Part 2

Over the past week, I have been working with the contents of the Army Painter Mega Paint Set, along with one of their cans of Pure Red spray paint.

The two photos above are after the spray paint has dried. The amount of red overwhelmed my poor digital camera and I was not sure the shots were going to even turn out. I took about six different photos and these two turned out the best.

As you can see, the spray completely covers the plastic and metal figures, with no material color bleeding through. However, in the course of painting the metal figures, I accidentally dropped the stick I was holding and a significant amount of red primer came off...in my mind it was more than what a standard black or white primer would have done.

I do not have current WIP photos of my troops, but I will take pics of those later. I AM noticing the red primer does bleed through quite a bit, even through two coats of watered down AP Tanned Flesh. It may be best to not use a 1:1 water to paint ratio with the colored sprays as primer.

Also, it has taken me 3 coats of straight AP Demonic Yellow to "mostly" cover the red primed socks of my troops pictured here. Yellows and reds have always been a problem as far as undercoat bleed through, no matter the brand, but I was trying to go with the "Army Painter Method" of using base colors only, on top of the primer. I will switch back to using a light brown paint, applied first, on top of the primer to then be covered by the yellow.

For the reds, white as undercoat seems to work best, without any "pinkish" hues that I have had with Games Workshop paints, in the past.

The AP paint bottles are virtually the same as those of Vallejo, the only noticeable difference being that the Vallejo bottles have slightly rounded edges. However, there IS a significant problem with the AP paints that I have no had with Vallejo. The photo below indicates this.
These are two bottles that have yet to be used or even shaken. Notice the leakage of paint from the Tanned Flesh bottle. This is a result of packaging, as the boxed set was still factory sealed when I received it.

The red bottle is, well hugely disappointing. Look at the crusted on red paint...and I've not even used the paint yet. You are seeing the condition of the bottle immediately after I opened the darn thing. Look at all the red paint smeared inside the cap. It was thickly in there too, not a thin smear, but a thick clump of wasted paint.

I cannot help but think that either the cap does not seal the bottle when twisted tight or that the folks who packaged the paint did not do a good enough job. Unfortunately, I was not thinking about this when I shook a couple of the paints (Black and Grey) and did not take the caps off until after I had shaken them. When I did take the caps off, I had a lot of paint ooze out of the caps...having either already escaped from the bottle or having done so during the shaking process.

Now, I am going to have to make sure all the caps are twisted tightly before I shake the ones I have not yet used or opened.

How well does the paint go on?

Well, when using Vallejo, I use a 1:1 mixing ratio of water to paint, but that seems to be too much water for AP. When I go 1:1.5 or 1:2 then the AP paints seem to work better. The only thing is, the AP paints are drying out faster than the Vallejo paints when I test them using the same mixing ratio. This seems strange as I think that these two modeling paints are fairly nearly the same chemical mix and just the color hues are what makes them different. Now, admittedly I have had the Vallejo's a lot longer and this may make for some difference, but I would think this would mean the Vallejo would come off the worse for it.

Will I use AP in the future?

Yes, I think I may do so. My local FLGS is rumored to be contemplating carrying the AP line of paints, which means I can get what I want within a matter of minutes instead of waiting a week or more. None of the local shops stock Vallejo, aside from a couple of the standard paint sets, so it's all special order for that line.

Still, AP needs a much more broad selection of paints in order to fulfill my paint needs as very few of their colors will work well for WWI and WWII vehicles or uniforms. Here, Vallejo wins out.

The paint brushes, of which I have used three of the six provided in the set, are okay. Not great, but not too bad either. The do reshape into a point nicely, after use, but Regiment brush thickens up a bit with a moderate amount of paint. Thus, it is too small to do large areas, but since it does not hold a point when using it, it is of limited use to me. I was painting the 28mm figures pictured above, with it, but I would hesitate to use this particular brush on 15-18mm. The Character brush is a dream to work with, though; it kept its point while painting.

Oh, one last thing, Vallejo bottles are 17ml and the AP bottles are 18ml. Of course, with the leakage of the AP paints, this difference may be moot.