WarColours paints review. In other words, I got new paints!!!

Hi gang. I'm in the middle of vacation, which involves dragging the family around Sweden to various tourists traps. When we're home I'm hoping for bad weather to get some hobby time in, because otherwise I have to paint the house... yep, 1:1 scale painting.

Speaking of paints I have been trying out a new manufacturer named WarColours, based in Cyprus.

Don't you just love trying out new paints?

This new range of paints are supplied in dropper bottles with child-proof caps. The consistency is smooth and they should be suitable for airbrushing as well -- the website claims that but I haven't tried it myself.

The bottles hold 15 ml of paint. In comparison Vallejo bottles are 18 ml while GW paints only contain 12 ml.

The paints are sold singly for €1.60 or in different sets. They do not have strange names like "Rhinox Hide" (what is a Rhinox and what colour is it?) or "XV-88" (it's a sort of brown... not that one can tell by the name), instead they are labelled with a colour and a number. So "Olive 2" in the picture above is the second lightest in the Olive green range. The sets vary a bit; you can buy the basic paint set with 14 basic paints, including black and white. This set contains all the "middle" colours, but no highlights or shades. Then there are the starter sets containing five different shades of one colour, plus a transparent version and then black and white. There are also special sets like Flesh containing four flesh paints and four brown paints, or the Fire paint set containing three yellow, two orange and three red paints. Or you could order the whole shebang for just €119.90, that's 92 paints!

The Olive green set, missing the transparent green unfortunately.

I ordered the Olive Green set to try it out, and a transparent red paint as well -- I will be needing it when painting the Royal Guard figures for Imperial Assault later. Unfortunately I didn't get the transparent green that should have been in the set, instead they included a Cold Grey 3 by mistake. (I have been given store credit so I can add the transparent green in my next order, so no problem.) The other paints in the top picture were for my mate Håkan, so I can't comment on them, but Håkan seemed happy.

Here I have put a drop of each olive paint, plus the grey, white, black and transparent red.

As you can see above I use old CD:s for palettes, it work's very well. It's a bit hard to see the difference between the two darkest Olive paints, but there is a difference. Now the paint goes on smoothly and some of the paints are slightly translucent -- it varies a bit -- so they are well suited to building up the colour with several thin layers of the same paint if that is your style. The five different shades of each paint ensures you can get a good gradient of colours.

The scales show the way you can build up the paint, using the five shades of paint.

I tried out the paints on a Trandoshan Hunter from Imperial Assault. I had already sprayed it white so I got stuck in. I needed two layers of the darkest olive shade to properly cover the white (the gun is painted with one layer of the Grey 3 paint and as you can see it doesn't cover fully) but then I used only one layer each of the rest. I used the lightest colour (Olive 1) only on the edges of the scales on the upper side of his arms and the nose, ridge and eyebrows on his head. (I took stage by stage pictures the whole way, but some of them came out unfocused or differed in hue too much to be able to use, so I'm just showing the end result.)

This Kromlech ork was also used as a Guinea pig, this time over a black basecoat.

I also tried the paints over a black undercoat on some orks. It worked well, but as I was used with thicker paints I inadvertedly thinned the paint a bit too much and didn't get good coverage. So these paints do require some care, or rather, they don't require thinning like other paints. Still, the end result was good, I think.

The many different shades make blending and highlighting very easy.

So what's my verdict? The Warcolours paints are very good and I will be buying more of them. As it is a new company they don't have any metallics yet, but I hear they are in the works. If you are the kind of painter who likes to blend many thin layers these are the paints for you. If you paint NMM (Non-Metal Metallic) there are a couple of sets specially for that purpose. For me, it's very interesting that they have both cold grey and warm grey paints, as well as a blue grey paints.

Ordering was smooth and problem free with swift delivery. Highly recommended.
So go check them out.