Thinning metallic paints?

Hello,

over the past months, I've become very used to painting with extremely thin paint. GW colors mixed with lots of water (milk consistency), applied in layers, or straight ink.

I could not get this to work with the metallic colors though. If I thin them with water, they don't really get thinner, but the individual specks of metal just get spaced farther apart, giving a very unsatisfactory result. Even when applied in multiple layers.

Additionally, the metals seem to dry very very quick - if I use them un-diluted, they seem to dry on the way from the pot to the mini, giving either a spotty look on the mini, or a damaged brush, or both. If I add only very little water, just to keep them from drying so quickly, they still seem to try very fast on the surface, creating some sort of "skin".

I have tried water and some "metallic thinner" stuff, with comparably bad results.

Any hints on the metallic colors? How do you work with them? Do you know what I mean? Do you use other colors maybe (not GW ones)? Is that normal, and NMM is the answer?

Thanks!

I use boltgun metal a lot and I thin that one out - A LOT!! and I don't think that it gets bad, just better when thinning so I don't know if your paints are messing with you or if my boldgun metal is kind on me

But if you want thin metal paint that still covers good you should try Valejo. I don't like the valejopaints in general but I really love Valejo metal paints since it covers really really good even if it is so thin and you can thin it even further without a bad result. Especially gold is a hard color to find that covers good and GW doesn't have a good gold color. But Valejos gold is great

Hm, speaking of which. Most of my paints are 5 years old. Could be that they're ageing badly.

I thin my GW paints with a few drops of water; but thats when they are thick. When I am painting with the GW metallics, I have noticed the same thing; they dry fast on the mini and the brush. I usually rince my brush constantly while using them to avoid damage to it. When I need it a little thinner, I just wet my brush, get the paint, then paint. Immediately rinse the brush after, though, since the 'wetter' paint will wick up the brush to the ferrule.

Edit: With paints that old, consider adding a couple ball bearings or BBs to the pot to act as agitators. I have a ton of paints that old that I still use, but sometimes I have to shake em so much my hand wants to fall off.

if you want metallics that are smoother and thin better try the reaper master series paint. Dave Pauwells (multi demon winner, member of Team North America and who teaches seminars on painting metallics at Adepticon and GenCon) showed these to me a couple years ago when we were talking shop and I went out and bought some the next day. Chris Borer swears by them too and uses them almost exclusively for his metallics. Reccomendations dont come better than that.