I had used various metal paints, but all good metal paints were solvent based and I loathed the smell. We originally only sold model kits, but we could keep the price low as we sculpted, cast and boxed up our own products.
“ I have been a modeller all my life and I started Darkstar Miniatures as I was fed up with modellers being ripped off with over expensive poor quality models for sale. The owner, Steve, told me about the beginning of Darkstar and I’ll use his own words here: I reached out to Darkstar to find out more about them and received an email back from the owner of Darkstar Miniatures Company first apologising for the (rather short) delay. It’s no surprise that the man behind the scenes is a hobbyist himself, just looking for good metallic paint to use in his own hobby. I don’t always use the suggested colors in the triad, but it’s a nice reference to have.
The colors in the pictures on the one I got aren’t quite exact for a couple of the colors, but they’re close enough to give you a feel for what you’re dealing with.
Darkstar one tips full#
The metal on the webbed shoulder panels and the metallic trim and details on my Legio Venator Titans are done entirely with DarkStar metallics | Credit: Garrett “John Condit” SeversonĬondit: In addition, the full set comes with a flyer that identifies which paints are in which triads. And if you find yourself leaning on a particular triad frequently, DarkStar also sell their paints in three-bottle sets of those triads, so it’s easy to keep yourself stocked up on your go-tos. You can definitely do more, but if you’re looking for a starting point for which of the metals will go well together to create the effect you’re looking for, this is an excellent resource. In addition, several of the paints are organized into “triads,” which are essentially groups of three shades that can be blended together or layered and highlighted to create some really cool finishes. Definitely has made my painting life much easier and have made painting trim on all my Titans a more enjoyable (read: not terrible) experience. The silver colors range from nice dark steel tones to bright pewter and silver to some really unique tones like Blue Steel and Silver Verde.īair: I’ve been using DarkStar paints pretty exclusively since I was turned onto them by my friend Joe (instagram: joe_paints_stuff), a better painter than me, over a year ago. Just in the golds, you can look to Braid Gold, Royal Gold, or Imperial Gold for a nice, bright gold color that wouldn’t be out of place on Stormcast Eternals or Custodes, or you could go for Antique Gold or Victorian Gold for something that looks a little worn or antiqued. There’s a wide variety of each of the “categories” of metallics. The colors are basically what you’d expect, a range of silvers, golds, copper, bronze, etc., and really cover basically any metal color you could need, even a very dark “blackened brass” which is a particular favorite along with a verdigrised silver. That said, I find these a lot easier to work with, and the variety of metal colors is great. The full set clocks in at £80 (or right around $110 USD), which is somewhere between Vallejo and GW paints in price.Ĭondit: Shipping to the US wound up being around $30, which is pretty reasonable for transatlantic shipping, though it did push the price slightly north of what I’d be paying for the same number of paints from GW. There are 27 different colours of paint, their own metallic thinner, and an MDF or Acrylic paint rack to hold 30 bottles (so you have spare room for an extra bottle of two of your favorites along with the thinner). This company specializes in metallic paint if fact that’s all they do, and they do it very well.
If you check out their website, you’ll greeted by a mere five options to click on, a Contact button, and your shopping cart. It wouldn’t be surprising if you haven’t heard about this company before. Well, today we’re looking at the only product put out by DarkStar Miniatures, which is metallic paint. If you paint Chaos Space Marines or Titanicus titans then you probably spend more than half of your painting time doing metallic trim and you’ve probably googled or asked on a forum of some kind “what is the easiest/best metallic paint?”
If you’ve ever painted any miniatures you’ve probably used some metallic paint.