Instar kindly sent me a sample set of paints to try out, here’s what I thought!
A few months ago, Instar Paint very kindly provided me with a generous sample set of their paints to try out. Here’s what I thought!
I received a selection of paints, including specifically the colours required to paint up Dark Angels. Because that’s my main army and would allow me to accurately compare their colours.
First impressions were pretty good. The bottles are nice dropper bottles with a very fine needle so you can easily control how much paint you are using. I noticed the lids do feel a little loose but they don’t come off unless you want them to, so it isn’t really a concern. One criticism I do have about the bottles is the text is quite small print on the label so it can be hard to know if you’re picking the right colour out. The lids are all identical too, so if they’re all standing up together it can take a while to find the paint you want. My solution to this was to dot a few drops of each paint into the recess on the lids, to give a visual aid to which pot is which.
The paints are thinner than the Citadel colours out of the pot, requiring little watering down to use. I use a wet palette so they’re pretty much ready to go straight from the pot for me. As a result though it does mean that they aren’t ideal for drybrushing.
I was impressed by the coverage of the colours, two coats generally does get you a nice solid colour. As with all paint ranges, it does vary from colour to colour and depends on your undercoat colour too.
I thought the black looked a bit pale like a darker grey at first, when wet it doesn’t look very black at all. This must be just the medium though because once the paint is dry the black is nice and dark.
It’s worth noting that Instar does a range of paints which matches the ‘classic’ Citadel colours of the past, so I had both a match for the current Caliban Green and the older Dark Angels Green provided. The colour matching seems to be pretty accurate. So if you’re looking for more paint from the discontinued range, you could do worse than check if Instar sell a match for your desired paint.
Here’s my Instar Paint test model (Right) and one I had painted earlier using standard Citadel Colour paints. As you can see, the results are a very close match indeed.
*Please note I was not paid to do this product review. They provided the paints as free samples for the purposes of review and trying out.
