Pebeo Studio Paint Range - Now on The Ion Age!

The Ion Age now stocks paint, inks and brushes!

Pebeo Studio Acrylic Paint Range

by Sam Croes.

This story began over a decade ago. I had just discovered the joy that is the miniatures hobby, and like any other hobbyist I had a small selection of little acrylic miniature paints which were purchased from a variety of manufacturers. These were on the expensive side ,but overall, I was happy with the results they yielded and thought nothing more of it.

In those days, I was also an art student, and not a very wealthy one for that matter. Now obviously, I did not use the little model paints for my big canvas paintings, they were far too costly for such a purpose. Instead, I shopped at the art store for my grander projects. One brand that was favoured by my fellow art students was Pebeo, for its quality and affordability. And naturally I would get big tubes of Pebeo Studio Acrylics for all things big.

For some reason, I did not make the connection between the two disciplines (canvas painting and figure painting) right away. I suppose I did not think the cheaper Pebeo paint could have the same quality as the paint from the little pots. After all, the hobby paint had to be more expensive for a reason... right?

But one day I ran out of a certain colour in my model paint collection. I really wanted to finish the model I was working on, and as it was a Sunday, the model hobby shop was closed. There were my cheap tubes of Pebeo paint, and I thought, ah I'll just give it a a shot. How different could the paint really be? As it turned out, the artist's paints worked absolutely excellent for the purpose of figure painting.

This simple revelation opened up a world of miniature painting possibilities. There were all sorts of advantages these acrylic artist colours have over the tiny pots of model paint.

For starters, the tubes were bigger of course, having ten times as much paint at my disposal meant that I would not run out as quickly. As such, it was more affordable too! And well, who doesn't like to pay less for the same quality or better, really? This especially made sense when I needed paint for large terrain pieces, or for drybrushing textured gaming table panels. Using the model hobby paint pots for this would be madness.

Using artist paint also meant more universal naming in colours. No Demon Black or Troll Blue, or such vague names. It was easy enough to get a colour chart from any artist's paints maker, and find out the universally accepted name for the colour I needed.

But the tubes had another big advantage I had not thought of. Because of the way paint tubes are designed, one only squeezes out the amount of paint one needs, with no air coming back in. With a paint pot, as the paint level falls, the amount of air inside increases, slowly drying out the paint, leading to wastage. And this is not mentioning the paint pot cap getting stuck because it's clogged up with dried paint.

From that time on I started to phase out the model colour paints and gradually replaced them with Pebeo Studio Acrylics as they ran out, eventually reaching a point where I am now using only artist's paints for miniature painting.

28mm Retained of the Quarrel Company painted with Pebeo!

When it came to choose a manufacturer to provide us with a good quality and at the same time affordable paint range, of course the first one I was to recommend was Pebeo. And that was the choice we made. A choice I'm absolutely delighted with, looking at the massive paint rack full of beautiful colours we have now standing in the Alternative Armies painting studio.  

Our Paint Racks

But I don't assume you'll just take this for granted. Therefore we will prove it, by publishing regular painting tutorials and showing you. So stay tuned for that.

Until next time...

Sam Croes

Lead Designer

PLEASE READ THIS

May 2019 and The Ion Age has been taken back into Alternative Armies.  It continues with new releases into the future!  Go to Alternative Armies for Ion Age pages of the 15mm Range the 15mm Terrain Range the 28mm Range the Publications range and the Free Downloads collection too for the latest.  All links to the ion age site are now defunct sorry!  If you wish to see something or ask a question email me on sales@alternative-armies.com.  GBS