Coloring Vallejo Paste

I am a big fan of Vallejo pastes, and have used their pumice and sand pastes in my basing for a while now. Recently, a reader asked if it would be feasible to color the paste before applying it to the base of a model. The thought had never occured to me, as so often I paste and then prime the base. It seemed plausible to me, but I wasn't sure. So I set up a little test to see how well it would work. Dan, this post is for you!

Clock-wise from the upper left: black; a mustardy yellow; brown; and a kind of sky blue.

I decided to use a few generic acrylic paints to mix. Such paints can be acquired cheaply as part of a set (indeed two of my test colors came from such a set), or as larger tubes. If you are painting up an entire army's bases, these paints (especially the tubes!) will both last through your project, and not cost you much. That said, Reaper or Army Painter paints could be viable alternatives, as their bottles are pretty cheap and can squirt their paint out. I think I'd avoid the GW paint pots though...

A day later, everything has dried out alright.

As it turns out, you can totally mix paint and paste to save some effort! One thing to be aware of though, is that the wet white paste will tint the color you are working with. You can see it most strikingly with the blue color above, but all of the test ended up a little lighter and whiter than the original color.

So, it is completely viable to mix paint and paste. That tinting, however, is somewhat bad news, on two fronts. First, you will need more paint in order to make the mixture. I tried to ballpark a 1:1 ratio with paint to paste. Second, it will make duplicating your new colored paste more difficult. If you want to mix up paste in order to base a new unit a month later, or a year later, it may be difficult to get that exact color again.

But it works! If you want to save yourself a little effort, you can totally mix paint with Vallejo paste. 


I also tested out one more thing. I scooped up some of the unapplied mixture, and placed it in a small plastic portion cup, like you might get from take out or food cards. I covered it with plastic wrap to try and make it more air tight. The intent was to see if it would be possible to mix up some paint/paste, and save it for later.

A day and a half later, and the mixture is still nice and damp and workable. This is good news! Provided that you take steps to prevent the mixture drying out, if you mixed up a big enough batch, it should keep for a long while, and you should be able to use it as you need it. Heck, if you knew you only needed one color, you could probably just dump some paint into a Vallajo tub and mix/store it there.

With some planning ahead, creating colored Vallejo paste is completely viable, and may save you some precious hobby time. Thanks for the idea Dan!