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!

Hobby WIP: Mounted Sergeants

With my transition projects done, I was free to jump into some new plastic… and I wasted no time.

Not everything I've picked up recently, but everything that was in the running to be worked on next: Foot Guard, Spear Phalanx, Mounted Sergeants and a dino-Warbeast.

After some waffling, I decided to start in on my Mounted Sergeants. I’m using Fireforge Game’s “Mounted Sergeants,” for the most part. The minis are good quality. If memory serves (I was hobbying on auto-pilot, and didn't pay close attention or take pictures of the sprues), there were 4 human riders sculpts and 3 horses, each repeated enough time to hit that 12-man box size. I’ll be using 3 leftover GW Knightly Orders knights and horses to serve as unit leaders. We’ll see how the range-mixing works out.

I picked these guys for a few reasons:

1)      Game-wise, I have not seen a single Kingdoms of Men list with them in the sub-forum. I’d like to take them for a spin and see what I can learn.

2)      Hobby-wise, all the models in the running (save the dino/Warbeast,., but it had a host of other hurdles associated with it) had bases built in to their sculpts. This was going to take some extra hobby effort, and I figured the larger cavalry bases would be a good testing ground for learning new techniques.

The problem: two bases.

Normally, I don’t mind working with sand at all, as it requires no real extra work. However, I didn’t really want to do that here. Nor did I want to spend the time pushing green stuff or milliput to smooth over all the edges. Nor try to chop off the bases from the feet of the model. I was stumped.

However, a local hobbyist hates dealing with real sand, and was raving about Vallejo paste a month or so ago, so I checked it out, and picked up a tub of their White Pumice, in anticipation of a project like this. While they make a few different kinds of paste, this seemed like the best start for a drier, more arid basing scheme that would be in-line with the rest of my army.

What I used. Models, 50mm square bases, the aforementioned paste, and one of those sculpting tools.

So, Sunday night I sat down, and started gluing the horses onto the 50mm bases. I using my usual glue for assembling minis (the bases also came on a sprue, and looked to be made of similar material). Once the glue had started setting, I selected a tool from my sculpting baggie that looked like a flathead screwdriver (the more money-conscious hobbyist could probably just use a flathead screwdriver I suppose) and set to work. I figured the flatter tool would be better for spreading, and it worked out pretty well.

I slopped the paste on bit by bit, and spread it around with the tool, adding some extra goops of paste along the edges of the model’s base, as that was what I was trying to disguise.

Unfortunately, the paste is sticky. I guess it is a paste, after all. After the first scoop, the tool’s head was covered, making it harder to get in between the horsie’s legs. Fortunately, it is water soluble!

A process was implemented: after each base was done, I dunked the tool in water and used some paper towel to wipe off the clingy paste. A brush on its last legs was wetted, and then used to apply some water to any hooves that have been accidentally gooped.

The whole application process took about 45 minutes. The paste goes on wet, and needs time to set. As it dries, the texturing comes out more. It was almost entirely dry overnight, but I gave it about 24 hours since it was a weekday and I had stuff to do. After 24 hours, it was bone dry, and looked pretty good overall. 

I based the GW horses too, for consistency. This is a shot from Monday night after a 24 hour wait. A few things were touched up after this pic was taken. I think the pumice did a pretty good job of camouflaging the model's base.

I decided to apply a bit more paste to a few more spots (the company recommends waiting for each application to dry and set before adding another), to touch up a few areas where the inherent bases of the models still stood out.

The plan is to (prime and) paint the sand, and then spruce it up as needed with pebbles and such similar to the ones I've used for the bases in my other units. We'll see how it goes...