For those who have English as a second language or those who are potentially not up on our colloquialisms then an argy-bargy is a bit of a verbal row.

By Heck the paint world has been rocked by a bit of a hoo haah about Army Painter Speedpaints and tye new Vallejo xpress range.

Evidently Juan Hidalgo said bad things about Speedpaints reactivating whilst working with Vallejo on their Xpress range.

Now as you know, I personally dislike Speedpaints and did exhaustive testing to see if I was in the wrong …according to Spikeybits it was my fault as I was indeed not varnishing between layers. … but I digress. Said Spikeybits has not taken a pop at Juan for not mentioning working alongside Vallejo. And it has gone nasty.

Funnily enough AP has just recruited people on their paint development team who never mentioned the reactivation… now to be fair they were in their initial testing they painted a model a single colour,but in later ones they did not.

As expected it has got a bit nasty now… I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. What Juan said was true, he didnt lie… he just didn’t mention he was testing paints for a competitors.

So excitement abounds to see what happens next!

14 thoughts on “Paint Argy-Bargy”

  1. ‘Just fix the paint by varnishing everything during the painting process’ was never a winning argument for me. I also noticed the connection between people who didn’t mention re-activation and the new AP ‘panel’ of whatever it is.
    My only response so far has been to ignore videos of paint ranges where people just paint one model all the same colour to show what the range looks like. Not even Space Marines are painted this way in reality! I suppose it’s fine to see the hue over one model, but I want to see how paints work together (or not!) since that’s how I would actually use them.

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    1. I watched the one colour paint jobs just to see what the colours were. As you say, nobody paints like that. I did see someone trying to argue that for things like wolves you could (except wolves are rarely only one colour).

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  2. For God’s sake they are just hobby paints! Why are people getting so worked up about it I just do not know. True it is wrong not to mention any conflict of interest but if paints for toys soldiers are all people can bitch about then life is not too bad. S I have appreciated your comments and experiences with varied paints and this is useful for all of us in the hobby, but at the end of the day we it our choice what we have used.
    “Speed” paints that require additional work are hardly speedy and those who point this out are detailing their own experiences.

    I still prefer crushing my own ochre, mixing it with urine and using a stick to paint on the cave wall. Chili Davis said “Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional”! Sounds to me that this is a case of not choosing the optional extras!

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  3. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I enjoy actual painting miniatures, so gimmick paints like “contrast” and “Speed” paints just don’t have a space in my paint collection. I love my Army Painter paints, they are so much better than the GW junk I used to use, but they are slowly being replaced by even higher quality paints like Vallejo. So If I get to a point where I need to paint a pile of miniatures to a lower standard, I could see me trying Vallejo’s new xpress paints.

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    1. Yea, hopefully Vallejo’s Xpress line doesn’t have any problems. I mostly use the traditional paint method, it’s more intuitive to me and I find ‘speed’ paints don’t save me much time. I have used some of the Contrast paints in different ways though, like as a wash. Also, Bad Moon Yellow is a pretty good way to get a bright base coat of yellow going.

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  4. Have to agree with Eric, (and Dave to be honest), though people seem to be getting good results with these “speedy” paints except the AP ones that is, Having thought about it they don’t really suit my style of painting (I like my Quickshade and I’m sticking to it, though it ain’t quick as I use it, in fact if anything it’s slowed the whole process down!).

    It is naughty to put down a product when you are working for the competition, but as you said he didn’t lie, so just deal with it guys! I like a good honest review like the ones you did, from someone who has no axe to grind!

    Cheers Roger.

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  5. I found out about this today and it is mostly a lot of nothing, I’d say. Spikey Bits is not a credible website at all in my opinion (one of the worst I’ve seen in our hobby in fact) and Juan Hidalgo is a talented painter and makes solid content on Youtube. Having said that, Juan should have disclosed the potential conflict of interest and then there would be no issue at all. Spikey Bits is trying to make this into a controversy and use it to their own benefit but I suspect it isn’t going to work out in their favor.

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  6. I initially was having issues with the Speed Paints (reactivating). Azazel shared a YouTube video where it showed using/mixing GW Contrast Medium basically can eliminate the problem. As I had already bought the whole set of Speed Paints (and every GW contrast paint too) before I learned of the reactivating issue (one source of which was your series of blog posts earlier this year), I was pleased to learn of this solution. I find that adding 2 drops of GW Contrast Medium to one drop of Speed paint eliminates reactivation. It also doesn’t seem to overdilute the Speed Paint and gives good results. I use all kinds of paints from many different manufacturers and I have close to 700 which is too much! But, some of the SP colors are really nice. As for the conflict of interest issue, caveat emptor always.

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