Re-Supply

As part of my Batman 66 project, I got some Lilac paint to paint a lair for Louie the Lilac.

It's Rust-Oleum paint that I will use to paint a car, and some of his lair.

I got some cross stitch grating.

Some of the Batman 66 villain lairs had cross hatched walls and a black background to make a minimalist room.  I plan on using some of this for that project.

My first paints were Testors paint in these little jars.

I still buy a few of the colors, particularly metallic, and red.

When the bottles are empty I often clean them and keep them for mixed paints, or decanted paint.

This is a enamel paint that requires mineral spirits to clean the brushes.  So it is smelly, flammable, and not as nice to use as water for acrylics. 

Still, I find about 20 of their colors useful.

I get them at Hobby Lobby.

Now I have been restocked and am ready for more projects.
 

Paint and Organization

These are the most common liquid paints in my collection, Tamiya acrylic paints.

I like that they have a wide range of military colors, and clean up with water.  Although I use their paint thinner to clean the brush after it has been water cleaned.

Naturally the State of California has a mandatory warning label on them because leftists don't like you to have fun.

Because the tiny warnings on the side of the jar are not enough.

Testors are my oldest continuous use paints.  I probably first got them in abut 1965.

These are enamel and require paint thinner for clean up.  

The Flat Green, 1164 is my standard WWII US Army canvas color.  Although not all that accurate for the job, when I started using it at age ten it seemed okay to me.  I kept using it rather than change so the Army would be uniform, that seemed more important than being right.  Not unlike the real army.

1165 Flat Olive is my WWII US Army color and the jar paint is a perfect match to the spray paint.  And it has matched perfectly for 60 years!  I have used enough of this stuff to not only paint my whole house, but probably pay for it as well.

It looks pretty nice on this Paul Heiser Sherman tank with Aunt Jemima mine roller.

I put little stickers on the lids of these paint bottles.  The serial number tells me the contents of the jar, after 50 years you get to recognize these things.  The serial number and the name of the color tell me the jar has been opened.  I store my paints inside drawer and I want to be able to see them from above and recognize what has been opened.

The Tamiya paints have a jar lid in the color of the paint.  And so do the Gunze Sangyo paint on the right.  Open jars get a black marker O around the rim to signify an open jar.  Some paints that have a special purpose get a sticker with extra data.  Gunze Sangyo paint in number 302 is the paint I use when I do flocking, either as a base color or as a touch up color.  It's also the same color as Imex and Revell US Army WWII troops and Korean War troops.  So I use it when other figures are added to those so they look uniform.  That's important because most of my armies are composed of units of troops of a single color.
 

Bronze Ant

My friend Clarence sent me this ant.

It maybe the best soft plastic ant I have ever seen.

Nice detail on the feet, and great antenna.

Legs support the body well.  I only got one so I painted him up to use as a statue in front of the Sweetman Myrmecology Institute.

I painted it with Testors Extreme Lacquer.

1/72nd scale figure for size.
 

Chopper and an Ant

Clarence sent me this in a box of miscellaneous bit and stuff.

No wheels or blades.  Only markings are the type of helicopter.  I don't know who made it.

It is my favorite color of all time, metallic blue.

It is an off scale for me but I suspect I can find wheels and something for blades.  It will likely end up as a museum exhibit, or maybe gate guard.

Clarence also sent me this great giant ant, he was red plastic.

One red ant does not make much of a colony so I painted it bronze color.

I plan to use it as a yard decoration for my Steve Sweetman Institute of Myrmecology.

Very good coverage for the paint.
 

Painting Little Trucks

Paul Heiser Models 2 1/2 ton truck with tires behind the cab show it is an artillery prime mover.

Overall it gets spray painted Rust-Oleum 2X primer, then Testors Olive Drab spray paint.  Most of the details get painted with Tamiya, like this winch cable.

Gloss black for the windshield.

And then flat black for the tires.  Testors 1164 Flat Green for the canvas, lots of touch up around the tires and canvas.

Painting the spare tires is a chore.

Each jar of paint gets a little sticker on top with the name and sometimes the number of the paint inside the jar.  I also include other information such as US Army Troops if it is a color I use for uniforms.  The jar lids get a black marker circle around the rim once it's opened.  I often have multiple jars of the paints I use a lot, so it's helpful to prevent me having multiple open jars of the same color.

Testors 1164 Flat Green and Testors 1165 Flat Olive.  I have probably used this paint for more than 50 years, and could have painted my house with all of it I have used.  It was about 5 cents per jar when I started using it.

 Their Flat Olive is a perfect match for Testors Olive Drab spraypaint.

Paints

Rust-Oleum purchased Testors and they came out with the old Olive Drab spray paint again.

It covers very well, here is a resin Paul Heiser US Army 2 1/2 ton truck and a Reviresco M3 Lee medium tank in metal.

M3 medium Lee tank, used on Makin in the Pacific and in North Africa in a couple battalions by US Army troops.

I like the resin trucks because they are nice and sturdy and few parts to assemble.

 The tires are craft pain, Apple Barrel Jet Black and the canvas is the ancient Testors brush on 1165 Flat Olive.  I think I have used that since about 1970!

Olive Drab Update

Good old Testors 1911 Olive Drab spray paint.  I have likely used enough to this to paint a real tank battalion!

The product has changed labels and cans over the past few years.  But all three of these are the same color.  The black label I think is the oldest one.  The center can is also old, and the one of the far right is the newest version.

This the same old olive drab color I have used for decades.

It's what I use for my WWII US Army vehicles almost exclusively.

It was discontinued for a while but it is back.  Testors was purchased by Rust-Oleum, the hardware paint company.

The can lid is an almost perfect match for the color.  The other thing about the lid is it has no markings embossed on it, so I have been saving them to use as fuel storage tanks!