Hello! Its a paint review! Yay! Kimera Kolors acrylics line this time around.

Disclaimers: I am not a great painter, nor am I a paint chemist. I have very little education over acrylic paints or paints at all. These are my opinions and my feelings on the paint itself. I will be comparing these to Proacryl (I have only two colours), Citadel (older but not very old formula), Vallejo (old formula), GSW, Warpaints, Scalecolor artist, Army Painter Fanatics and Primacryl acrylics.

Because of these disclaimers I will only compare my feels, vibes, results and working feel. I will not be doing something super awesome like testing opaqueness, vibrancy or resin quality. I will showcase some of my work with these Fanatic paints and tell you how I feel about them.

I will be using a number system for judging. 0-5 where 0 means not possible or very very very bad, 1 is bad and 5 is eggsellent.

Layering with these paints out of the pot does not really happen. How ever you can create almost any hobby paint colour with very simial opaqueness or even better opaqueness with these. These are made to be mixed with and such dont really have the same work rythm as the common hobby acrylics. How ever these shine in semi transparent and semi opaque layers and creating multible overlapping layers. By changing your rythm, you can achieve same things that you can with hobby acrylics. Most times with better results too. So these will get 4,5 for layering

Wetblending and feathering with Kimera is a pleasant experience ones you get the hang of controlling your water in the mixtures. Kimera gives easy to predict mixes with wetblending and doesn’t dry too quickly. Feathering difficulty curve is quite high. You have to control your mixes, so that they don’t suck up too much moisture before hand. When you get that nailed down feathering is a joy. I will give these a solid 4 as I have had some brushmark issues come up with wetblending and feathering has a learning curve to get right.

Glazing is joy with these. Many choices out of the bottle and most mixes are either semi transparent or transparent which gives you control for glazing! I have had issues tho. Sometimes these paints separate their matting agent if you are not careful with water or thin too much with just water. Because of these issues I will be giving these paints a 4 glazing.

Colour range is very limited in its palette and there are many too similiar pigments chosen to be in the range. Some colours are also grosly under pigmented. There are also some bad pigment choices as they are known to fade. How ever the very core basics and expansion sets give you enough to create a wide pool of colours by mixing your paints. I would love to see Kimera to cut some pigments away and add some others in their place to have even greater selection. Painting with kimera is about expression and taking things a little slower. This is not a set for army painters with that issue I find myself needing a suplimentary range in support of these at times. With that in mind I will give these a 3,5

Mixing with these paints is lovely and predictable. 5

Behavior of the Kimera kolor is somewhat difficult if you are coming from the hobby acrylics. The heavier nature of their medium, sitting in between heavy bodies and fluids, is difficult at start. But when you can see and feel the pigments power, I felt like the difficulties were worth it. Even with some difficulties at worst I could feel the clear difference in quality between these and hobby acrylics. Even if these were matt they weren’t prone to chipping. They had tooth to stuck into plastics more. I felt like these paints were more forgiving than hobby paints. Except for brush marks at first. Water and medium control was very important with Kimera. For behavior I would give these a 3,5. Water control is key. It opens the door for glazing without fogging, feathering without crying and dripping paint that dries on the palette too quickly and smooth layers.

The summary of points: 24,5/ 30

My thoughts on these paints?

These paints are link between Hobby paints and proper artist acrylics. They do a magnificent work with that in mind. They do lower the barrier of entry to sigle pigment paints, but thats just marketing. What lowers the barrier are guides on mixing, guides usage and painting tutorials. These paints are really just a little bit more crappy artist acrylics, with some under pigmentation proplems in the mix. The big leap in quality is really noticable from the hobby paints. But between kimera and Schminke its not very noticable. And as such these paints dont actually serve any meaning or purpose. You should just skip this step and get to the artist quality acrylics.

Even thought I am writing this I love my Kimera kolors. I love painting with them. I love to use them as an auxiliary paint with hobby acrylics and the vice versa is also true! These paints give me joy and their little lackings in means of quality really are not a big issue for me atleast. I also like to teach with these and they are easy to point towards a fellow hobbyist. As they do not have to go to a scary artist shop to buy paints, they can just get these (sorry americans) off the shelf in the hobby stores. Even thought it might not be a local one.

My absolute favourite colours from the range: Cobalt blue teal, Alizarin Crimson The White, Phtalo green, Royal Brown, The Violet, The Magenta, The Red, Cold yellow, Gold 79, Kiwi brown, Poison green.