Hello! Its my first paint review. Yay!

Army Painters Fanatic acrylics line. This is the modernisation of their old Warpaints line.

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, Kimera 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 opaque layers is very easy with the whole range. This also applies to drybrushing and edge highlights. Layering with semi opaque layers is also very easy through the whole range. I will be giving these paints a solid 5 for layering

Wetblending, feathering is very avarage. I feel these get solid and dry fast and I need to be in a hurry. This is most annoying if you are feathering. Their score will be 3. Not bad, not really anything special either.

Glazing is difficult to do with their over arching brightness issue. There really aren’t any transparent colours in this range. It is usable as a velatura and you can soften blends with these, how ever painting with transparency is not possible at all with these. I will be giving them a score of 1 as they cannot really be used for glazing.

Colour range is rather boring and unimaginitive that leans towards blue hue range heavily. They lack croma and this is most noticable in reds, blues and violets. They also lack in variety of reds and natural tones of earth, reds, yellows. These are also hard to mix with their added white and black pigments in the colours. I will be giving them a 3. Its a solid core for any army painter (see what I did there?) but need a suplimentary range in support most of the time.

Mixing with these paints is okay I guess at the best of times. You have to understand some things before hand, like the greyness will increase very quickly, especially in browns. Most colours mix predictably with this in mind. There are some other wierdness going on like mixing oranges to the browns to brighten them up, you will create greener mixes as a result. This happens most likely because their browns have black in them and some oranges have yellow mixed in. Those two will combine into olive greens and became very overpowering in the mixes. I give this paint line a 2,5 on this as they can be mixed predictably most of the time.

Behavior of the Fanatic line is very normal to most things. They go through the airbrush easily but they sometimes react to Vallejo products wierdly. Like their flow improver makes them become a little more gel like. How ever Liquitex, Amsterdams and Kmeras auxilaries like flow aids, retarders and mediums work very well with this range. For many techniques retarder and added medium makes these paint behave better. They have their own stabilizer which also makes them behave more easily. This paint range uses chalk and pva- glue to cheapen out the paints. Which is most noticable on the drying time, glazing and feathering. They tend to dry on my brushes unless I add auxilaries in the mix. This problem does not really become an issue until you start to really go beyond most common tabletop level painting. I think they have succeeded in the balancing of these cheap alternatives in the mixes and are a solid tool for anyone wanting to paint fast and furiously. I dont find their triad system to be usefull for me, but I can see its brilliance. Most painters are very unsure about painting and this system tells people that are unsure or see painting as means to an end, what to do and how to proceed with highlighting. I also dont really have a use for their metallics or their washes. The metallics are fine. The washes seem to strip paint away which is odd to me. I will be giving these a 3. Nothing wrong with being very basic.

The summary of points: 15,5/ 30

My thoughts on these paints?

They are a solid tool for quick painting and to most wargamers arsenal. They especially shine in their opaqueness and cost effectiveness. With a good colour varietation in the range you are mostly covered with just one brand, how ever I tend to add Kimera Kolours and Scale Colour Artist line paints on the palette with these. They are lacking in some key areas I find myself often. On the other hand when I aint with the forementioned paint ranges, I start the project with Fanatics to create solid opaque base coats for my pieces. As with any range I have some problems with them. This is the reason to not marry a paint range! Don’t do it! Its stupid and gives you no benefit at all. Every paint range need support as nothing can do it all, all the time. Army Painter Fanatics over all are best and most usefull at their darkest colours. These are the best hobby acrylics with a reasonable cost that I have tried. Which is why they are one of my core ranges rather than Citadel.

I have send a message to their customer support about the washes stripping paint away. No answer yet but I’ll make sure to inform you about the answer when I get it in the discord.

Summa summarum Army Painter Fanatic line is a European cousin to the Proacryl paints in my opinion ofcourse. They opted out for more of a thicker paint rather than super easy execution straight through the bottle. The Fanatic line also works better on the wetpalettes than Proacryl in my opinion. How ever its somewhat more annoying to use on a dry palette. I would say they are very similiar, in behavior and in cost when compared the place of purchace. If you are from the US or Canadialands you should opt to Proacryl. If you are anywhere else, mostl ikely your better option is The Army Painter Fanatic line.

My absolute favourite colours from the range: Deep Sea Blue, Grotesque green, Evergreen Fog, Mulled Berry, Blanched Berry, Banshee Brown, Sun burst Ochre, Tainted Garden, Terrestial Titan and Basilisk red