LifeColor paint: what is it good for?

Jakko

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I’m hoping someone can enlighten me as to LifeColor paints. I own a dozen or so pots of it, and I can’t get to grips with it. If I brush-paint it, it doesn’t cover. Like, at all — I need to apply four or five coats to mostly cover bare plastic (any colour) or white primer. This is regardless of which colour paint I’m using: a dark green covers just as poorly as a pale sand colour. It feels like I’m brush-painting airbrush-ready paint, except my experiences with that have been more positive.

Today, I finally got round to try spraying it, figuring that might help. So I put some in my airbrush, thinned it with water because it looked too thick for airbrush paint, and had runny paint that didn’t cover any better than it did on my attempts at brush-painting it — just without the strokes in it. This really made me think it must be airbrush-ready, then, so I tipped the contents of the airbrush down the sink and put some more paint into the cup, straight. On trying to spray it felt slightly too thick for the airbrush, though it did spray — and covered almost as badly as when I had thinned it!

I kind of assume that the paint can’t be as crap as it looks, because then it surely wouldn’t still be sold 15–20 years (at least) after it first came out. That leaves the question: what am I doing wrong, then?
 
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Tim Marlow

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Hi mate
I only have the rust and dust set and the panel line enhancement set.....
The five pots in the rust set work superbly, covering really well and drying absolutely matt straight from the pot.
On the other hand, the panel line set is absolute pants....wash is like clay, and about as usable...and it comes with a clean up solution to take off overuse which simply strips off the entire underlying paint finish....
It’s not a paint that is stocked locally so I haven’t thought about buying more....after your experience that isn’t going to change any time soon....
 

Jakko

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Now I read your comments about the rust set, I remember buying two Israeli sand colours from LifeColor a long time ago, and they covered well enough the one or two times I used them. All the paints I’ve tried that cover poorly have been bought last year or two years ago or so. Maybe they changed their formula? Or the Israeli colours had settled before I used them (a good couple of years passed between buying them and trying them, as I recall.)
 

Dave Ward

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I bought a LifeColor DunkelGelb Set a few years ago, I tried brush & airbrush, and wasn't impressed. Recently I resurrected a bottle for a ICM Ford V3000 truck, and then spent the next day or so trying to get my airbrush to work again! - I blamed it on the high temperature, but other paints worked.............. I do have some LifeColor paints left, but I won't be replacing them, as the choice is now much wider ( AK, Hataka etc etc )
Dave
 
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