A Brief Interlude – Paint Tabs

Interlude

“A pause between the acts of a play.”

Or in this case, between posts!

I don’t know if it’s just me, but do all painters do something like this?

I wanted a quick and easy method to enable me to find exactly the colour I was looking for. I also wanted something to help me compare colours, both to each other and to source material.

Here’s what I came up with… Paint Tabs!

I’d just finished making some dividers for Marvel Champions The Card Game and I had some offcuts left over.

To make the dividers, I’d printed the images on a sheet of self-adhesive matt photo paper, which was then stuck to an A4 sheet of 2mm greyboard. The offcuts were all unprinted, and these turned out to provide a great foundation for acrylic paint.

I cut these up into small tabs, approximately 2cm x 1cm, painted the end and wrote the make and name on.

I then stuck a small piece of magnetic tape to the rear, and used an old metal sign for a board… simples!

Being magnetic means they’re easy to move around and re-arrange, useful when deciding on the palette for a miniature.

I can also pick them off to compare to an image, like I did here with Spider-Man.

These have proved to be really useful, in fact I’d be lost without them. I can glance at my board and find exactly what I want, no more shuffling through the paints trying to find a specific shade of blue or red, and it makes choosing layers a quick and easy process.

It’s great for comparing the colours of differing manufacturers, like GW and Vallejo, and it’s easy to see how the paint looks under different lighting.

As I said, I don’t know if this is something everyone else does or not, but it’s certainly helped me, so I though I’d share the love!