Paints, Color Equivalence Charts, and Mixing your own Citadel Colors

Almost as messy as my paints.  OK, not really.  I'm way too OCD organized to ever have paints looking like this.
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Hey everybody, Chaoshead here again with a quick post about painting.  No, I'm not going to go over which brand is best, that dead horse has been beaten so much it's not even recognizable any more.  What I will be covering is a number of equivalency charts that let you find similar colors in different paint ranges/brands, and then I will share a very useful post that will show you how to create any Citadel paint color (even some of the discontinued ones) with only 5 colors of paint.  Intrigued?  Good.  See you after the jump.



Ok, first up is the equivalency charts.  I have stumbled upon several in my travels through the interwebs, and I wanted to share them all in one place rather than being scattered to the eight corners of the forums and blogoshphere.  I'm sure there are more good ones out there so if you know of any, let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the list.

You call that selection?  THIS (see upcoming segment) is selection!
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Charts with a wide range of colors
These first charts cover quite a few different paint ranges including many that are not widely used for painting miniatures.


The Ultimate Model Paint Conversion Chart
This one has a metric buttload of different paint ranges to compare and quite honestly can be a bit overwhelming.  Since it is aimed more at scale modelers rather than miniature painters it can be very useful for finding comparisons with the paint ranges outside of Citadel, Vallejo, Reaper, and P3 that most miniature paint charts focus on.  Color Ranges include: FS595, RGB, BS381c, RAL, RLM, US ANA, US Navy, Humbrol, XtraColor, XtraCrylix, White Ensign, Airfix, Testors, Polly Scale, Pactra, Vallejo, Life Color, Revell, Andrea Color, Heller, Tamiya, Gunze Aqueous, Mr Color, Quarter MAster, Imperial Japanese, and of course Citadel Colours.  Whew, that's a lot of paints.

Nesbet Miniatures Paints Equivalence Chart

From the Nesbet Miniatures blog, it comes in the form of a number of .jpg and .png images in several sets that you can view or download easily. First set: Coat d' Arms - Vallejo Model Color - Vallejo Game Color - Citadel.  Second set: Citadel - Rackham - Reaper - Vallejo Game Color.  Third set entitled "a lot more" includes Federal Standard, RAL, RLM, Andrea, Film Color, Gunze, Humbrol, Rackham, Revell, Tamiya, Testors, Model Color, and POSC.

Dakka Dakka Paint Range Compatibility Chart
Much more friendly format than the previous chart.  Has a nice selection of paint ranges including Citadel (of course), Vallejo Game and Model Color, Rackham, Reaper Master, P3, Coat D'Arms, and the Hex Code for each color.  Also has a long list of resources at the bottom of the page so you can go to the sources they used to construct the chart.

This paint is very lonely.  It needs some friends.
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Charts with only a few color ranges or less
These charts have a much smaller scope, comparing only a few different color ranges.  Most of them, well actually all of them now that I think about it, are focused on Vallejo paints since that is the model paint brand that I use the most.


WikiPaint Color Comparison Chart 
A more simple chart including a color swatch with hex code for each color, Citadel, and Vallejo Model Color, Game Color, and Model Air.  Organized by color groups i.e. whites, yellows, flesh, reds, greens, blues, etc.


Miniaturewargaming.com Vallejo - Citadel Paints Comparison Guide
An even more simple chart with Vallejo Game and Model Color Name and Stock Number as well as their Citadel Equivalents.


eBay.co.uk Vallejo Game Color Acrylic Paint : GW Conversion Chart
Very simple comparison between Citadel and Vallejo Game Color paints.  Not even in a fancy format, just text.

No caption necessary.  I think this one speaks for itself.

Other equivalence resources
Sites that function very differently from the rest of the equivalence charts so they get their own special category.


Color Match 1.0 Full Line and Color Match 1.0 
Both links lead to the same site but with different types of search options.  Color Match 1.0 has a simply staggering number of paint ranges that you can compare with each other but differs from all the other charts because it finds the colors that are the closest match rather than direct equivalents.  The Full Line link will give you two drop down boxes.  The first is the range you want to find the equivalents of and in the second you select the range that you want to match to the first range.  It will then pull up a list of up to 3 of the nearest equivalents to the original color.  The other Color Match link brings up what is essentially a search engine with lots of different search options that lets you search multiple ranges at once.  Both have their uses, but remember that you might not get an exact match, just the closest match that the search engine could find.

ORLY?  I am intrigued.  Please, do go on.
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Now, on to the really fun part


Nesbet Miniatures Tutorial: Getting the Citadel Colors
I discovered this Tutorial sometime last week and was simply astounded at the genius of it.  This tutorial is "A pretty old technique to achieve the entire Citadel Colour range, using only 5 colours" which are Blood Red, Enchanted Blue, Sunburst Yellow, Skull White, and Chaos Black.  Nesbet apparently rescued these recipes from an old LOTR webpage that went offline and he went through a whole ordeal to retrieve the web-admin's email from the webpage and obtained the charts before they were lost to the ages.  (I added the dramatic parts myself.  No, I'm not a drama queen... just a drama princess).  There is a typo for Regal Blue and the recipe for Kommando Khaki is pretty crazy with 156 parts yellow and 1 part black but Nesbet does address that color at the end so you don't have to tear your hair out mixing that color up. I'll let you check out the tutorial and come back here in a when you're for my little addition to the fun.

Hurray!  I'm being useful!
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My contribution: Easy lookup for equivalents to the 5 colors used in the above tutorial


Just like it says, I'll do some of the research for you so you can find a non-Citadel equivalent to each of the 5 colors used for most of the more popular miniature painting ranges.  This is especially useful if your paint brand of choice comes in dropper bottles to easily measure out the quantities in the mixtures.  Vallejo Game Color could have an advantage here since they are designed specifically to emulate the Citadel colors.  This may or may not be the case, but I felt it was worth mentioning.  I will indicate an approximate match when appropriate.  Some ranges such as Vallejo Model air and P3 do not match well with Citadel paints and it is not feasible to provide comparable colors.  Again, if there is a range that you would like to see added let me know in the comments and I'll update the list.

Citadel	Blood Red	Enchanted Blue	Sunburst Yellow	Skull White	Chaos Black
Vallejo Game Color	Bloody Red	Magic Blue	Sunblast Yellow	Dead White	Chaos Black
Vallejo Model Color	Vermillion	Andrea Blue	Deep Yellow	White	Black
Reaper Master	Clear Red	Cyan Blue (approx)	Sun Yellow	Pure White	Pure Black
Coat D'Arms	Blood Red	Wizard Blue	Sun Yellow	White	Black
Rackham	Rackham Red	Ephren blue	Lahn Yellow	Eternal White	Accursed Black

To review, today I shared some paint equivalence charts to help you find equivalent colors in a large number of different paint ranges, shared a tutorial on how to make Citadel colors including several out of print ones using only 5 different colors of paint, and then did some of the research for you for finding equivalents to those 5 colors in some of the more popular paint ranges.  All in all a pretty productive day.  Hope you enjoyed the article and got some good use out of it.  Ladies and gentlemen, Chaosheade has left the building.  Catch you on the flip side.