A red that works

Those of you who regularly apply brush to miniature know that there are certain colours that are, shall we say, reluctant participators in this whole painting thing. I'm talking about reds and yellows of course.

Reds and yellows, because of the way these pigments work physically, do not cover easily. You will usually need more than one layer to get a good coverage with any yellow or red, even with miniature paints where the amount of pigment in the paint is higher than usual. And if you do get coverage with a reddish or yellowish colour, I'm certain you'll find that it is more of a brownish colour, which is cheating really.

Until now that is. I've discovered a red that actually covers a black undercoat in one go. [Games Workshop](http://www.games-workshop.com) (yes, the vaunted evil empire and bugbear of many supposedly stout hearted historical wargamer) do a range of paints called [Foundation Paints](http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat470012a&rootCatGameStyle=) which are specifically formulated to be used as base coats and intended to cover in one layer. I'm guessing what that means is that they have so much pigment in them that they're just a midsomer nights sigh away from being chalk.

But, never one to shy away from some experimentation (I blame my education) I bought the red ([Mechrite Red](http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470012a&prodId=prod810840)) and one of the yellow ([Ivanden Darksun](http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470012a&prodId=prod810844)) ones to try them out. You'll notice that I went straight for the difficult customers here.

Earlier this week, I used the red one as the shade coat for the piping on a bunch of Bavarian light infantrymen I'm painting and you can hit me over the head with a flabby flounder and call me flaky if it didn't cover the black undercoat in one go. Even thinned (I almost never use paint straight out of the pot) down to my preferred consistency it still covers the black. I'm sold.

Now only to find something to paint yellow to try the other one.