Here's my purchases and the cost.
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/1331510336.jpg)
Lots of folks will suggest you use your old toothbrush for this purpose, but they also say you need reasonably firm bristles for this task, and my toothbrushes tend to be somewhat ... mushy ... by the time I retire them. I asked my wife to pick one up on her weekly Walmart run, but apparently they don't carry such pedestrian items, so my son and I headed to the local Walgreen's to purchase one. Notice the two important qualities which are prominently displayed: firm bristles, and 99 cents. I found both attributes to be adequate.
Tool: Toothbrush, firm-bristled
Source: Walgreen's
Cost: $1.07
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/9778175.jpg)
Heavy cans of propellant seem like the sort of thing it is not cost-effective to ship, so I looked around my neighborhood for a local hobby shop. Scale Model Stuff, a hobby store dedicated to models, seemed like a good place to start. The proprietor, Jim Cowling politely answered my email about what he stock he carried. When I went on Saturday, it was a little difficult to find parking (the legal type, anyway) but there was road construction and that blocked a lot of the road. He had a lot of scale models, particularly WWII (I think), and a decent amount of painting supplies. Unfortunately, he was clean out of white spray-on primer, although he did go to the back room to check for me. He had some white enamel spray-on primer, but enamel is supposed to be harder to work with and takes forever to dry. I went with the gray spray-on primer, which will dull some of the brighter paint colors but should be acceptable for dungeon-type critters.
If you'd like to stop by the store and sample the wares, it's
Scale Model Stuff
7259 Canoga Avenue
Canoga Park, CA 91303
818-716-7847
Tool: Spray-on primer, acrylic, grey
Location: Scale Model Stuff
Cost: $10
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/2530023.jpg)
I have no manual dexterity to speak of, and a slight tremor in the wrist, so a fine detail brush seemed like a good idea. These were bought on EBay from Mass Collections and are a Master's Touch Brush set #5000, made of camel hair and are Round 10/0, 5/0, and 3/0. I think these sizes are graded in microns, because the tips are tiny. The picture really doesn't adequately provide a sense of scale for how small these tips are. In any case, I now have sufficiently fine brushes for detail work. I've ordered some larger, flat-edge brushes for base coating so that I don't need an electron microscope to see what I'm doing. Not to imply that these are low-quality or poorly marketed, I just didn't do my research on brush sizes.
Tool: Detail brushes, fine point
Location: EBay, Mass Collections
Cost: $3.40 (including shipping)
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![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/6556654.jpg?175)
Scale Model Stuff carried Vallejo acrylic paints in a variety of colors. The droppers are supposed to be helpful in keeping your paints from drying out and measuring out exact quantities. In retrospect, I probably didn't need high-quality paints for starting practice. The only one I really needed is the flesh color on the right. I have no idea how to make a Caucasian skin tone, unless it's John Boehner orange or Marilyn Manson white, so a bottle of the correct color will come in handy (and yes I know that "crackers" come in different colors). The others are black, white, and chocolate brown ("brown brown" is not good enough I guess) which should allow me to do adequate shades and tints on dungeon creatures.
Tool: Black, white, brown, flesh acrylic paints
Location: Scale Model Stuff
Cost: $3.40 ea., total $13.60
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/1331521013.jpg)
The three brushes are cheap camel hair with a fat, mushy tip. The price was good (50 cents each), so they may become mixing brushes or something disposable.
Tool: Rainbow paints
Location: Scale Model Stuff
Cost: $3.40 ea., $20.40
Tool: Bushy brushes
Location: Scale Model Stuff
Cost: $0.50 ea., $1.50
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/1331510854.jpg)
Tool: Acrylic paints
Location: Walgreens
Cost: $5.50 (set of 12)
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/5502532.jpg)
Tool: Matte spray sealant
Location: Scale Model Stuff
Cost: $5.50