Two Thin Coats paints: the review

Two Thin Coats in a new range of acrylic paints manufactured in the United Kingdom. The paints are supplied in 15mL dropper bottles, and there are currently 60 paints in the range, including metallics and washes. This review will consider all the paints for quality and place in the market. I will also start off with the overall verdict.

Overall

While the paints individually are of very high quality it’s difficult to recommend the range as a whole. A new painter would be better off with an established range which offers a greater variety of colours. A long-term hobbyist will find some of these colours and metallics a useful addition, but won’t see much value in acquiring the range as a single purchase. These paints are a good quality addition to a crowded market, and it will be difficult for the range to find its place.

Containers

The paints come in dropper bottles, as all good ranges should. The 15mL containers are slightly smaller than those for Vallejo Game Color and Model Color ranges, making these more expensive on a drop for drop basis. Not a deal-breaker but worth noting. Also the dropper bottles used are slightly opaque, meaning you should get some pant on your palette to properly judge the hue. Just looking at the bottles makes the colours seem more muted than they are.

The colours

The colours present in the range of 60 are vibrant and look great on a model. While the currently limited range means that some colours are simply missing, what is there works very well. I recommend Cuirass Leather, Plate Armor, and Dragon’s Gold to older and newer painters alike. The metallics will be replacing my existing paints as they just work so much better.

My main criticism here is that the colour triads don’t all work well together. Some hues are so close together you will have trouble working out which is the mid-tone and which is the highlight at a glance. The full set comes with a colour card to explain this, but I would have preferred this to be written on the bottles themselves for easier reference during the painting process.

Paint quality

For the purposes of this review I used 54 of the 60 paints provided in the initial Kickstarter box. I didn’t come across a single dud in terms of paint quality. The paint is thick, but mixes will with a shake of the hand or a few seconds on the vortex mixer. The pants thin easily with water or acrylic medium, making them easy to work with in whatever way suits your style best.

The paints also mix well with each other, and I stepped outside of the triads several times with no issues.

It’s a crowded field

The Two Thin Coats range has a lot of positives, and the negatives mainly relate to the context this range exists in. It’s a crowded market out there. When YouTube channel Squidmar did a battle of paint ranges, they used 16 ranges and that meant leaving some out. As hobbyists we have plenty of choice, so the challenge is – why choose these?

Frankly there is no reason to throw out your existing acrylic paints and replace them with Two Thin Coats. If you are a painter who has moved towards using Contrast paints or equivalent, there is nothing in this range to bring you back. Many of these individual colours will make great additions to your collection, and some may even replace the specific colours you are using now. I intend to use the reds, yellows, and purples from this range as my main colours of those types moving forward, along with the metallics.

It’s a good range, and I think hobbyists will benefit from introducing some of these colours into their current collection of paints. Whether this is enough to sustain the Two Thin Coats range in the market remains to be seen.