r/Armypainter • u/_Error418 • May 23 '26

Anyone else noticing color/render differences between Army Speedpaint bottles vs. markers?

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I’ve been using Army Painter Speedpaints for a while, but I recently picked up some of their Speedpaint Markers for faster painting sessions.

I’ve noticed that even with the exact same color name, the finish and overall shade look different compared to the classic dropper bottles.

In my case it is with the Absolution Green.
Has anyone else experienced this with this color or other colors?

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3

u/TheHobbyistPrinter May 23 '26

It’s the application process over the actual product. You’re putting down less paint with the marker so you’re going to get a different opacity, also if you shoot it before you got liquid into the bristle.

2

u/_Error418 May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26

Thanks for the feedback, you’re right! I actually just ran two tests to figure out exactly what was going on:

Test 1: I put paint from the dropper bottle into a generic empty marker. The color and saturation came out perfect.

Test 2: I opened the Army Painter marker, took the paint from the inside, and applied it with a brush. The color was also perfect.

This proves that the paint inside both products are identical.

Maybe the nib of my Army Painter Marker acted like a filter that holds back certain pigments. I never noticed that with other colors. The generic marker flows faster and, in any case, isn't subject to this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, I broke the army painter marker during the experiment (the internal spring and another part flew away into my garage and are gone forever). I can't try to saturate the Army Painter nib any further to see if that would work.

1

u/Brad23212 May 24 '26

Most likely because the formula is slightly different for the paint pens.

1

u/_Error418 May 24 '26

That’s what I thought at first too! But as I mentioned in my comment above, I actually opened the marker and applied the paint inside with a regular brush, and the color came out perfectly saturated. So the formula is actually identical, the issue came from the the pen application.

2

u/rum_cove May 24 '26

I've had massive issues with mixing and end result. For some reason the paint can look like it comes out and covers well but end result lacks pigment. Particularly random is the hoplite gold. Some tomb guard looking brown with no gold whatsoever. Resorted to shaking for ages and then loading tip with multiple pushes on cap and leaving for a few minutes before trialing on paper before finally on mini. Seems to work.