Tag Archives: paint

Painting, Reviews

The PaintRack App, A Short Review

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PaintRack is an Android & iOS phone/tablet app I discovered a few years ago ago, used a little bit, then during a reorganization of my chaotic painting bench remembered the existence of. This little review has sat in my Drafts folder for a couple of years, but it’s worth hitting publish on because the app continues to be really solid and useful!

The core of PaintRack is a paint library/inventory system to help you track which paints you own. It comes pre-loaded with a huge library from dozens of manufacturers, and can use your device’s onboard camera to scan the barcodes on your paint bottles to make creating your inventory as painless as possible. The free version will only scan one bottle at a time, but the paid version has a feature called RapidScan that lets you do a whole batch of scanning then update your inventory all at once. The paid version is only a few bucks, I highly recommend the purchase!

PaintRack inventory screen showing part of my Reaper paint collection.
My inventory screen, with Reaper selected as that’s my main paint supplier.
The Rapid Scan feature in action, with a paint bottle lying on my cutting mat.
The RapidScan barcode scanner in action.
Sets, showing painting notes, mostly for WW1 or WW2 subjects that demand some uniformity of colour.
Sets – the painting notes utility. Mostly used for WW1/WW2 stuff that has to be vaguely uniform in my case, apparently…
Color Tools, searching for an alternative to Vallejo Light Orange from amongst paints I do own.
Color Tools, figuring out which random Vallejo colour I don’t own is close to something I do own.
Settings screen, or part of it.
Part of the Setting page – the app has a “backup to our website” option just in case you bork your phone. Have used that at least once…

PaintRack is actively working with various paint manufacturers to get their lines into the app, so if you’re Kickstarting the latest celebrity painter’s private line of paints the app probably already has their stuff available.

It isn’t just wargaming or model paints like Vallejo, GW, or Reaper in the onboard inventory, there’s art supply companies like Windsor & Newton and craft paints like Deco and Apple Barrel listed too, which means it can be useful for scenery painting or for those of us who branch out beyond just the game store paints.

There’s a Sets tool that’s basically a notepad for painting schemes that links into your inventory, and a set of Color Tools for developing colour schemes and picking paints for your inventory that are close matches to paints you don’t own (very useful for trying to follow other people’s painting tutorials!).

PaintRack also has a Wishlist shopping list feature, potentially very useful if you’re standing in front of a massive wall of paint at your favourite local hobby store trying desperately to remember which weirdly named colour it was you were missing at home! I think it’ll also tie into your Amazon account for online purchases, but I don’t give Noted Sociopath Jeff Bezos money if at all possible so I haven’t explored that part of the app.

Search for PaintRack on Google Play or the iOS store, see more detail from the developer on the Courageous Octopus website, or follow their BlueSky account (@courageousoctopus.com) for updates.

Galleries, Gaslands, Painting

First Three Gaslands Cars Finished

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Finished up my first three cars for Gaslands over the weekend, the two Barracudas and an Impala last seen in grey primer a little while ago.

Basecoat on all three cars; the black stripe on Vlad was done as part of the basecoat with glaze medium. Click for larger.

Car One: Vlad the Impala

The big red and black car is an Impala, so naturally it has to be called Vlad in the long tradition of ancient dumb car jokes. The bulldozer blade ram plate, exhaust pipes, ring mount gunner, and rear slab spoiler are all off the North Star accessories sprue; the bar armour on the windows is thin styrene plastic strip. I might yet freehand the car’s name on the top of the spoiler, but it’ll thunder around the track quite handsomely without it for now.

  • Vlad the Impala, right hand side.
  • Vlad, left hand (drivers) side.
Two views of Vlad the Impala.

Car Two: the blue Barracuda

This one seems to have accidentally turned into a Spaff Maureen landsplatter or whatever they’re called, never having played any 40K myself. It’ll be nice and clear which direction to point toward the finish line, anyway! Sheet armour over the windows is sheet styrene scrap; the air scoop, gun, and minedropper are North Star accessories.

  • Posed on the ramp so we can see the top nicely.
  • Side view on the ramp.
The blue Barracuda.

Car Three: The Purple People Eater (Barracuda)

The second Barracuda is wrapped up in some extra bar armour with a pair of machine guns bolted to the hood. Guns again from North Star, bar armour bits from scrap styrene. Over the purple paint it has neon green skulls on the trunk and both doors, with some flames alongside the gun on the hood.

  • Rear view, showing the trunk skull and rear window armour nicely.
  • Front view, with flames, guns, and windscreen bar armour.

A Few Extra Shots

Just a few extra beauty shots for fun!

Both Barracudas heading up the jump. You can see the passenger door skull on the side of the Purple People Eater. Click for larger.
Tight starting grid, or parked up waiting for the mayhem to start! Click for larger.

My next project is going to be a set of gates for Gaslands race events; I’ve got a big stash of random plastic tubing, girders, and such that’ll make three or four gates to lay out race courses.