We don’t give much thought to the humble water pot. Whether it’s an old jam jar, a spare mug or a Citadel plastic water pot they’re all essential to our hobby. In today’s post I’ll offer up three tips to appease the brush gods. They’ll also be a bonus tip if you own a Citadel Water Pot at the end.

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Hands up who did this when they started painting miniatures?

1. Don’t leave brushes in your water pot!

I’m pretty sure we’re all guilty of having done this first one. Usually when we first start out painting miniatures we chuck our dirty brush into the water pot bristles first. This is a big no no and we lead to your bristles curving round and making the brush useless.

Oh fleck! It’s all glittery!.

2. Use two water pots

If your models use metallic paints you should use a second water pot. One for metallic paints and one for everything else. You can see by the picture above there is a lot of gold fleck in the water and if you use that water to thin your non-metal paints you’re effectively adding a small amount of metallic fleck to your paint. I recently did this without thinking on my Invictor Warsuit’s Fist and it now has some tiny silver flecks on it’s paint job.

A cup of dirty water and a cup of tea
Now, which one of these is Mournfang Brown dirty brush water and which is my cup of tea?

3. Don’t put your water pot next to your drink

Do you even hobby if you haven’t tasted paint water or cleaned your brush in tea? Keep your jam jar away from your Gin & Tonic, your old water mug away from your hot beverage and your Citadel Water Pot away from your beer tankard.

Bonus Tip.

There is a flaw with the Citadel Water Pot. It’s made from plastic and the paints we use are designed to adhere to plastic. A glass jar or ceramic mug cleans up so much easier than a plastic pot. If your plastic Citadel Water Pot has layers of dried paint water stuck to it you’ll know it’s impossible to scrub off. However, you can easily remove the layers of dried paint the same way you would strip paint from a plastic miniature, just fill the pot with some Simple Green or Dettol and leave it to soak for a bit. Make sure you give it a good rinse and a wipe before using it again.

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