ICM is a hobby company based out of Ukraine. They have provided IPMS-USA a six (6) bottle acrylic paint set for review.

In the Box

The paint set contains six (6) 12ml bottles with nontoxic water based acrylic paints. Inside each bottle is an agitator ball to help mix when shaking. The following colors are provided:

• Gun Metal (1027)
• Deep Brown (1008)
• US Dark Green (1072)
• Buff (1041)
• Black (1002)
• 4BO Green (1073)

Straight out of the bottle, the paint’s viscosity is thick and purposely prepared for brush painting. The instructions do recommend thinning 40-60% with water or thinner for airbrushing. All surfaces are recommended to have primer applied prior to painting. Volume wise, the paint takes up about 70% of the bottle and has “room” to add thinner if so desired.

Note, the bottles are not the usual dropper style (think Vallejo) but a twist off cap and a large opening to allow brushes to enter the bottle.

Review Process

For this review I used white plastic spoons that I prepared by sanding with a 400-grit sandpaper to rough up the surface. This was followed by an airbrushed coat of Mr. Surfacer 1500 White on both sides. Then on the outer side, I taped off half of the spoon and airbrushed Mr. Surfacer 500 Gray for color contrast.

Next, I airbrushed each paint to the outer side of the spoon. For this process added about 50% Vallejo Airbrush Thinner to allow it to flow more easily. The airbrush I used was an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS with a .50 mm nozzle. Several thin coats were applied and I used the airbrush to help accelerate the drying process between coats.

The thinned paint flowed and atomized well. The color of the base primer coat will have an impact of the final hue of the lighter colors since there is some transparency bleed through after several coats. The finish is dead flat once dry. After about 12 hours cure time, it is also durable.

For the inner side of the spoon, I applied the paint with a round 0-size brush using applications straight from the bottle and then thinned with varying amounts of water. All the paints left brush strokes with no thinner. However, all of them responded well when thinned and flowed easily from the brush once a good ratio of paint-to-water was achieved. I recommend using a wet palette for brush painting to control the moisture content and extend the life of the paint since drying of acrylics is relatively fast.

Conclusions

This is a good acrylic paint set for the hobby. It applied well from the airbrush and paint brush. The colors have a dead flat finish once dry and durable when fully cured. A necessary first step is to have a quality base primer coat before painting.

I want to thank ICM for providing this paint set and IPMS/USA for allowing me the opportunity to review. Recommend for everyone.