About Tru-Color Paint

Tru-color paint was formed by Rick Galazzo and Scott Cohen in 2008 in Phoenix, AZ.

Tru-color paints are a solvent based paint. For those modelers out there who are also model railroaders, Tru-color is a reformulation of the old Accupaint formulation, modified to flow better and give a more glossy appearance after drying.

There is currently over 600 colors in 7 separate product lines; railroad paints, naval ships, military armor, military aircraft, automotive colors, sprayable (air-brush ready) matte-finish colors and brush able flat-finish colors. Individual colors come in 1-oz. and 2-oz plastic jars.

The Set

Tru-color paint set “TCP-10502: Brick” contains five brick colors and a light primer in 1-oz. bottles. There is an 8½ x 11 instruction and information sheet folded inside the box. The front side has instructions and information on use of the paints. The back side has a listing of other paint sets and possible future sets.

The instructions suggest spraying with a 0.3 mm tip, from 4 to 6-inches, at 15 to 25-psi for detail weathering. The manufacturer also recommends clean-up with acetone, but I found Tamiya lacquer thinner worked better. The paints are pre-thinned and sprayed easily through my Aztec 4709 airbrush at 15-psi, through both a 0.4 and 0.3 mm tips.

My impression was that either I am way under-thinning my paints, or these are over thinned as they have the consistency of water. When sprayed, it required several coats to get an opaque finish. I don’t look on this as a bad thing as it allows a lot of control in how and where the color is built up.

Results

The manufacturer considers these colors appropriate for weathering or detailing, which means that after spraying a base coat of one of the colors, the others can be used to add tonal variation to the base color. I choose Brown-Red Brick and Orange-Red Brick and applied them over the supplied Light Pink Primer, a black primer, and a light gray primer as seen the photo 1. Photos 2 and 3 show the resulting colors. For the three-window wall, brown-red brick is on the left, and orange-red brick in on the right. For the four­­-window wall, orange-red is on the outer portion of the left and right sides, and brown-red brick is in the center of the wall. The demarcation is obvious over the light pink primer but almost invisible over the black primer. I also did a test application of the other three colors, Dark Red Brick, Grimy Red Brick, and Aged Brick, over the light pink primer to see how they looked as base coats. Photo 4 has the light pink primer on the left, and dark red brick on the right, while photo 5 has aged brick on the left and grimy red brick on the right. I think any of the brick colors could be used as a base coat and then weathered using the remaining colors.

I “aged” the darker color (brown-red brick) with a light overspray of Aged Brick. The lighter color (orange-red brick) was aged using a light overspray of Grimy Brick Red. Photos 6 and 7 don’t really do justice to the subtle effect achieved. But it is very realistic.

Final Thoughts

Having these paints pre-thinned speeds up the painting process and removes the headache of getting the correct thinning ratio. However, one minor draw-back of this is that the paints are way too thin to brush paint, as they go on like a filter or glaze. Clean-up with Tamiya lacquer thinner was quick, easy, and effective. The paints, being solvent based, do have a very strong odor, so proper personal protective equipment and ventilation are mandatory.

I would recommend these paints to anyone looking to paint and weather a brick structure, be it a house or a factory.

I would like to thank True Color Paints for providing these paints for review, and IPMS USA for giving me the opportunity to use them.