I finished painting a batch of plugs. While in the process I saw I had some paints that were transparent and some were opaque. Are there guidelines when to use each type? And when I replenish my paint supply are there basic paints for base coats that I should buy in the big size. Thanks Charlie

Transparent is nice when you want to "tint" certain colors. for example, I like using transparent black to darken the back and add scales to almost any color plug... it darkens the color without covering it, in essence creating a perfect darker shade of the color you covered. they also have transparent colors. Its basically for subtle effects and color shifts that look nice, but probably dont matter to fish

I use opaque colors over primer to set the base color and then I usually add clear coat and fish them… The transparent paints that I’ve tried are very thin right out of the bottle and go on light which I would think makes them ideal for adding additional shading or detail to plugs that plug collectors go crazy for but fish and guys that actually fish their plugs don’t care much about…

I'd go so far as to say that half of the opaque colors they sell you actually are transparent in nature because of the thin viscosity needed to spray out of a very fine gun.
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just finished painting bunch with transparent forest green createx. shot perfect right out of the bottle for a color base at 35lb. nice mist shading with 15-20lbs. opaque paints mostly don't shoot well with a tip smaller the .5mm unless you thin to a skim milk consistency. Createx opaque for what ever reason are thick as oatmeal. Adding up to 50% medium(water) gets them to flow. I wont talk about the craft paints except I'm done with them.

None of you work with glass but when I am trying to get the brightest colors to “pop” I will overlay a transparent color over white. The reasoning is that the transparent allows to light to enter it and give a richer brighter appearance. An opaque is not going to offer that index of refraction.
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