Artistic Dense is a set of densely pigmented acrylics put together as an artist's palette. Instead of documented military shades you get pure painter's colours: lime, jade and moss green, turquoise, Oxford and Prussian blue, crimson and wine, three yellows and a cool flesh tone. They exist so you can mix your own shades rather than hunt for them.
That has a practical consequence for figure painters in particular: pure colours keep their saturation through several mixes, where a paint loaded with filler turns grey after the third. The other side of the bargain is that this is not paint you apply straight from the bottle. Both are covered below.
Ready-made modelling shades are convenient but finite: what is not in the catalogue, you do not have. An artist palette sidesteps that. From a handful of pure, highly pigmented colours you can mix any tone, and more importantly you can repeat it, because the recipe is always a ratio of two or three components.
The limitation is honest: straight from the bottle this paint is thick enough to leave brush marks, so palette work is not optional.
Two blues, two yellows, crimson and a flesh tone cover most needs. Oxford and Prussian blue with a yellow give practically any green, and crimson with yellow gives orange and brick. The ready-made greens are there as a shortcut when you would rather not mix.
Out of the bottle the body is high enough to leave strokes on the model. Thin drop by drop, on the palette rather than in the bottle, and judge the result on an offcut. Tools are in bottles, pipettes and palettes.
A mixed shade survives hours on the palette, not days. If a figure takes you several weeks, note the proportions; without them you will not return to the same tone and the repair will show.
If you would rather have finished shades taken from historical tables, they are in AK Interactive model paints.
