Hard Time Hand Painting with Flat Acyrlic paints

john087

 Hey all,

 

I am returning to plastic modeling after a few years off.

 

I used to build race cars but I am now concentrating on 1/48 Naval Aircraft.

 

I do not have an airbrush so I am brush painting the details and using spray cans for the larger areas.

 

I am having the hardest time getting the flat colors to lay correctly.  I have thoroughly cleaned the parts with soap and water.  I am using Tamiya Acrylics, which I have used in the past, but mostly semi-gloss and gloss for the cars.  It seams like the flats are much harder to work with.

 

I have tried to use a super light coat of primer, but it is very difficult to lay multiple layers of paint and still have the fine details come up.

Any suggestions?  Am I missing something? 

 

I hope to have an airbrush set by the end of they year.

 

Thanks!

 

John

Tamiya acryls have a reputation for being problematic to hand brush straight out of the bottle, especially the flats. I've found that proper thinning/retarder + flow aid is the key to hand brushing Tamiya acryls, but overall they're much better suited for airbrush application. There are a number of acrylic brands that are much easier to work with out of the bottle for hand brushing.

If you're going to continue hand brushing Tamiya, go to your local craft store and pickup some flow aid and retarder - at the very least a retarder is practically mandatory for hand brushing Tamiya. A couple of drops of each in the mix works for me.

A search in this forum will reveal lots of opinions and suggestions regarding hand brushing acrylics and which brands are generally considered better, or at least easier,  to work with other than Tamiya.

Tamiya paints lay down better if you use slower brush strokes with a little more paint on the brush than you would normally use.

Oddly enough, I have more problems with Tamiya's gloss paints than I do with the flats.

The key to getting a good finish with Tamiya flat paints is to thin them and not try to paint straight out of the jar.

• Use good quality brushes, Red or Kolinsky Sable - avoid the "dollar store" brushes like the plague.
• Add about 30% (or one drop of thinner to three drops of paint) Tamiya X-20A thinner and mix well - do this on a palette, do not add thinner to the whole jar.
• put a small amount of clean thinner another well on your palette or in a suitable container
• before dipping your brush in the paint, moisten by dipping the tip in the clean thinner and wick off excess on a paper towel. You want the brush just moistened, not wet. Repeat this step periodically, say every third or fourth time you re-load your brush with paint.
• paint in short, even strokes, only as far as the last-applied paint. Do not attempt to brush over previously applied paint which appears to be dry - it isn't. Doing so will pull it up in big lumps.
• If recoating is required, allow the paint to cure at least overnight before recoating.
• Clean the brush periodically - paint drying on the brush will cause brush strokes and the occasional lump of dried paint will flake off the brush

If the tamiya paint do not lay properly. Try dip a bit of paint again and brush opposite direction. That's how I overcome tamiya paint.

Be sure you are using a brush suitable for acrylics too. I prefer good old fashion sable brushes but there are synthetic fibered brushes specifically designed for applying acrylic paints.

Thank you all.

I do have a pretty good set of brushes for Arcylics that I got at an art store. 

Thinning the paint worked great, but I did find that a very light primer coat really helped.  Some of the parts I started last night had a thin primmer coat, and the thinned paint adheared great.  I still struggled a little bit with parts that were not primed. The parts still need 1 more color coat, but it is looking much better, thanks.

I started to prep some new parts tonight with a super thin coat of primer.  I thinned some primer to almost 50/50 and did just a wash coat.   We'll see how it goes later.

Thanks all again!

John