I
just finished a Zvezda LA-5N, details in the gallery forum. I painted
this plane entirely in artist acrylics, mostly made by Golden, the
company that developed the genre in the 50s. No exceptions. It’s a
little hard to explain why, especially as I have easily $200 worth of
Tamiya, Polly Scale, Vallejo, Xtracrylic, Model Master and Gunze paints
around. And I will certainly not waste them - Minnesota Norwegians do
not waste things purchased - a little like drinking beer in Church. A
rational person could ask why do this if my room is awash with paints.
This was not a whim. I began messing around with acrylic mediums because
of tip clogging and found out Retarder worked great. Gave Flow Aid a
shot to see if it would help suspend pigments and help with clogging: it
did both and also helped greatly with brush painting Tamiya. Heard that
Model Master acryls were weak – so I tried some hardener (GAC 200) and
laid down a beautiful and rock solid coat of MM RML 75 on my last plane.
Above all, the inner child I suppose, I wanted to see if something
could be gained at getting at artist pigments. (Might add this was not
done to save the polar bears. It’s true that everything was water
soluble but I was still cleaning my brush with lacquer thinner and other
solvents. Artist acrylics would not be good things to leave in your
airbrush to dry – be a lot like Future. They are, however, very easy to
clean out if done promptly.)
Paints
are pigments and medium. In the model world, the chemists know
everything there is to know about how to combine the two to get the
desired effect. What they want is something that adheres well to styrene
(#1) and lays down a good coat. Obviously there are quite different
ways of going about the job – anyone with a nose can tell that Tamiya or
Gunze are a different brew than Vallejo. But all of them try to do what
modelers expect - make a good paint for plastic. Nothing wrong with
that – I wouldn’t be modeling if everything was scratch building. The
makers of paints for the art market can’t make that assumption because a
painter might want radically different effects depending upon the
project. Hence, when you walk down the rows of the local arts store
you’ll see colors galore. Chemically the paints are pretty simple. An
artist acrylic will have a pigment mixed into a polymer of varying
consistency. All water soluable. As it stands it is very limited in use.
Consequently you look at a blizzard of “mediums” that control the way
the paint acts in dozens of ways. Painters, humble or imspired, in a
very real sense, still make their own paint.
That
I think is a possible advantage because depending upon what modelers
do, one size does not fit all. So I figure this would be a good way of
learning how to change the nature of the paint to match the task. What
I’m really after is a way to handle color modulation and multiple light
coats of paint sprayed at low PSI. But there was
also simple curiosity at work here. When you buy artist paints (not the
“student grade”, which, I think might work very well for modeling:
expensive high series oils would probably be counter-productive) you’ll
see they have different “series” which is a short-hand for cheap or
expensive pigments. White is series 1 and really quite cheap. Golden is
$3 per ounce but $4 for 4 ounces. You need a lot of white. A series 4
Prussian Blue will go $8 an ounce. (Oils are sold exactly the same way,
but somewhat more expensive.) Should note that even a fluid acrylic is
thicker than any commercial model paint, so it will go a longer way.
Mediums are much cheaper per volume. You’ll also note that the paint
tells you the make-up of the pigment. Artists love to argue about the
merits of this or that pigment – I don’t have the foggiest. But I can
testify that if you put a dab of Prussian Blue into that white the
pigment explodes. There’s nothing like this in the model paint world. It
can easily explode in the wrong way, but mess around a little and
pretty soon the color charts start to make real sense. I don’t think for
a minute that (within reason) money should determine a choice of
paints. However, artist acrylics (and oils) mix far better than their
modeling counterparts simply because its pigment is more concentrated
and one color the same as the other chemically. (I'm not sure I'd want
to mix Gunze with Vallejo.) You mix with a tiny bit. Get the right
proportion and upscale. I think you could make any color with a little
practice. This has obvious advantages. However, the potential quality of
the paint really doesn’t. In the real world planes, tanks and ships
were painted with pretty crude stuff – they weren’t working with series 4
Prussian Blue. And the kind of incredible colors that made Van Gough
(on a good day) the greatest visual artist of his century have no
equivalent in the world of military hardware.
But
my experience was an unqualified delight. After getting the right (or
at least an acceptable) % of the appropriate mediums I laid down
wonderfully colored smooth coats. I did sometimes put in a little less
GAC 200 to harden the paint and found it scratched easily. More GAC, no
scratches. You don’t use thinner (indeed no alcohol of any kind.) The
thinning mediums are thinned polymer which are white in color but dry
clear. Extender is something similar but also aids in pigment suspension
and smooths the flow. If you want to “thin” the brew you can add up to
25% water (I used Liquitex Flow Aid which is 90% water): more and you
break down the chemical make-up of the paint and end up with a mess. So
what you’re doing, in a sense, is a little like mixing 25% Tamiya, 25%
lacquer thinner and 50% Tamiya gloss clear. (Fainter color – lessen the
paint, increase the clear: leave the thinner at 25%. More paint if you
want darker. The mediums make the paint appear lighter more than it
should because most dry clear - you simply do with less thinning
mediums.) What this means is that you’re never spraying with water thin
paint. When I was doing delicate stuff the paint was, no joke, like
milk. I was able to take Payne’s Gray (one of the planet’s great colors)
and postshade at something under 10 PSI and I got the straightest,
clearest thin lines that I can make. (That does not say much. No paint
will compensate for a good hand with an airbrush.) And zero nozzle clog
because of the few drops of Retarder added – there’s already some in the
Airbrush Medium and Extender. I whisked away a little build-up but that
was it.
This
stuff absolutely requires primer. I don’t think it matters much what it
is. I used Gesso from a can for most of it. Also used Tamiya Surface
Primer on parts on the sprue. And, at Golden’s recommendation, tried a
simple combination of Extender and GAC which was transparent but left
the surface a little sticky. The gloss factor of the mediums differs
greatly (there’s a matte medium that I used and it worked) but the
essential GAC is gloss. I wish I’d made photos of work in progress so I
could show you what the plane looked like at the end of the base coats.
It reminds me greatly of gloss enamel – it even feels like it. These
are, however, acrylics, and will dry very quickly especially if laid in
multiple layers. This was all irrelevant in the end because I gave the
LA a good dose of Future/Klear mixed 3:1 with Tamiya flat base. I’ve
done this often and gotten a nice satin finish. Normally I don’t want
something dead flat, but this time I wanted to do some heavy weathering
with the washes and pigments so flat was in and the Future/flat base mix
worked perfectly. (I’ve used Dullcoate with good effect, but I’m still a
little afraid of it. Future washes off with Windex.)
I
made one major error during weathering and it had nothing to do with
the paints. I wanted to mix some thinner with pigments to fade that
strange blue green color the Rooskies used underneath. And so I did. I
brought out my squeeze bottle of mineral spirits and found out that it
said “lacquer” on the label. It certainly bound the pigments to the
plastic – glad it didn’t attack the plastic itself.
I
do a plane, tank, ship cycle. Next up are tanks. (I’ll be doing two for
a group build.) And for the time being, I’m going to go on a model
paint/artist acrylic cycle. I don’t know what is out there to gain, but
there’s precious little to lose barring clogged nozzles
Here's
a couple of pics - more in the gallery. (Do note that I weathered this
plane heavily - appropriate for the Russian Front in summer 1943. All
weathering techniques are the same. The artist acrylics are only used
for the base coat: after Future is applied the playing field is the same
as with any other brand. Though, come to think of it, artist acrylics
are excellent for drybrushing - no mediums needed there, or maybe just a
tad of Extender or Flow Aid to wet the brush.)
Eric
