acrylic woes

acrylics dry very quickly, this is a problem id suggest getting an airbrush or thinnign the paint. its not you fault, its a limitation with acrylics.

As Reggie said, the ultra-quick drying time is just a fact of life with acrylics. You can help the problem a lot by using either an acrylic retarder or Tamiya thinner (since it contains some retarder) in your paint. Retarder is available at most art supply stores (But very few hobby stores). Michaels, Hobby Lobby, any place like that should have some. It is available under numerous names including Liquitex, Golden, Createx, and several more.

DON'T add it to the entire bottle of paint. Pour a little bit of your paint out into a small container (I use the top of an old 35mm film canister), add a couple of drops of retarder, and the paint will dry much more slowly and eliminate most of your problem.

Ditto the above, I've especially notcied the problem brushing with Tamiya paints, and they seem to always need to be thinned and retarder added before brushing. MM acrylics do somewhat better but also usually need to be thinned.

I have switched to enamels for brushing, they seem to go on smoother with less preparation prior to brushing. Usually all I have to do is add a dot of thinner and on they go! That's just the lazy man's way around it though. If you want to use acrylics the two posts above will help you.

The only Acrylic I use anymore is Vallejo. Has none of the problems associated with Tamiya. Best I've ever used, highly recommended.

Regards, Rick

thanks for the help everyone. Strange I hadn't heard of the retarder until now.
I must say that since I joined this forum my modeling skills have improved greatly. I consider this one of my most valuable tools.

thanks again,

Mahoney

dude ive had the same prob.... the painitng would even bring up the layers underneath off!! ive only really had this problem when brush painting very thinned acrlys over dried, thinned acry(pretty sure i used tamiya thinner)l. i was going for lots of thin layers, but i guess u cant do it when brushpainitng tamiya acrlys.... the only thing i can reccomend to u to do is try not to thin the paints to much, and if u are try and airbrush them on...
hope this helps!

I too second Vallejo with Plasticmod. I still use Tamiya for certain things but vallejo is the way too go. Man, they dry flat too, unlike my belly.