I set a goal to finish my DK by the end of the year. Anyone want to place bets if I'll make it?
If you've been reading a long time, you'll know I've had a love/hate relationship with the Vallejo alcohol metallics. After reading around a bit I think I figured out why I was having trouble. Water is an absolute enemy to these paints. So much so that if you buy your rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol off the shelf at your local drugstore, the ~9% water is enough to make your metallics tarnish. So, my slowly adding alcohol to the bottle as it thickened up on me was having the opposite effect that I wanted. D'oh.
I bought myself some new bottles of Old Gold, etc., and decided to give them another try. I'm still using the same rubbing alcohol, but plan to see if I can get a higher percentage over the counter from the pharmacy (I've heard that may be possible). In the meantime, I'm just being really careful to avoid any contact with water and not letting anything but a stir stick go in the bottle- not even a potentially contaminated brush. So far so good. I'm also getting better at painting larger surfaces and keeping them smooth- helps to get a nice wet (alcohol) brush before you dip in the paint (on your palette).
So far I'm not thrilled with my paint job on this guy, but we're getting close to the end on it. Just a lot of little details to get to. Less than 24 hours to hit my goal. Yeah...about that...
Happy new year to all our readers! Thanks for helping us make it a good one.
~Deet
Oh, wow, that thing is really coming together!
ReplyDeleteLooking sweet Deet.
ReplyDeleteLooking good! The Dreadknight is a blast to paint and it will really SHINE with the Vallejo Liquid Metal series.
ReplyDeleteAside from using high percentage alcohol (isopropyl 99% is best) another thing I can recommend is using synthetic brushes. Alcohol based paint destroys organic (see sable) brushes, so just get a couple cheap synthetics from your art store and you're golden.