Gentlemen, I bought quite a few different acrylic paints at wal-mart today from the craft section. The ones I bought were in 2 oz bottles and I paid $.48 each for them. The brand of these paints is Folk Art. These paints seem to be a much better value than the Testors acrylics I usually buy. Has anyone had any experience with these paints? Do they hold up as well as other acrylics?
Paul
Sorry I can’t help. I do recall reading that model paint pigments were ground finer than other acrylic craft paints.
My wife uses that for her crafts , but i never have used it for plastic models . You might want to test it out on a scrap piece of plastic first .
I’ve used them a bit for painting tabletop gaming miniatures. Unless you are really strapped for cash, I would say steer clear. The Folk Art paints are very, very thick. Though I haven’t tried it, I would be worried that, by the time you thinned it enough to shoot through an airbrush, that it would be too thin to do anything with.
Yep, they do not lend well to plastic. I tried it as an experiment once and they dont airbrush well either. By the time they are thin enough to shoot they spray like water and wont hold to plastic.
I did try to to shoot the stuff and it would not fly through my air brush (I have the $20 model.) The paint seems to work great when brushing though. I do thin it everytime because it comes out of the bottle in like a cream like consistantcy. I am just really curious how it
will hold up over time…
Paul
Hi All:
I use acrylic paints like you describe almost exclusively, though I’m certainly no expert. My models will never win a competition, I just do it for fun, and part of the fun for me is trying to get a good finish without spending… what does good paint cost now, $2.50 per color? I think of it as a challenge.
It must be said from the outset that craft acrylics are not nearly as good in quality as true model paints. How could they be, at less than 1/4 of the cost? They do not cover as well, they are often very thick and must be thinned, and brushing them is super difficult to get a good finish. But they can be shot through an airbrush if thinned, they come in about 300 different colors, the flip-top bottles are handy for storing mixes, and they dry to a dead flat finish. And they’re so cheap that I don’t mind experimenting nearly as much as when I use the good stuff.
I don’t use the .48 cent stuff… that’s probably the “Anita’s” brand or similar. There’s another brand called Delta Ceramcoat, I use that almost exclusively. Sometimes I’ll buy Anitas just for the bottles… I dump the paint and use the bottles to store airbrush-ready thinned mixes. I’ve been thinning with windshield washer fluid, but one of the tips I’ve read here is a mix of 75% washer fluid, 25% Future. Bipolar Bill had a number of great tips for using Ceramcoat on models… to summarize, he says 1) you’ve gotta thin it, 2) you MUST primer the model first (craft paints have a low adhesion on bare plastic) 3) you must filter your paint… he uses panty hose, I haven’t tried this yet, and 4) you’ve got to remember that craft paints will never completely cover in one coat, but you need to slowly build 3-4 coats.
See his full post under “Water Based Problem”
Craft paints make good weathering and sludge wash mixes, too, and of course they’re good for making dioramas. Some folks hate craft paints, and if you’re used to Tamiya acrylics, you’ll probably hate them too. But I don’t agree with categorical statements like, “they look terrible on models.” The CAN look good if you like to play around and experiment with them.
One of my personal project has been to figure out which delta ceramcoat colors are matches for historical colors. Some have to be mixed yourself, like olive drab and zinc chromate green. But according to my copy of the Monogram US Army Air Force Color Guide, here are a couple of very close matches:
Hi Paul,
After a month most acrylics are bulletproof. Sometimes it takes that long for them fully cure. After that they should be good for life.