Apologies if this has been covered before. I am in need of a reddish-orange color for my current build, and was thinking of combining Tamiya X-7 Gloss Red with Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow (both of which I already have on my bench) to accomplish this. I’ll of course need to experiment with how much yellow to add in order to get the correct shade.
A few questions:
Can Tamiya gloss and flat paints be mixed in this way, or are the formulations incompatible? I would think it would be fine.
When mixing gloss and flat paint, for example at a 50/50 ratio, does this result in a semi-gloss finish? And for ratios other than 50/50, can I expect the amount of gloss in the finish to diminish on a roughly linear scale according to the ratio of flat paint in the mix?
Yes, the formula is the same except for a silica flattening agent.
Yes
As long as you are mixing acrylic with acrylic, not acrylic with enamel. Tamiya’s enamels are not available in the US, so that’s not a concern for me.
If you want a flat finish instead of semi-gloss, you can add a bit of Tamiya’s flat base (X-21) to the mixture. The flat base is an additive, not a paint on it’s own.
As the above response makes note, I will also reiterate - make sure both your Tamiya bottles are of the same type of paint.
The other day I tried lighting up a colour with some white, but it just would not take, drying to a paste and quite rapidly at that. Turns out the white bottle was enamel, while the colour I was working with was acrylic.
I don’t use Tamiya, but mostly Testors MM line. I have made semi-gloss by mixing flat and clear together, but find it is not real linear. With those it is best to experiment to get right mix. Also, if you are going to be overcoating decals, you can get a semi-gloss urethane clear in cans, which you can thin to airbrush.
Thanks everyone. Yes, the two paints are both Tamiya acrylics. Semi-gloss is exactly what I’m going for here, so a blend of the two should work out nicely.