I contacted Vallejo but I believe there might be a communication issue. I’m working on that.
In the mean time, I wanted to reach out to the community to get opinions.
Two days ago I painted Vallejo Model Color black acrylic on the top of this windshield of a 1/43 model. The windshield is plain clear plastic and was clean prior to application. I masked everything off and applied with a brush. Paint was not thinned with anything other than whatever minimal distilled water was on the brush.
It seemed to dry in a uniform manner but after a few hours dark areas appeared. They looked like moisture spots. So, I hit it with a hair dryer and it quickly went uniform. I check back and it did it again, but in different areas. Hair dryer again and gone again, but comes back again to varying degrees. In fact, sometimes the whole thing will look dark and appear to have light spots, instead of what is showing in the picture. This has been going on over and over for almost two days now.
I live in NJ and it’s humid. But I don’t think that explains why the spots come back and seem to move around. It’s almost like it can’t completely dry. I was contemplating hitting it with the dryer and then applying matte varnish but before I did anything, I wanted to get some opinions.
update: i brushed it with distilled water again last night and let it sit. woke up this morning and it looked a lot more even, no spots. Vallejo contacted me back and said to airbrush it. uhh, ok, haha. 1. i don’t have an airbrush and 2. i got these paints because they said they’d work for brushing small areas. textxure, ok, fine, but this is uneven color and/or strange color behavior. anyway, i am wondering how long i should wait now to coat with matte varnish. the distilled water disappears fast so i’m sure it’s being absorbed. i’ll probably wait overnight one more time if i don’t hear anything that opposes my line of thinking and then varnish it tomorrow.
after being brushed repeatedly with distilled water and left alone for a while. i just checked it again and it still looks good. i’ll wait a bit and top it with matte varnish to see what happens.
i know i’m pretty much talking to myself here but i wanted to put this out there in case anyone else has a similar issue and uses the search feature of the forum. the last time i brushed it with distilled water was early this morning. it looked fine tonight so i decided to mask the frame and the bottom of the strip and coat with matte varnish. it came out nice. i had to do some very creative trimming of the tape ridge at the bottom of the black strip, as the varnish had created a whitish raised line on the edge of the paint. having a fresh Swann Morton scalpel blade made that possible but wow was it an exacting process. remember, this is a 1/43 model, haha. so, in summation, brushing repeatedly with distilled water days after the fact somehow made the spots stop appearing and then i was able to varnish to a satisfactory finish. i will post pictures tomorrow.
I would agree with you, for me both Tamiya and MM provide more predicable and reliable results. The original Vallejo Model color line has a great consistency for brush painting and of course the little bottles are better for dispensing paint.
thanks all. i appreciate the replies. my responses show up very late because every one has to be approved by moderation before it posts. that can take a couple days. i’m sorry for the delays.
i bought these paints specifically because everyone touted them as being ideal for brush painting and they are completely water cleanup, which is nice. i used to use MM/Testors stuff several years ago, enamels, not acrylics and it was such a hassle, although the results were satisfactory.
as a couple days have passed since i topped this with the Vallejo matte varnish, it has been fine.
i think i need to invest in an airbrush for situations like this where i’m painting broader areas, and also, where it can be sensitive to a raised tape line. though i think if it thinned the paint down more and did thinner coats, it would cause less of a raised line. i don’t know yet. like i said, i’m used to using enamels and i used to mask a lot with parafilm and tamiya tape and overcoat pretty much everything. with these little cars, i’m not overcoating stuff.
It took awhile for me to get used to using Valejo paints, it sounds like the paint wasn’t completely cured in those spots or maybe there was some surface contaminant.
It seemed to dry in a uniform manner but after a few hours dark areas appeared. They looked like moisture spots. So, I hit it with a hair dryer and it quickly went uniform. I check back and it did it again, but in different areas. Hair dryer again and gone again, but comes back again to varying degrees. In fact, sometimes the whole thing will look dark and appear to have light spots, instead of what is showing in the picture. This has been going on over and over for almost two days now.
