artist paints

[custard]

just an update guys.
after ordering the zinc white, titanium white and the medium before i left for my holiday, i expected to have received it by the time i was back.

but unexpectedly the company forgot to process my order

i rang them today and they have promised to rush my order through.

i may have abit of time in a few weeks to begin testing them...

[custard]

i have just made some sample dots of the titanium white, zinc white and the fliud matt medium.

i will post the readings of the titanium and zinc white in the next 24hrs once dry.

as i mentioned before i was unable to purchase the matt finish for the fluid paints so i had to settle for the original versions which are probably satin.

the first thing i noticed about all three is that they seem quite runny... thinner than the paints i have dealt with.

maybe the normal matt medium will be similar in viscosity to household paints

Harp - i cant remember what ratio we discussed for adding the medium into the AAA-M mixes. should i keep the ratio of aluminium the same? so if i was comparing to the 8:1 AAA-M would i do the medium mix as 4:4:1 or 8:8:1 if i was adding the same amount of medium as the base.
i think if i was simply diluting the mix as 8:8:1 then in effect i would be reducing the amount of aluminium.
hope my lack of literacy is not too confusing

[Harpmaker]

That's interesting Custy, all the artist paints I've gotten so far are quite a bit thicker than house paint. Even the matte mediums are thick. I'll take stock next time I get to my shop.

Yeah, I think we should approach the artist paints in a similar way as the house paints, meaning treating the AAA-M as the reflective additive and the paints/mediums as the base. The ratio of reflective additive to the base should remain constant. Does that make sense?

I would start with a 50/50 mix of medium to paint for the base unless that would be too thin and watery a base; and then add the AAA-M. Whether you use a 4:1 or 8:1 ratio is up to your discretion.

[custard]

possibly the reason for the paint being runny is that i bought the 'fluid' versions as opposed to the regular artist paint
the artist paint i bought a few months ago for color correction is very thick but it does say high viscosity on the tube.

understood on the point of keeping the reflective ratio constant

i think i will keep the ratio at 8:1 (ie 4:4:1)for now as the base paint i have keeps me in neutral when using 4 parts (if i remember correctly). it may move out of neutral if i reduce to 2 parts, and then may need color correction.
the other point is that i already have an 8:1 panel for comparison to aswell.

i cant post the spectro readings for the whites yet as the translucent zinc white needs another layer on the sample.
the gloss level on both the zinc and titanium seems high, with the zinc white having the most gloss.
i may have to research further where i can obtain the matt versions if we reach the point of using them as bases.

at the moment i will concentrate on the use of mediums...
as i am running low on AAA-M i may even try adding the medium to AAA-F as i have loads of that.

[Harpmaker]

Yeah, I'm hoping we can find some way to knock down the gloss of the artist paints. Bill thought he had a way, but I don't know how involved he will be at the moment. I think we can get away with using paints with too much gloss for real screen paints for current testing. My hope was that the addition of matte medium would knock the sheen down to usable levels. I guess we will find out.

AAA-F can't be used in place of AAA-M, but I certainly understand your desire to do so. I'm in the same boat. I will have to get some more AAA-M. The AAA-F needs a Bermuda Beige base to be neutral. If at all possible, I would like to stay away from having to color-correct the artist based BW mixes, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it (you might be there already ).

[custard]

with regards to the gloss levels you should be able to purchase the matt versions for the golden artist paints in the US so it may not be much of a problem on your side of the pond.

the only reason why i mentioned using the matt medium with AAA-F was that i thought we were only using the medium to check if we can increase reflectivity in the first instance.
i understand that we wont be able to use AAA-F for the final versions of the lighter black widows as we wont get it light enough.

you mentioned not color correcting the artist paints when using AAA-M. if we can find a neutral N8 grey that should not be a problem but the lighter 8.5 may need a slightly 'orange grey' especially that we are in effect reducing the base ratio to 4:1 when adding the medium.

as you say we can only wait and see what the testing throws at us.

[Harpmaker]

OK, gotcha; you mean to use the AAA-F just to see if it works and then color-correct later if it does.

It still amazes me that AAA-F and AAA-M behave so differently.

[custard]

i was thinking to mix the medium into the household paints i already have, not with the artist paint in the first instance. the household paints have already been color corrected for AAA-M and for AAA-F(s0907-BB clone)
the AAA-F comparison may not be ideal if i am using the BB clone as the ratio will increase to 8:1 by the time the medium has been added. so in effect i am comparing a 8:1 mix with a 4:1

i have found that i can use the same base for the 4:1 AAA-M as i can for the 8:1 mix so this is a better comparison. i would compare a 4:4:1 medium:household paint:AAA-M mix with a 8:1 household paint:AAA-M mix

i will get onto using the artist paints later if thats ok.

we can see how the masses would find this thread confusing!!!!

[Harpmaker]

custard wrote:

i will get onto using the artist paints later if thats ok.

Sure, no problem; but another thread should be started on the house paint:medium mixes to keep confusion to a minimum.

we can see how the masses would find this thread confusing!!!!

yep!

Oh yeah, meant to mention that keeping a written log of experiments will almost certainly be needed as well. I haven't been doing that, just using whatever scraps of paper I had on hand to jot the info down to bring it in to the house. The basic stuff I did write down in a small book, but many things I will probably have to do over again because those scraps have now disappeared.

[custard]

new thread started

all my notes so far have been kept in that little head of mine

i'll make a note to take notes from here on in.