Blending Tamiya Acrylics?

[sapperastro]

Hi all,

 

I have had a friend of mine, who is an exclusive Acrylic user, ask me how to blend paint (I tend to use this with my enamels all the time, especially when figure painting). I told him he couldn't really do it with Acrylics and to look up the different ways Acrylic users get around this, but I have been thinking...

 

I hear a lot about Tamiya Acrylic having issues with second brush painted coats lifting and melting the previous coat. Has anyone tried using this to an advantage and blended the paints? ie; painting a colour, then lightly painting a different colour next to it (or over it if done lightly enough) and once they are both fairly dry, wetting it down gently with the Tamiya Acrylic thinner and allowing them to slightly melt into each other? Just wondering if I might be able to suggest a way of blending that uses Acrylic paints.

[Greenshirt]

Please try this and report back here your results. 

[monsterpartyhat]

I've only been at it a short while, but I've had no problem blending Tamiya acrylic paints. I drop them into a palette and blend them together with some cheap brushes I keep just for blending. If you let it sit for a long time the individual components will begin to separate a bit, but a quick re-stir fixes that. 

 

You can see the result of blending a custom flat orange from XF-3 and XF-7 here - it worked pretty well:

Since it's water based, a second coat will mess with the first coat if the first coat isn't dry. Once it's dry (which happens pretty quickly with acrylics), it's totally fine. I use a hair-dryer to speed the drying process between coats.