Xtracrylix colour separation

[Vlad]

I use Xtracrylix sometimes, for colours I can't easily match otherwise, and I'm slowly improving my technique at brush-painting them. Not the easiest but worth it for the colours and finish!

 

One issue I can't seem to get away from is streakyness resulting from what looks like colour separation. Basically, I paint on, looks perfectly smooth and even, I let it dry... I get dark (almost black) patches, or dark lines in it. I see this happening when I thin them as well, until I give them a stir. It's frustrating because I can't tell it's happening as I paint, only as it dries when it's too late to fix. And it can easily happen just in the last coat of an otherwise great paint job, which basically puts me back to square one.

 

Any techniques to try to eliminate this?

Edited February 8, 2019 by Vlad

[colin]

Not a brush painter with large areas, but are you sure your not over thinning them

[Vlad]

This used to happen to me when I first started using them, straight out of the pot un-thinned as if they were Humbrol or Revell Aqua. That wasn't a good idea. I would have thought thinning would help, and indeed I started thinning partly to resolve this issue. I have been thinning more recently and doing lots of thin coats because otherwise they dry really thick and "lock in" brush marks.

 

I can try harder to find a happy medium if you think that's the problem, but it seems to happen regardless of thinning proportion.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Vlad

[Vlad]

OK so in a roundabout way you were right. I was thinning quite a bit to avoid streakyness and brush mark issues that I was having when I tried to paint "out of the pot", and this was causing occasional inconsistent separation issues (though not as bad as now).

 

I then started experimenting with flow enhancer. Now, the flow enhancer itself works like magic, but I did not account for the fact I wouldn't need to thin anywhere near as much. I think it was the combination of flow enhancer with lots of thinning that was causing poor coverage and separation issues.

 

Still perfecting the quantities though

Edited February 10, 2019 by Vlad

[Mr T]

I brush paint Xtracyrlix for patterns and found that thinning with flow improver does wonders. Each colour seems to need a different ratio of paint to improver and it really does help to prevent brush strokes.