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Washes on flat paint


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To all who may be able to help,

 

Hello all. I am fairly new to aircraft modeling but have done scale auto for quite some time. My 7 year old wanted to do a model of an SBD Dauntless and we bought all the paints and primers. Well, once I sprayed the “dark gray” on the top side, it looked way too light. Him (my 7 yr old) being a military aircraft enthusiast goes “it looks kinda like a Japanese zero”. I can’t say he’s off by much, so my thoughts were to apply a blue wash to one: bring out the panel lines and two: to make give the gray a little bit more of a blue tinge. I used testors dark gray spray paint and am thinking of going with citadel washes. Any harm in doing this? Please advise. Thank you all in advance who may reply.

 

Also, the bottom color looks fine. It’s mainly the top side that is t necessarily dark/blue enough. 

 

Thank you all

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Normally a wash is applied to a gloss surface so that it can be wiped away from all but the panel lines or more readily controlled outside the panel lines. A wash on a flat paint is more difficult to remove; perhaps impossible, depending on the conditions. I'm not sure that will provide the effect you want.

 

You seem to have ruled out respraying the topside paint. One reason could be you already applied the decals; but you didn't mention that, so I'm left wondering why not the simplest approach?

 

Also, welcome aboard! 

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Thank you for the reply. I have yet to put decals on to be honest but I have glued the prop and the top glass and there are little people in there. Nothing to where I couldn’t put some silly putty and masking tape over but I was just curious if putting a wash would give it that blue tinge. I’m not looking to make sure only panel lines get washed. I was wanting to give a tinge of blue to a gray surface. I’m just want to make sure that if I do that, it won’t look awful after application. Please advise. Thank y’all 

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2 hours ago, Feenix said:

Well, once I sprayed the “dark gray” on the top side, it looked way too light.

 

A coat or two of clear gloss for the decals will darken the color.  Another coat of clear gloss to protect the paint and decals before washing will darken the color even more.

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"Washes" of a sort can be used over a flat coat, but usually will be called something more akin to a "filter".  A "sludge" wash where there is thick pigment overlying the panel lines will not wash/wipe well off a flat surface.  But a thinner even layer over the whole model can be used.  This will still collect in panel lines in part and act a bit like a wash, but would usually be called a filter.  They can be good for adding subtle variation to monotone schemes, adding depth to base color, or creating streaking/fading/weathering effects.  These filters behave a bit differently on flat vs gloss surfaces, but work on both. 

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Thank you all for the input. I went ahead and did the blue wash and it came out ok. Way better than I thought. Was scared for a minute after all my sons hard work. Didn’t want to ruin it. I would upload photos of it however my iPhone does not allow for such small format photos. I’ll take pictures of the finished product after it’s all done and reformat the photos to a smaller size. Again thank you all for this help. Y’all have been great.

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  • 3 months later...
On 11/28/2018 at 1:51 AM, dnl42 said:

I think you risk looking awful. Personally, I'd go with repaint.

 

Hopefully, you'll get some more input to help you decide. Posting a picture will help.

Agreed. I am just getting back into building after thirty years. One thing I remember though, the great part about our hobby, is you can always change colors if you want. There are only two reasons why repainting won't work. One, if you did the decals already, which you have not. The second is, trying to go lighter than the original paint, but that is probably easy to overcome with another coat of primer and then the new paint of your liking. The amount of paint we throw down is so light, you could probably put 20 coats on before you start losing details like panel lines.

 

Good luck, post pics when you finish.

 

Anthony

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