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Hey everybody, so I was thinking about using glow-in-the-dark paint to paint the eye lenses and plasma coils on my Chaos Marine army.

There's just one issue I need to figure out before I can do this: figure out a way of getting it to go on smoothly. For some reason whenever my brother uses it for his costumes it's always super thick and we figured to thin it with a little bit of water, except there is almost no pigment in these paints, but after a few coats a solid color came into being. The only thing being it doesn't like to go on very smooth and the excess paint doesn't like to be covered and leaves an obvious layer of where it was before you reapplied the base coat.

So enough of this rant; what would you guys think would make this stuff flow and/or thin down better? I thought logically flow improver or slow-dry, but lately my LGS hasn't had a supply of either. Is there any other products that might help?

Well for starters it sounds like fabric paint which is meant to be thick and like you said causes problems from the beginning so it might be better to find a more suitable one.

Other than that after you thin it do some practice runs to see if it stays on the models properly. I'd say keep looking for either an alternative paint or a proper thinner as water will likely just wreck it.

True, I'll have to look online when I get some money and see if I can find it for craft use instead of fabrics. I just like this kind since the color it is (IE blue, yellow, red, purple, etc) it glows that color and not just green.

I have no advise for this, but I'm pretty interested in how this comes out, can you post pictures of the final product? Quick question... do you ever plan on playing in the dark...?

I used some last week on my Space Hulk Terminators. I didn't paint the eyes though. I used it to coat my splatter greenblood from the genestealers. The guy holding the genestealer head and spinal column has it dripping down his leg. I also put some on the chainsword and a few of the powerfists. I will take some pictures later and show you all. It is thick, but this worked to my advantage since I wanted it for genestealer gore.

To be honest, that actually does sound pretty awesome, link the pictures when they are up, looking forwards to it!

Sevenups wrote:To be honest, that actually does sound pretty awesome, link the pictures when they are up, looking forwards to it!

Sure thing. When I get home tonight from work I will try and take some pics. If I can figure out how to turn off the flash, I will see if I can take some photos of them in the dark too.

I think Vallejo do flourescent paints, those might be worth checking into.

One secret to photographing glow-in-the-dark items, is not to photograph them in the dark. Most consumer-type point and shoots jut can't handle that little light. What you do is hit it with a UV (black)light. and a dim normal lamp. Glow-in-the-dark paint also floreses under blacklights, so it will appear to "glow" the dim lamp will provide better lighting for the whole mini. Then instead of just taking the picture, rest the camera on something (like a tripod if you've got one) and use the timer setting. This will allow the camera to have a nice long slow shutter speed without you accidently moving it even a little bit. So you'll end up with a reasonable exposure, and the glow-in-the-dark components will look like they are actaully glowing.

I've seen some tutorials online for a necron army like this. Monoliths have black lights in them that shine on the necrons and if you give them a highlight of the UV paint it will glow along with the rods.

this sounds very cool,lets see some pics please.

I concur, we need pics.

I remember building a Revell Pirate Ghost ship with the glow in the dark paint: ugh! It was like trying to paint with curdled milk, very hard to get an even covering. Gamecraft of Liverpool (England) do fluorescent paints such as green, red and yellow. They used to do blue as well. I use the green for Necron eyes etc and it works well, giving a good glow like finish.

@Sevenups: Well I was thinking of doing it as more of a bragging right and also when I get my own place set up a black light to make me and my friends games more interesting.

@RayvenQ: I don't think Vallejo ever made paints like this, I think he closest they ever got was a series of bright neon colors that would react o a black light.