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Hi all,

I have had a a few different painters here tell me that the use of Flow Improver will give you better adhesion than water-thinned paint. I had another painter tell me that the less dilute Flow Improver becomes, the more and more it will compromise the paint's ability to stick i have confirmed this on Liquitex's website.

Can both of these things be true?

After trying every varnish out there, and hating them all, I have decided not to bother, so I am very interested, and simultaneously terrified of adding Flow Aid to my paints as a matter of course...

One of the side effects of diluting your paints with water is that it increases the surface tension. If you were to apply an overly-diluted paint to a flat surface, you wouldn't get a nice coat on the surface, but instead little beads of paint. Adding flow aid would remove that. Maybe that's what the first person you talked to meant by better adhesion.

The liquitex website does mention that too much flow-aid will lower the ability of the paint to stick to the surface, but I've never seen anything like that with flow-aid, so I suppose it's only when you use very large amounts of flow-aid.
Also, liquitex sells acrylic paints that they call "heavy body". I know someone who uses them to paint on canvas, and they're indeed very very thick (compared to what we use in miniature painting). Maybe if you were to mix these paints with flow aid to obtain a thin consistency, you would have to add a ton of it and end up with a very poor adherence. Anyway, my point is that their warning might not apply to miniature painting, as we use very smooth paints to begin with (and therefore never need insane amounts of flow-aid). In any case, I've never experiences adherence problems with flow-aid.

The two fellas in another thread were quite explicit about it adhering, ie: not coming off, better than water thinned paint in their experience. Could it be that diluting it appropriately gets it into a "sweet spot" of some kind where it has the opposite effect as when in higher concentration?

 Weboflies wrote:
The two fellas in another thread were quite explicit about it adhering, ie: not coming off, better than water thinned paint in their experience. Could it be that diluting it appropriately gets it into a "sweet spot" of some kind where it has the opposite effect as when in higher concentration?

Normal paint should adhere pretty well on its own, and only come off if you hit the model. So better adherence would mean that it withstand impacts better? If so, how do you test it? By chipping the paint voluntarily and see what happens?
All I can say is that I've never noticed any adherence difference when using flow-aid. My paint didn't start rubbing off easily, and I don't think my minis' paintjobs became bulletproof. But I've never tried to drop them on the floor to test it.

I think flow-aid is pretty widely used, so hopefully other people will share their experience.

 Weboflies wrote:
The two fellas in another thread were quite explicit about it adhering, ie: not coming off, better than water thinned paint in their experience. Could it be that diluting it appropriately gets it into a "sweet spot" of some kind where it has the opposite effect as when in higher concentration?

Vallejo's airbrush flow improver is both a surfactant (makes the paint flow better over the surface) and also a solvent that will help it bite in to the previous paint layer better. Over bare plastic I have no idea though, it may improve or decrease or do nothing to adhesion.

Even though it's labelled as an "airbrush flow improver" I use it more with a hairy brush than my airbrush.

But that's specifically the Vallejo brand, I haven't used other brands to know what they are like.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Vallejo's airbrush flow improver is both a surfactant (makes the paint flow better over the surface) and also a solvent that will help it bite in to the previous paint layer better. Over bare plastic I have no idea though, it may improve or decrease or do nothing to adhesion.

Even though it's labelled as an "airbrush flow improver" I use it more with a hairy brush than my airbrush.

But that's specifically the Vallejo brand, I haven't used other brands to know what they are like.

I see, maybe it's something particular to the Vallejo product. How much do you normally use when brushing on paint?