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Made in nl
Regular Dakkanaut





How do you cope with big, curved smooth surfaces? At the moment I’m painting a LOTR fell beast and I’m taking about the tail. The underside is long, curved and super smooth with no texture whatsoever for the paint to grip. With thinned paints - I need thinning for any shading, right? - it ends up pooling and drying very patchily. Just wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem and maybe found a solution
   
Made in au
Fixture of Dakka





Melbourne

One solution might be to take some fine grit sand paper and just gently rough up the offending surfaces. Using fine grit sand paper will give the surface enough tooth to hold the paint and yet (hopefully) wont mar the area too badly. Use a fine enough grit and any paint you put on it should fill in any imperfections left.

Another option could be to use rattle cans/airbrush and just give the piece as light or heavy a dusting as required.
Seeing though as you're talking specifically about shading, neither method might work for you unless you jusy want a general cover-all shade. If you're aiming for only shading particular parts then you may need to find something else that works.
Regarding shading though. What paints are you using? If you are using shade/wash specific paints then they likely wont need thinning unless your really want them diluted for something. Any of the GW shades you can slap straight on.
Pictures are always helpful too! Just so people can get an idea of what you're dealing with.

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Made in gb
Frenzied Berserker Terminator




Southampton, UK

Sounds like you're trying to wash a smooth surface, it won't really work. Washes need recesses to settle in to.
   
Made in us
Stealthy Space Wolves Scout





Folkvang

Couple of points here for ya.

Thinning paints is all good and well but sometimes a slightly thicker paint is actually preferable. This is probably one of those cases.

Alternatively, you would need a stronger adhering paint. This is typically something you learn about over years of painting minis. Molotow permanent inks are usually sold as pens but their refill bottles have amazingly strong and matte inks that you can both paint on and airbrush on. They're amazing and they will cover and be smooth. Just don't drip them on anything you don't want to have paint on cuz they don't come off easily... and if you airbrush, use an airbrush that's cheap or old cuz they can totally kill it.

You also might try mixing standard inks like liquitex brand with your typical paints. It thins down the paint while not compromising your pigment count.

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Made in us
Grumpy Longbeard






General tips:
If paint is pooling that sometimes has to do with water Surface Tension. To help with that add a drop of dish soap into your paint mixture. Paint should cover and stay better.

Other times pooling has to do with de-molding residue. Pre-wash the piece in soapy water and scrub it with toothbrush should prep surface for painting.

Spray on Primers usually give the smooth surface a bit of a tooth for other paint to stick to.

Sometimes I add a drop of ModPodge to my base-paint mixture. That also helps paint to sit without pooling.
____________________________________
What can be done now:
For large smooth surfaces folk mostly use rattle-can or airbrush. If you are stuck with paintbrush and thin down paint, then you have to build it up in layers. Paint the piece first, let paint pool and dry in patches. When dry put another layer of your thin watered down paint, it will cover more with less pooling, let that dry. Put third coat and 4th and 5th and you will have smooth large area painted in few thin coats.

Professional Acrylic photo-realistists use thinned down acrylic on Board (smooth surface) and achieve extreme smoothness, transitions and detail. It is all about painting many thin layers over and over. And because acrylic dries so fast laying many layers is not a problem.

If you are talking about a Wash over already painted tail then you are dealing with water Surface Tension issue and need to ether use: 1- Wash the tail with specific paints for washing that do not pool, paints like (GameColor WASH) or 2- Use Oil wash, thinner that dilutes oil paint is much much thinner than water and does not have Surface Tension issues that water does and will never pool. 3- Augment your existing paint with additives that will help with the Surface Tension. Additives like :dishsoap, Golden Acrylic medium, Liquitex flow aid, ets For the addatives look up some DIYs



Hope this helps.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 21:47:58


 
   
Made in us
Deathwing Terminator with Assault Cannon






I would go with a size 6-8 filbert and wet blend it instead of trying to shade with a wash.
   
Made in nl
Fighter Ace






Yes, blend that tail.

   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Just an idea to look into but for boatmakers they use a roll and tip method to get a consistent finish over large areas. I can't guarantee its applicable here, I airbrush large surfaces on minis myself, but having extra ideas can't hurt.
   
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





It depends what you're trying to achieve really.

If you just want a smooth coat of paint of one colour, then use a big brush and thin the paint down and do it in 3 or 4 coats. Mix up your brush strokes between coats to avoid reinforcing and inconsistencies (e.g. use circular strokes one time, then straight in one direction for the next coat, then straight in a perpendicular direction for the next coat). Also if you're painting colours that have poor coverage, try and prime in a way that you aren't trying to massively alter the tone from the primer to your top coat (e.g. don't prime black if you want a bright yellow).

If you're trying to achieve colour variation transitioning gradually from one colour to another, there's lots of methods. You could layer it, you could glaze it, you could wet blend it.

If it's a one off model (rather than a whole army painted the same way) then you could use oil paints instead of acrylics as they blend much more easily over large surfaces. A blend that would take hours to achieve with acrylics can be done in minutes with oils. The approach with oils is to roughly apply the different colours without thinning them too much, then use a blending brush to work the two colours together, mixing them on the model to create a smooth transition.

You could also try drybrushing / stippling the paint on, which can work well on a large model if you want a textured look/feel like demonstrated in the video below.




But yeah, I'd hesitate to tell you what to do without knowing what you're trying to achieve.


This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2022/01/20 08:48:04


 
   
Made in gb
Thane of Dol Guldur





Bodt

Washes aren't for shading smooth surfaces. You will need to work your shading into your layers, which means transitions. Alternatively you could try stippling/drybrushing/smudging techniques using a make up brush.

Edit. See that's already been covered above..

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/20 09:34:12


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Made in nl
Regular Dakkanaut





Some great tips as always. Thanks everybody.
   
 
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