What to Thin Metallics With?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2018
- Thinning metallics can be a little tricky. Not TOO tricky (water still works fine for a lot of things), but there are some products that are better. In this video I run several tests on 11 different thinners to get an idea about which would work the best.
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0:00: "What should you use to thin metallic paints?"
0:05-0:15: *badass metal intro*
0:16: "Water"
0:18: *roll credits*
indeed
But when would we get the charts?
From which songs is this Metall Intro? Plz let me know
@@mr.t5585 th-cam.com/video/7P1qWrormko/w-d-xo.html
A good look in the descriptions is really worth it!
A friend once told me that a good artist is a good scientist, because experimentation and observation can take you far with your artwork. Your attention to eliminating variables here is awesome, and your explanation of light in your NMM video was mind opening.
You make paint science look rad!
A few artists are actually quite resistant at applying science into their art. A few years ago, I listened a segment on NPR where some guitar makers were getting salty when an acoustic scientist tried to recreate the best guitar ever using the power of science.
InstaBlaster.
that is why i dont thin metalics i just use very little on the brush. most metallics appear ready to go straight on to me and i like the finish that this gives.
I have tried thinning mine with the blood of my enemies, but it ends up looking too damn pink and then it congeals. It is almost as irritating as trying to drink from the skulls of my enemies and the damned stuff leaking out the eye sockets every time.
Yeah, feels like Khorne lied to us all the time!
You gotta put the skull around a pre-existing cup
The Vallejo Metal Medium really isn't for thinning, but you can mix any colour into it to make a metalic.
M1keUp tbh, it just seems like silver paint. Like a thinner, less useful silver paint.
Miniac it's basicly glitter in suspension fluid. Same thing that makes metalics shimmer.
I wanna try it now with some black paint for my Deathwatch army. :D
Yeah, it's basically mica grains + acrylic medium. There's no extra pigment, but the mica will lighten the colour of whatever paint you add it to, so you need to use a darker colour than you want the result to be.
thanks - now it makes a lot more sense to me. I was trying out Vallejo Metal Medium and it changed the color of my brass metal and didn't improve the characteristics at all.
Love your scientific approach. Great little sled! Your attention to detail is amazing.... and kinda explains ur Mini Hacks video ... ur sanity is definitely in question!
How does this video not have more views? I don't understand how people are missing out on this awesomeness.
The quality of your production and of the information you provide is, to my knowledge at least, unrivaled in the mini-painting youtube sphere. I appreciate ya.
Recently I discovered the Matt medium from Vallejo. Using it with Metallics gives a interesting finish. Don't ask why I tried it, but I really love the result
Still waiting on that masking tape video :)
Great production value and thanks for all the effort you put into this with your elaborate testing method. Much appreciated!
Love your videos and really digged this style of testing with how careful you were to make it a fair test! Can't wait to see more videos like these!
Shout out from the land down under
Just found this channel already loving it.
Hey Scott, just responding to your conclusion - you can buy concentrated flow improver from W&N, Liquitex and other places. You could mix a very small amount of this into your gloss medium to give you the best of all worlds.
I appreciated the heavy metal break while the brush holder was being assembled.
Megadeth!!!!
I am so impressed to see controlled tests! Man what a good video!
Great video, love the commitment to a fair and meaningful test!
I always enjoy your videos, Scott! I was looking around earlier for glues and what each type does best. I think this could make an interesting video topic.
Currently going back and watching you video's in chronological order and must say that I like these testing video's the most. Hopefully you will do more of them in the future!
I appreciate the depth of your explanations. Great scientific approach.
one of the most interesting video series yet sir. thank you for the break down
this is really interesting that you released this today! I just learned and applied how to thin metallic paints to airbrush my dreadfort!
Soooooo glad you made this video. I was having problems having my vallejo game color metals flow well off my brush. Was giving my problems while I was trying to add highlights to some sisters of silence I'm working on.
I use a mix of water, flow aid and slowdry at a 3:1:1 ratio for thinning. It works pretty well.
Thank you for this, I was pondering it two days ago. Your a star ⭐️
Cheers m8, advice has helped for major project
Love your videos, and also, your vulfpeck t-shirt is kickass
Your videos are great dude
I've been using Vallejo flow improver for the last few months and it does a real charm using the straw blow airbrush replacement technique from your last video.
Also makes it taste sweeter!
Hey Scott, being new to the 'try to improve my painting' crowd, I really enjoy your informative videos. Yesterday, I even bought your suggested air brush and compressor to at least start priming my stuff with...yer welcome..... I do have a suggestion though. While I acknowledge that I could slow the video down or rewatch it numerous times, I would find it helpful if while you are going over the results, you actually indicate which one you are talking about at the time. A simple finger on the bottom of the column would suffice. Throughout the video I found myself trying to figure out which one you were referring to by trying to read your abbreviations at the top and of course you moved on too quickly before I could so I was unable to actually 'see' what you were referring to. Of course I am literally a year behind in some of your videos so maybe you have already made better changes..tks
Super helpful video, as always!
Btw, love the shot at 10:03 - such crispy focus!
love your scientific approach
So helpful...Thank you.
Can you do more heavy metal marines ? I love the series:)
great vid as always, Thanks!
this is science level of work!!
love it!
Awesome video! 👍🏻
Love that outro!
This video really changed my life, not cause of the primer, but because I had no idea those little droppers existed, gonna make pulling paint out of the pot so much easier! Thank You! :D also love the scientific vids, though that poll really was a pain in the butt, I was like uh is this over yet?! I'm pretty new to the hobby so allot of your tutorial stuff really helps me. Is my primer dry yet? I really want to paint these minis! Maybe if I write a really long comment then they will be ready... What's a good metal band for someone new to the genre? What's your favorite metallic paint? Is Metallica really metal? Find out next time on Digimon digital monsters!
Hey Scott, love your videos. Keep up the good work!
Quick question: Could you do a video on the "loaded brush" technique? I'm sure many people might not have heard about it and I think it is amazing if a bit difficult to pull off.
Sounds like wood floor polish would work as well. It is basically a low gloss water based acrylic medium with flow enhancer. Pledge works as a wash thinner, so...
This type of content is awesome
that pokemon bucket is fucking legendary
Just got my awesome cutting mat, shirt and cup in the mail! love your stuff mate, keep on doing what you do! :)
Impavide thanks for your support!!
That's a pretty fucking honest way to start the video, I approve!
Great video, I really like these experiment videos, they are really useful and will most likely result in me saving some euros. By the way, I don't think Vallejo's Metal Medium is meant to be used as a a thinner for metal paints, it's used for making coloured metals by mixing it with paints or inks. Of course you could use it for metal paints as well, but it changes their colour. It's basically a thin white paint with metal particles.
I use mostly Vallejo's Thinner Medium to thin my metal paints, I think it works well enough for basic thinning. Vallejo's Airbrush Thinner works as well even for brush work.
Love your videos man.
They are Always interesting and i Always learn something new.
Also, my job is really bloody booring.
Regards from Sweden.
One of the reasons to thin paint is the one you tested here: Improved flow off the brush, while maintaining good consistency and good coverage.
The other reason is that you want less opacity while maintaining good workability and good consistency (glazing for TMM techniques, for instance), which you didn't really test here.
The test you did is solid science and useful. Much appreciated.
Could you define workability and consistency in such a way that I might quantify it? I did genuinely forget that, but I'm having trouble coming up with a test for it.
That's trickier. What you want to see is even coverage and a durable cured paint coat, but tinting rather than opaque coverage. You would probably want to add the fluid in some controlled way, then paint a broad thin coat and check the evenness of the tinting. A classis sign of bad coverage is chalkiness, but with the mica flakes in metallics you might end up getting a slightly different breakdown.
Then, after the paint is cured (significantly longer time than drying, btw), do some sort of scuff test to test durability.
Here, the issue isn't so much "Can you thin the paint with this stuff" but "How far can you thin it without it turning into something not useful." This might require multiple dilutions per substance, though you can probably get away with using fewer substances, since acrylic media tend to be very similar to each other (as do flow aids and drying retarders.)
very nice video thanks
Liquitex Flow Aid has given me the best results with Vallejo and Reaper - everything else has given me a "chalky" finish that seemingly changes the color too (much like your analysis of finish - several look like totally different colors simply because the thinner changes or reacts with them oddly.
Thanks to Miniac for doing these tests in a pretty reasonably controlled manner, I appreciate it.
Invaluable information. I've been using Lahmian all the time and after seeing how much it affects the color, i might be pulling out some other options. Thank you!
Yeah that was really surprising how much it affected the finish of the metallics.
What brand of Metalic did you use? I skipped the thinning for awhile and went straight to Vallejo air brush metalics, but they were a little TOO thin for brush work. I love these in depth and informative videos. Looking forward to your video on different metalic brands.
For thinning my harder to control metallic I have had just amazing results with golden airbrush medium. It is really potent so I use it at a 5 to 1 ratio or less. It will split the paint faster than water but I love the results so much it's worth the wasted paint.
I wonder how well the new Contrast medium would work for regular paint or metallics.
Nice video and testing methodology, btw which metallic paint did you use?
Great video, thanks. BTW, where did you get the paint rack that's attached to the wall behind you in this video? That would be perfect for my man cave.
Dear Scott, thank you again for this awesome content. May i add something (i've not finished your video yet)... The "splittinng" or "piling up" of water thinned paint, may be due to the surface tention. there might be an alternative with window cleaner.
Comparing mediums to do glazing fat and thin glazes would be a good thing to demonstrate. I have found vallejo's additives just don't tend to cut it. Their medium and glaze medium tends to cause clumping of pigment, rather than even distribution, leaving a worse outcome than water with a small ammount of surfactant in it from say a dish detergent. A product I found to be good to have on your wet palette is Golden's Wetting agent, which can be added to your water and wet palette to provide surfacant effects. The problem is it will lower working time and dry faster, albeit not so fast it will dry on your wet palette if you keep it topped up. Currently trying out AK interactives drying retarder, as it is a liquid, rather than a gel like vallejo's so it could work well in tandem with Golden's wetting agent for smooth blends that take some working time.
This is a good test
Lahmian Medium is mostly used as a Matt Varnish. I do use it sometimes for thinking paint, but I mostly use it for varnishing.
If you still have the leveling test board, it would be interesting to see what the shine difference comes out looking like after a normal clear coat.
I used Vallejo airbrush flow improver last night with GW Stormhost Silver for the grooves of my AdMech Galvanic Rifles and Arquebuses, with a Broken Toad MKII 3/0 brush. Outstanding results. The mix sat on a wet palette and didn't need mixing or reconstituting of any kind. I painted on 15 guns in total and was impressed by the results. If anyone has experience with vallejo metal medium, please let me know how it works for you.
Golden makes excellent Artist Grade products. The key is learning what each one does and experimenting with the various applications until you feel comfortable with the products and their uses.
Yay! Charts!
Wow, this is really helpful. Most of us don't have the resources to test something like that. More please! :-)
I'm curious to try thinning with some Vallejo Gloss Varnish
Where is Vodka thinner?))
I also would say the different paints you use would make a big differance. I use army Panter brand most and guarantee it would act different then a GW paint when introduced to thinners.
I have some GW paints I haven't used in about a year. Other day I cracked them open and see they are dried out. Was wondering if there is a thinner or some way to "revive" them or if they are just ruined?
How much of GOLDEN’s open medium do you use to make regular acrylic on par with miniature specific acrylics?
I was looking for a less grain metallic paint but yours came up first on the list sooo, any suggestions?
Thanks for the video. Just got my merch and have to say quite pleased with everything (I got the coffee mug, mat, and hoodie.) You need to find a way to sell a thing with your logo on it that works like the old staples button and has the "Paint more minis!" sound byte loaded in it. Do you by any chance have a link to the shelves in the background of your video?
Its a shelf from the Container Store as part of their "elfa" system. I can't seem to find it on their site, but I made the little wooden steps for it to take advantage of the space better.
I've tried citadel/gw, p3, Vallejo metal color, Vallejo game air/model air, and scale75 metallics. They all thin fine with water aside from scale75, although I think the gw metallics suck in terms of consistency and finish. With the scale75 metallics when I first used, I couldn't figure out how to thin with just water, it seemed to be pooling and acting weird in general. I started thinning it with Vallejo glaze medium instead to reduce the surface tension, and that did the trick. But that's the only brand I use something other than water for.
I'm not surprised the Lahmian Medium didn't have separation; while it may have the same consistency as Vallejo Flow Improver, its actually just thinned acrylic matte medium, which is why it thins paint without really diluting it. The additive I've had the most luck with is Liquitex Flow Improver; for me at least, it seems the best at allowing the paint to flow off the brush smoothly and easily. As an aside, Vallejo Metallic Medium isn't actually designed as a thinner; its meant to be used with matte paints to give them a metallic luster, which would allow you to take something like Mephiston Red, mix it with the Metallic Medium and get a red metallic paint. Just as a heads up though, it can affect the color; if the color you chose is a relatively light shade (say like Wild Rider Red), you're more likely to end up with a pastel metallic (in this example, metallic pink) so be aware of that when using it.
If I'm painting a model that I really want to look good, I use lacquer or enamel metallics (can't go wrong with Mr Hobby) thinned with Tamiya lacquer thinner and sprayed or brushed over a black gloss coat. For tabletop quality I use acrylic metallics thinned with liquitex matte medium and never airbrush it because airbrushing acrylic metallics is too fiddly and gunks up the brush. I've been too lazy and intimidated to learn NMM. Maybe some day.
I get really frustrated painting with metallics. I just messed up a couple of primaris marines by globbing some gold paint on their chest plates T_T. I've resorted to drybrushing the metallics on but that really doesn't work for every surface. Guess I'll pick up some thinner finally and see if it makes a difference in my painting. Your channel has improved ever other aspect of my painting, I'm sure it'll help with this one.
Are there no miniac t-shirts? I checked the merch store and only found cups and mats, but that's probably on me.
The t-shirts were a limited edition run. I'll have something more permanent sometime soon.
Well you went halfway to doing my other comment, let's just go whole hogg and thin out that tmm and paint it over some nmm and see what happens! Also keep it up man, I like what you're doing. Only wish you posted more often
Can you perform a test using yellow from recognized brands?
You're using your Raphael's 8404 to paint with metalics? I thought that wasn't a good idea to paint with metallics using your good brushes?
Your 'like' to 'dislike' ratios are epic.
Great Video , Can you put a link to the pipettes you use please?
amzn.to/2ADoYRs
Does that work?
Been toying with the idea of painting minis for a bit... so giving credit where credit is due, your videos in particular pushed me over the edge. I am now addicted. So from one old metal dude to another metal dude Hail and Kill!.
Golden Airbrush medium. Thin as water, glossy finish that protects your metals.
Might be worth doing a similar test with inks as thinners.
Scientistiac!
Did I miss what metal color did you use?
Interesting would be a test with two or three of the thinners with different types of metal color.
...
Or do a test on masking tapes.
;-)
I like rubbing alcohol. I use it for most of my thinning and it works just as well as name brand thinning products. Really breaks up the paint tension and flows better than most. Cheap rubbing alcohol and a little water. Drys fast so not that great for blending.
Am I wrong for thinking that Vallejo Flow improver (VA FI) had really good results and looks like it thinned the paint down well?
no, it did well
I use it exclusively for my airbrush work and was wondering how well it would do with brush work and thinning. I've been using Liquitex Flow Aid but it's a little bit of a pain since you have to dilute with water.
Could you aff Dish Soap with the Water
Is the Vallejo liquid metal gold that's in alcohol any good?
They look really realistic, since they use actual metal instead of mica, but they're fiddly. The alcohol you need to thin them with dries fast, and you can't thin them with water or mix them with water-based paints (or even put water-based paint on top without varnishing first), unless you want your models to rust. They seem to be a bit thicker than water-based metallics too.
Out of these 11 only water and x20a are actually thinners. Maybe this was the point, but I really can't see what you were hoping to achieve by thinning with flow improver. On a constructive note, try Mr Hobby's leveling thinner.
Where are you getting the piepets? Not sure I spelled that right.
Amazon has them
Two part question:
1) What metallics (color & brand) were used?
2) Brand specific thinners, are they formulated to work best with their same brand paint?
We used citadel paints in all these tests, and we used the citadel thinners in all tests so you should be able to come to a conclusion with your second question.
Nice video, but you know what would be extremely useful? A "technical" vid about thinning paints in general, showing examples and talking about how much dilution is the best for each objective (layering, glazing, highlighting, etc) and product to use in each case. Perhaps you pros take for granted given your experience but that is my number 1 struggle. Too often I either under-dilute (leaving marks and making highlighting impossible) or I over water the paint, and then it runs too much and accumulates at the curves like a wash. Thanks
I find vallejo airbrush thinner works well with metallics.
SCOTT
HOW about mop and glow?
Miniac, you should remake video with "Best base color for metalics" with airbrush.
I think it can improve opacity and consistency of colors.
P.S. Red is da best undercoat for bronze.
One of the things I love most about the miniatures world is that pretty much everyone is a hacker.
Also list some of your favorite metal bands. Cheers
You have a huge amount of tools :O
I used to use X20A but now I' m using Mr. Color Leveling thinner. Best thinner and paint leveler in the universe.
Scott, bro, get on that Vallejo Liquid Metal already :D ! It's got it all: flow, coverage, shine, smoothness. The only thing I'm trying to figure out is which undercoat works best. I've found that the glossier (in other words perfectly level) the surface, the more you end up with crisp, highly reflective surfaces. A matte undercoat gives you a grainier look.
This isn't the metallic product comparison yet! I have purchased some and will compare it to the other brands.
Sick, can't wait :) !