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purplecat wrote:
I hate humidity…feels like living in soup…bleh..
😆 THAT was a good one! Kinda feels like walking around like a wet dog too. Or, if you want to get the feeling I actually have, grab a tight heavy wool over coat, soak it down with hot water, and lay out in the hot sun on black pavement (not in traffic)! That is how I feel, personally. Hence, my distaste and my expectations and hopes for our winters. 30s-40s in the night sleeping with windows wide open (I never use heat in my house no matter how cold it gets; I refuse in FL; the cats simply snuggle under covers and have special NASA material heated pads they love to lay on too. But they actually enjoy sitting on their chairs and condos in front of open cold windows and fluffing up- their choice)!
During the days, if were lucky, we’ll get a weeks stretch of 50s-low 70s (usually somewhere in the 60s without humidity) for our winters. If we can stir up a bit of a wind, thats even better! I work the Equestrian Winter Grand Prix series which starts, technically, at the end of December. But the Olympians and upper level riders I use to compete with, they arrive as their classes begin in the middle of January (rain or shine). We have use of an AWESOME new Grand Prix ring which was ready last year but due to poor footing they used in there, too many horses were pulling ligaments and riders were also complaining that is was like riding on a trampoline. Coming into your huge 4’9″+ fence, and the horses last stride where they push down into the ground to launch upwards, made them sink further down making it harder to clear the fence. Many pulled lots of rails and had medical problems. They switched rings to the old Grand Prix ring last year mid season. But this year, the new footing is in and safe, and it will also make my photography job much easier as well.
Why I went into all this much to your boredom is beyond me, but Im rambling for no other reason than Im tired- I guess. 😕
Hmm . . . working with the Golden interference paints, I’ve tried both thinning them with GAC 100 medium, and putting a little water on the brush and taking just a tiny amount of paint (like barely enough to see on the brush) and wiping the bristles back and forth on the palette, then applying it to the PYO. I noticed a few things.
With the medium-thinned interference, applying it over black base coat, I got the intense jewel colors, fairly dark and very rich. I had to thin the interference WAY down; in fact, I ended up putting a swath of my base color down on paper, letting it dry, and then testing small swipes of diluted interference until I got it to stop looking milky when it dried. But when I tried this over a lighter base coat, I still ended up with a milky look. I made lemonade out of the situation by pretending to myself that the Muse was wearing a few pearls. 😛
With a damp brush and microscopic amounts of straight interference on the brush, it took lots and lots of layers (like six or seven) to build up the degree of flash I wanted, but there was no milkiness. I did start losing the depth, though, and the effect started looking flat. I got around that by glazing thin amounts of the underlying base color over the interference. The interference still came through, but it wasn’t so pale and flat and glare-y. Also, I noticed that the darker the base color, the deeper the color shade of the interference. I haven’t worked with it over white yet. And putting interference of the same color over a base color doesn’t give as good an effect as putting it over a different base color.
Hope this helps!
Yes, that does help. Sorry for your troubles but at least I know Im not alone crying over spilled milk! 😛
My new PYOs just arrived and Im going to want to use my interference paints on various different background colors. Being that the Dragon PYO arrived with his left ear chipped off (I crazy glued it back on), I’ll keep that one instead of sell it. It will give me a chance to really play with both colors and textures since I know I wont be selling him. I really want to practice smooth scale blending for I must conquer that aspect of painting. It’s my down fall- other than this interference problem Im having.
BARRDWING- like you, Im trying to do extremely thin layers of each of the interference colors so as to distance myself from the pastel appearance, and try to reach a deeper richer coloration (flashier). But like you, no matter how thin I do it, it does take many layers and in the case of the statue Im doing, Im losing fine details. Luckily most of it is smooth, and I can use paint pens to pull out some of the beading and other details. But right now it just seems too milky for my taste; pastel. I want DRAMA! 😀
I want to get a clear paint coat too, before final sealant to do certain areas of sculpts. Like beaks or such. Windstone seems to get certain areas SO incredibly smooth and shiny as if they were truly metallic. It’s hard to do selective sealant spraying but if I can find a clear coat of paint, I can gloss that on selective small areas and achieve the effects I desire. Or so Im hoping.
Yeah, I ran into loss of details too until I started thinning with water and using teeny amounts of paint on the brush. Now the details stay; it just takes me a freakin’ month of painting an hour or two per night to finish anything. Eventually I’ll figure out how the paints behave and stop getting unpleasant surprises, like colors turning out different than they looked in the bottle. 😆 Still learning.
PhoenixTears wrote:The color it’s going over is a hematite slate middle gray color (hmm, not unlike my kitty in my signature- hehe). Granted, I can see the interference however, they look more pastel than rich and I wanted them rich and bold like the Windstone interferences.
Ah!! That might be your problem. The way the interference looks is largely dependent on the base color. Interference always looks the boldest on black, and as you move to white it looks more and more ‘pastel’. It looks especially strange and pastel, to me, when used over top of a metallic color or a neutral color such as grey.
When making the peacocks, black golds, etc… Windstone starts with a black base. That’s why the interference on those sculpts is so vibrant.
I hope this helps some!
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My art: featherdust.comNam, yes, that does help too and something Id thought about. However, I was tripped up by seeing that the coloring on Siamese flaps, etc, were still more vibrant (hmm, maybe it’s on a darker brown in those areas; cant tell at the moment).
So, technically, if I went over the particular area I want in interference, with a base of black and reapplied the interference, it should be less pastel? Im scared to wash it off and start again, so I might settle for the pastel effect, as it will be different than other interference pieces I have. Adding a bit more specialness to it.
PhoenixTears wrote:Nam, yes, that does help too and something Id thought about. However, I was tripped up by seeing that the coloring on Siamese flaps, etc, were still more vibrant (hmm, maybe it’s on a darker brown in those areas; cant tell at the moment).
So, technically, if I went over the particular area I want in interference, with a base of black and reapplied the interference, it should be less pastel? Im scared to wash it off and start again, so I might settle for the pastel effect, as it will be different than other interference pieces I have. Adding a bit more specialness to it.
Tell ya what, why not experiment? Paint a nice swatch of black on some paper, let it dry, and see what you think of the interference over top. That way your PYO is not effected until you are comfortable with it. 🙂
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.compurplecat wrote:Wish I could be some help…I’ve not actually used interference paints yet….
On your description of “Black Cherry”, you stated you used interference, was that just a mistake 😕 (Sorry, I was just in the gallery looking at Melody’s graphic novel and Black Cherry happened to be one of the randoms so that’s why I bring it up).
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