Ammo by Mig Transparator

[Semper Fortis]

Has anyone used the above product? It's supposed to make paint transparent. I have a couple colors I want to try something with. Any input is appreciated.

[Bung]

I have used it and its an ok product.

But you gave to use it with an airbrush to work in my experience.

On the other side most paints dont need that transparator. You just need to dilute your paint like a glaze with 10:1 dilution / paint ratio at least.

[Semper Fortis]

Thanks, Bung! I want to try a super thin tint experiment and don't want to mix a big batch of glaze recipe. Will give it a go.

[Arkhanist]

If you have some existing acrylic medium, i.e. matt medium or lahmian medium, some of that will let you dilute with a lot of water to a glaze without losing adhesion. Vallejo glaze medium is similar, with some added flow aid to make it pool less and I think drying retarder.

[Semper Fortis]

Thanks, Arkhanist. I appreciate the response. I tried that, along with a various combinations and ratios of the usual additives and it just wouldn't thin far enough. Even my go-to, Vallejo airbrush flow improver, didn't do it. I'll give this stuff a shot and if it doesn't work, give the whole thing up as a bad idea. If it does work, I'll write up a review.

[Subtle Discord]

What colour are you trying to make transparent? Vallejo makes a range of paints that they refer to as 'transparent' but they're only basic colours, so anything beyond the standard spectrum and you'd need to mix something. I have a range of them but I haven't had a chance to play with them. They're quite thin and I doubt they would be translucent enough for you right from the bottle, but they might perform the way you want if you use one of the products listed to thin them down.

[Bung]

@ Subtle Discord

The Transparator shall help to make any color transparent without changing color too much.

Its mostly used when you do miniatures in black and white technic so you dont need to mix any highlight colors etc.

Its something coming from scale modelling mostly for tanks. But it would work for Marines and other armoured troops too.

 

I start with a dark grey primer, then start with a neutral grey for first highlights, light grey for top highlights. All Airbrush till now.

Wash the deepest shadows with black paint top highlights with pure white.

Do some weathering with sponge chipping (still grey).

Last stepp is to hit the miniature with your transparent basecolor (airbrush again).

For the last step you mix in the transparator. If you would hit it with pure Dark Green or something like that you would lose the contrast you build up with the black and white.

[Semper Fortis]

Subtle Discord, I'm trying to thin a particular shade of red and also a burnt orange for my Ordo Reductor force. Bung hit the nail on the head. I'm experimenting with the black and white technique on a tank. So far I have stripped it three times. For some reason I'm just not getting the same results as Mig Jimenez. :)

 

Thanks to both of you for your help.

[Major_Gilbear]

Silly question probably, but I take it you've read the little "how-to" PDF? (link).

 

Second silly question, but what exactly are you having trouble with? Can you post some pix to show us? I'm just thinking it might be easier in terms of giving you help about anything that you might be getting wrong or missing - I mean, you might in fact be getting the "correct" results even if you don't like them! :P

[Semper Fortis]

Good evening, Major. Thanks for responding. Unfortunately, I don't have pics; that is unless you want one of the Beast freshly stripped (again). :)

 

I'm using a 1:35 WWII German VsKfz with some minor conversions as a minesweeper for my 30k Ordo Reductor mechanicum force. I don't play anymore so I don't much care if it's legal. It's a tank I always wanted to build back when I modeled armor, and I also wanted to try black and white technique as it is almost all flat planes.

 

I suspect a large part of my problem is that I was too cheap to buy the transparator in the first place. Using Forge World clear red works a treat, but that isn't the shade I want nor is there an equivalent orange.

 

I thought I could use additives. Unfortunately, I find that mixing the paint into additives is simply attenuating the paint so that it won't cover well on the dark parts and then tends to leave tidal marks as it blends up into the white. I suspect it wouldn't be nearly the problem if I was shooting normal military colors, but red and orange are far more tint sensitive.

 

BTW, thanks for the PDF link. I didn't have that, but I do have the Mig book on black and white. Very interesting technique.

[Bung]

After reading this:

 

 

I thought I could use additives. Unfortunately, I find that mixing the paint into additives is simply attenuating the paint so that it won't cover well on the dark parts and then tends to leave tidal marks as it blends up into the white. I suspect it wouldn't be nearly the problem if I was shooting normal military colors, but red and orange are far more tint sensitive.

 

I think you have other problems than the transparator.

First the Transparator is designed for water based colors, so it wont work with alcohol based paints like Tamiya.

Second is, if a color is transparent it doesnt cover that well anymore cause transparant is opposite of oppaque with good covering.

Third if you have tidal marks it looks like you spray to much at the same spot with your airbrush or spray to much paitn at once, you need to work in lighter layers maybe doing more layers after each one dried to get to the shade you want.

I have used the transparator with Scale Color Reds and Armypainter colors which normaly are pretty oppaque without any problems.

[Arkhanist]

I thought I could use additives. Unfortunately, I find that mixing the paint into additives is simply attenuating the paint so that it won't cover well on the dark parts and then tends to leave tidal marks as it blends up into the white. 

 

My first question - are you using an airbrush, or by hand? That will have a significant effect on how you can best approach this.

 

Fundamentally, it sounds like you're glazing (also known as tinting). This is where you apply multiple layers of a translucent colour to build up an effect. Over a plain base colour with a brush, you select where the colour goes, by not having much on the brush to slowly build up the transition effect you want. With an airbrush, it's harder to do this so you pre-shade i.e. the black-white method to get the shading, then apply multiple thin layers to build up the colour.

 

Starting with applying via brush: If you're using a glaze correctly, you should see little impact with each layer. Particularly with reds and yellows, as they are already low-vibrance colours (the intense paints are toxic, such as cadmium). It will take a lot of patience, and is an advanced technique. Unlike a wash, you want to apply controlled amounts of paint, otherwise you get pooling similar to a wash which ruins the effect. For brush work, I've always found ghool's guide very useful for additive ratios.

 

He uses a 20% ratio of artist flow aid to water for his water mix; vallejo flow improver needs less diluting than that I think, but it would be too strong neat and cause paint break down. To make a glaze, he does 4:1 water(inc flow aid) to normal paint, then a 2:1 ratio of dilute paint to matt medium to restore adhesion. Lamiam medium is already quite thin compared to matt medium, so you can use it neat with the paint in around a 3:1 ratio with a drop or two of flow aid if needed (i.e. the paint feels a bit 'chalky')

 

If you apply it as a wash though, it will still pool up, so brush control is absolutely key - here's a quick guide.

 

 

With pre-shading and an airbrush, it's much simpler. Using the thin layers you get with an airbrush as standard, you can just build up the colour effect with a couple of light layers (using normal amounts of airbrush thinner to get the paint to flow nicely through the brush). For this approach to pre-shading, checking out this tutorial for blood angels. In effect, you're using the pre-shading to affect the shade of the top coat, but the final colour comes from the top coat which sounds like what you're trying to achieve. You can then use the same technique with a lighter paint, to zenithal highlight spray just the top of figure (as you did to airbrush the pre-shade) and increase the colour range. Airbrush ready reds are already pretty thin, so you don't need to do much thinning. You would do more (with water and/or airbrush thinner) if starting from a brush paint.

 

If you want to thin the paint further to show more of the under-layer, more similar to brush glazing, then this is often known as a candy coat (or tint) and is applied over a metallic base to get a shiny coloured metallic finish, though it would work with a pre-shaded base colour you wanted to mostly keep, as bung suggests. Tamiya transparents are often used for this, with alcohol thinners. Minitaire ghost tints are another popular choice for that sort of effect, or the forgeworld transparents. Using a glaze mix similar to for a brush with acrylics should also work fairly well, or of course transparator or pre-made glaze medium, but I can't say I've tried it as I mostly use the first airbrush method. You will need to go slow though, and do a number of thin coats, letting it dry between each; at least half a dozen IIRC. Too much in one go will run and pool.

Edited January 11, 2018 by Arkhanist

[Bung]

@ Arkhanist

I think he knows what hes doing as he is refering to the Black and White Technique book

 

 

I have it too, and the B&W technique is a bit more advanced as the pre-shading tutorial you linked.

Its basically doing a complete painting with weathering before you even start applying the base color.

 

Like this one:

 

For tabletop miniatures i just use 3 layers of grey but you can really do impressive stuff with it.

And the best part you dont need to mix shades of your basecolor, so if you are painting an army your main color will be consistent.

Edited January 11, 2018 by Bung

[Major_Gilbear]

As the others have said, it sounds like the type of additive and the method of application are key here.

 

In terms of additives, you have (broadly-speaking) extenders, flow-improvers, and retarders.

 

The last two are self-explanatory, but the first one (extenders) really encompasses anything that could be regarded as "blank paint" - like matte or gloss medium for example. Flow improvers include both thinners (making the paint more runny, like water) and flow aids (which reduce the surface tension in the paint, so that it flows into recesses more easily).

 

Extenders essentially decrease the ratio of pigment to binder in the paint, and therefore make the paint more translucent overall. In other words, the more transparent, the worse the coverage, so the more of what is painted in the under-layers will come through.

 

If you add just extender to the paint, whilst it is more transparent, you are not really changing the "handling properties" of the paint, and it may still need you to tweak its other properties to suit your chosen application method.

[Semper Fortis]

What a great community this is! My sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to answer. I got so frustrated with the paint job that I put the project away for a bit. Now I've had some time to reflect and I think I know what happened. As Bung surmised, I was using the Mig B&W book and my airbrush. On the first try the shading looked OK, but I just didn't like the look of the color I chose. And so I stripped it and used the darker red.

 

And that's where it fell apart. Normally after I strip something, I give it a good scrub then run it through a few cycles in the ultrasonic cleaner. The VsKfz is way too large to fit in the ultrasonic. The more I stripped, the worse it got. Ergo, residual stripper. I feel really stupid...

 

 

 

tl;dr Didn't get all the stripper off, dummy!