Metallic paint

[Wm David Green]

This might be a boneheaded question, as I am new to car modelling, so please forgive.

Is it possible to mix your own metallic colors by combining silver, or possibly another base metal shade, with a plain color.

I ask this as I have a shed load of Vallejo acrylics, and no metallic colors other than silver, aluminium, gunmetal etc.

Many thanks,

William. 

 

[Snake45]

Probably not, but you can try it yourself for nothing. Using toothpicks, put one drop of color and one drop of silver (or whatever) on a smooth surface and mix them up and see what happens. I do this all the time to see what various paint mixes will look like. 

[BigTallDad]

There's a product called "Pearl X" available at Michael's. It's a dry powder you add to paint for the metal-flake effect; it's also available in several different colors (gold, silver, etc.).

[Kit Basher]

2 hours ago, BigTallDad said:

There's a product called "Pearl X" available at Michael's. It's a dry powder you add to paint for the metal-flake effect; it's also available in several different colors (gold, silver, etc.).

I tried mixing Pearl Ex with regular paint and it didn't work. There was no metallic/pearl effect at all. If you mix Pearl Ex with clear, and spray it over your color coat, you can get some very nice effects. "CrazyJim" has posted some models on this forum showing this technique.

I routinely mix Testors Silver and Gloss Black to get a darker silver color, that works fine. I have never tried it with any color other than black. This is Testors Silver with some Gloss Black in it:

 

Edited December 27, 2018 by Kit Basher

[89AKurt]

I'm no expert, and my experience is with enamels.  But you should learn how to mix paint colors.  Doing a test as Snake45 suggested is always a good idea.  But it could look different when mixed in the airbrush and sprayed, vs. mixing a puddle.  As I struggled with this project, I thought the straight-out-of-the-bottle metallic blue was close, but after spraying, I could not live with it.  So I mixed silver with that paint until I was happy, and then hoped I would never need to touch up later.

But I would like to read what acrylics do.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I know almost nothing about acrylic paints for modeling. I'll be much interested to see what the folks who've used them extensively have to say too.

[BigTallDad]

8 hours ago, Kit Basher said:

I tried mixing Pearl Ex with regular paint and it didn't work. There was no metallic/pearl effect at all. If you mix Pearl Ex with clear, and spray it over your color coat, you can get some very nice effects.

 

I mixed some Pearl X Interference Gold with black paint, airbrushed this spoon, the sprayed a coat of clear. I had no problems with airbrush clogging while spraying the Pearl X, and the picture below does not do the final results justice...the spoon was awesome!

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by BigTallDad

[peter31a]

If you are using acrylic paint you can mix in some Liquitex Iridescent Medium to get a metallic effect.

[Wm David Green]

Thanks to you all for answering so far, lots of ideas to contemplate.

Strangely enough my original bottle of Vallejo silver was too 'sparkly' to be a realistic silver, but having mixed it with a dark gray it looks more like a convincing metallic.

I do realise there is a semi translucent element in true metallic colors, therefore adding some clear gloss acrylic medium will hopefully work.

William

[TarheelRick]

Depending upon how basic you want to get with acrylics, the cheap bottles of acrylic "craft" paints in WalMart and other craft stores has a "pearl" available which can be mixed with their other colors to make a rather convincing finish.  The pearl will lighten the base color a bit, but that can be overcome with more base color.  I would show you a picture of one I painted this way, but it had an unfortunate mishap while wet-sanding and I have not got back to repainting it yet.