I've never used Wicked, as it's not available locally where I am. It's certainly possible/plausible that there are paints that do work right out of the bottle, but they aren't any of the ones I've tried yet. Certainly not Golden Hi-Flow. It'll spray at full concentration, but atomization is very rough, spray feels sluggish, and I have to pause to blow out the nozzle often. If I want nice edge fades or if I want to cover something without obscuring fine topographical detail (I use airbrushes mostly for modelmaking), or if I just want to spray without my brush constantly clogging, I gotta reduce it at least 2 to 1.
I don't generally like to use water as a reducer. Not straight water, at least. It doesn't have the right viscosity or surface tension. Isopropyl works amazing in terms of spray characteristics, but I don't know if it's good for the binder, and I'm wary of atomized iso from a health and safety perspective. I've tried replacing iso with ethanol, but it's not the same: ethanol has a more oily-viscous character (better than water, but only just). Golden airbrush media should be the best in terms of maintaining the binder, but I find it to be less favorable than water in terms of improving spray.
So if I'm going for solid color coverage, I'll thin with 1-1 or 2-1 Golden airbrush media, and if I'm trying to do more delicate stuff, I'll use isopropyl at 3-1 or 4-1, then overcoat with airbrush media while it's still curing to shore it up.*
I would like to try Wicked and especially Etac at some point, as they seem to be the top acrylics that get mentioned here.
Most of the other paints I've used have been modelling acrylics. Mostly Tamiya, Model Master, and Aztek. Aztek sprays the best, but has the weakest colors. Tamiya has the best colors (Golden's colors tend to be more vibrant/saturated, but Tamiya's colors are better for subtle realism), and has the best reducer (i.e. Tamiya reducer improves Tamiya paints' sprayabilty better than the others brands' reducers improve their respective paints' sprayability). Golden has the best adhesion, and the best color density and vibrance, but sprayabilty is below that of Aztek or Tamiya. Model Master is... usable, but extremely inconsistent. At its best, it's on par with Golden in sprayabilty, and better than Aztek or Tamiya in color density (though not color quality), but only maybe a random 1/3 of bottles will be like that. Most of the time it varies from "usable, if you wrestle with it a bit" to "unworkable glorp".
I've been trying to learn more color mixing, as I'd really like to be able to just buy a handful of large primary color bottles of the good stuff online instead of lots of small pre-mixed color bottles of whatever rubbish I can get locally.
*EDIT: This part actually depends on which brush I'm using. The HP-TH can spray Golden unreduced just fine, and is what I use on larger projects and for solid coats. The SOTAR needs everything to be thinned way more than the TH or the Eclipse. The Eclipse is the brush I use most, so that's what the above stuff is referring to mostly.
I don't generally like to use water as a reducer. Not straight water, at least. It doesn't have the right viscosity or surface tension. Isopropyl works amazing in terms of spray characteristics, but I don't know if it's good for the binder, and I'm wary of atomized iso from a health and safety perspective. I've tried replacing iso with ethanol, but it's not the same: ethanol has a more oily-viscous character (better than water, but only just). Golden airbrush media should be the best in terms of maintaining the binder, but I find it to be less favorable than water in terms of improving spray.
So if I'm going for solid color coverage, I'll thin with 1-1 or 2-1 Golden airbrush media, and if I'm trying to do more delicate stuff, I'll use isopropyl at 3-1 or 4-1, then overcoat with airbrush media while it's still curing to shore it up.*
I would like to try Wicked and especially Etac at some point, as they seem to be the top acrylics that get mentioned here.
Most of the other paints I've used have been modelling acrylics. Mostly Tamiya, Model Master, and Aztek. Aztek sprays the best, but has the weakest colors. Tamiya has the best colors (Golden's colors tend to be more vibrant/saturated, but Tamiya's colors are better for subtle realism), and has the best reducer (i.e. Tamiya reducer improves Tamiya paints' sprayabilty better than the others brands' reducers improve their respective paints' sprayability). Golden has the best adhesion, and the best color density and vibrance, but sprayabilty is below that of Aztek or Tamiya. Model Master is... usable, but extremely inconsistent. At its best, it's on par with Golden in sprayabilty, and better than Aztek or Tamiya in color density (though not color quality), but only maybe a random 1/3 of bottles will be like that. Most of the time it varies from "usable, if you wrestle with it a bit" to "unworkable glorp".
I've been trying to learn more color mixing, as I'd really like to be able to just buy a handful of large primary color bottles of the good stuff online instead of lots of small pre-mixed color bottles of whatever rubbish I can get locally.
*EDIT: This part actually depends on which brush I'm using. The HP-TH can spray Golden unreduced just fine, and is what I use on larger projects and for solid coats. The SOTAR needs everything to be thinned way more than the TH or the Eclipse. The Eclipse is the brush I use most, so that's what the above stuff is referring to mostly.
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