Hey Madbrush
It's about $130 Australian to have them sent here. I can't get them from anywhere else for a better price that i know of.. I just want to find a paint/ medium combination that i can stick with. Creating your best artworks comes not only from experience with the airbrush but techniques used with your paint and board - such as over reducing createx paints to kill the binder and allow for soft erasing of transparents, or using 800 grit sandpaper on claybord to rub out mistakes and create texture!
I love the claybord mate, it's fantastic for scratching and erasing - but com-art is likely a paint i would reserve for paper. The binder is too gooey and takes quite a while to dry which means that if you begin using a blade immediately after air drying the paint, the binder is still sticky and little globules will stick on the artwork. When you move your hand over the artwork it sticks them down and to get them off can often take the paint back to the white of the board. So com-art is off for blade work all together for me.. I also find sometimes that it sticks a little too well.
I've tried it on Yupo paper also (a synthetic paper), however due to how thin the paint is and the gooey binder, it seems to absorb which makes it hard to erase after air dry and next to impossible to erase after it's completely dry.. it's a no go on yupo paper for me.
the advantage of com-arts is an immaculate flow and infrequent tip dry.
I can understand why you would like this on schoellershammer paper.
The createx illustration works like a dream on clayboard. you have a small window where erasing/scratching is extremely simple, then it hardens somewhat but you can still scratch and erase with aggressive enough erasers. This means you can lay one paint down, wait a day, lay a transparent down and scratch off ONLY the top layer of paint. This is imperative for creating a range of textures in certain locations of the artwork that call for the base color to show through.
I've also tried this on Yupo paper and it outperforms the claybord erasing, however scratching is a little harder! straight black seems to soak into the paper just a little, so it looks like it doesn't quite scratch back to white? I'm not sure if it's my eyes or if it is genuinely soaking in?
with an aggressive perfection eraser i'm able to erase back to the white of the paper in seconds, after air dry it's almost instantaneous - like a super aggressive eraser.
The disadvantage is that the flow is pretty horrible straight out of the bottle. it's better when you apply transparent base and/or reducer. but it's more of a splash down and erase type of paint. It's excellent on the claybord or over reduced on paper/card.
Etac i have used but not extensively. From all reviews i've heard it wouldn't work well on claybord as you can scratch it off using loose stencils and shields on the artwork. I loved the flow of Etac, very little tip dry similar to the com-art - again ideal for cards and papers.
I've just given the Holbein a try - it seems fantastic. it's like a mix between com-art and createx illustration colours. I can only really judge it well once i've used it on an artwork to see how it goes, but the flow is immediately better than createx illustration paints. I tested it on the yupo paper and scratching after air dry works beautifully back to white. I then laid down a straight yellow transparent and the first coat wasn't noticeable over the black which was a nice surprise as the CI yellow seems to cover quite harshly.
I'll do my next artwork with the Holbeins on Claybord i think and see how it performs.
Be careful with inks.. they won't be color fast, so over time certain colours will fade faster than others - such are the characteristics of dyes
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