Heavy Metal: P-47N Part 8
I made a video today of me brushing Vallejo Metal Color onto the P-47. Unfortunately, the thing is taking forever to upload to Youtube, so it will be awhile before we can all enjoy my antics. In the meantime, I’ve taken a few still photos of this model with three coats of Metal Color on it.
I’ll be completely frank and explain that I’m still figuring out this very weird material. Vallejo Metal Color is not like any other paint or “coating” that I have used, except possibly Future floor finish. The stuff is very weird. Here’s an image that is not as flattering as the one above.
There are number of oddball characteristics, all of which make brushing it on into a challenge, but none of which make it impossible. One thing that I discovered (again) is that YOU MUST NOT STIR THE PAINT WITH THE BRUSH.
I know this sounds silly. I don’t stir paint with a brush. Ever. But in this case, the Metal Color separates so quickly that I’m tempting to just give it “little stir” with the brush just to “keep going.” This is a dumb thing to do. You have to keep stirring it, and use a stirrer of some kind (I use cut-up bamboo skewers). If you (like me) use the brush to stir then “gunk” is picked up by the brush from the bottom of the jar and in order to not put this on the surface of the model, you have to 1) wash the brush, and 2) stir the paint properly and dip the brush into the Metal Color gingerly. Don’t stir up the sediment. That is bad.
But if you can avoid doing that, the Metal Color is simply several orders of magnitude better than anything else.
Even with my sloppy habits, it looks good.
The Metal Color needs to dry completely between coats. It changes its appearance as it dries. Once it has dried (several hours later) you put on another coat, using the brush to “paint” the stuff on evenly. You can scrub on the first two coats in order to provide a “base” for subsequent layers, but eventually you’ll need to do a “finish” coat that should be applied evenly.
I’d like to do a video on that, but I’ll have to find another way to shoot/upload the video that doesn’t take forever.