Hey everyone!

New to this forum so wanted to ask a general question of technique.

I'm having problems with weathering an A-6 Intruder. I use acrylics thinned with water and a drop of dish soap ontop of enamel paints with a lacquer clear coat. The problem I keep having is that I put the wash in the desired grooves, then I wipe the superfluous wash away. But a stain is left behind. I keep wiping, but the wash stain doesn't really go away. At best it looks like someone threw mud on the plane. At worst, the wash in the groove is wiped away but the stain remains. I have tried thinning more. I have tried thinning less. All kinds of combinations. Someone please help! Washes sound so simple but there is something I am missing.

You should try oils thinned with odorless mineral spirits.

Thanks for the suggestion Matt.

At the risk of sounding stupid: I thought oils were enamels? How can I tell the difference?

Also, thanks for the suggestion but would you mind explaining why "oils with mineral spirits" would be a good idea? I ask because I know absolutely nothing about the topic.

Thanks for any further info!

I use enamel based paints over a Future coat to do panel lines, find it works much better, and any residual left over tends to look like shadowing along the panel edges.

As for oils and enamels, they are both clean with spirits, but they are different bases. Oils mostly come in tubes for artists.

Hi Mark,

Matt and Kevin are both correct here. For all intensive purposes, enamels and oil paint are the same. Oils have a thicker concentration of pigment to medium than the thinner enamel paints. To use either for a wash, you want to cut with a thinner. You want to make a 'colored thinner' rather than a 'thinned color'. It's always easier to make something darker by adding more wash rather than removing sometimes. For most pin washes you will only need a quick dab of oil into a small pool of thinner in your pallet...then mix.



Some of the newer easiest ways to get a consistent pin wash/wash would be to use something like one of the streaking products or the washes from AK Interactive. Enamel, they go on easy and clean of easier. They look exactly the same each time you open the bottle and use them. I use the 'Streaking Grime' for pin washes. I will just not fully mix up the enamel solution as if I were going to use for streaking stains and it works really well.

Good Luck!!

Thanks for the advice everyone! After scimming past threads here and an old FSM mag I realized taht I was mistaken in my application.

Oils are really popular so they will have to be yet another thing I experiment with.