Well I’m going to take a crack at shooting paint on foam. I don’t want to do a design or anything like that, I just want to paint the whole board a solid color (taping off the stringer of course.).
So, just curious what is the BEST paint to use. I know people that do this with in some abundance has a preferance for good reason. I’m a painter by proffesion and I know I really like and dislike some brands of paints etc.
I’m actually looking for that classic “Seafoam Green” color, popular on Fender guitars and other things, Foamez has pretty limited color selection, does anyone have a favored online resource to purchase paints?
Finally, is there any difference, or pitfalls for painting on poly vs. eps?
I don’t know what’s best… I only know what I use, and I’ve said it before: Benjamin Moore acrylic house paint, with 15% high quality acrylic additive. A good artist grade low viscosity acrylic polymer, mixed with the perfect shade of seafoam green (just look at the fan deck for the color you want) mixed with water for the gun, or even rolled on with a mini roller, gives you exactly the color you want, great UV protection, and high adhesion due to the extra acrylic polymer. No worries about delams, bleeding, foam deterioration…
The only issue is whether your epoxy will go down clear over it, or make it look cloudy. That depends on how good you are with working with epoxy.
For EPS, use water based paints. I’ve had serious delams with latex rolled on for total color. Duh. Shouldn’t even admit to that. Pretty sure I won’t do that again.
For art work and pinlines, go with tempra. Stable, nontox, easy, cheap.
G Loehr and his crew use Design Masters rattle can for bigger areas, but dust it on lightly in multiple coats because it is not water based.
Keep in mind, that there is nothing wrong with putting the color on the sanded fill coat and spraying a satin finish of clear floor acrylic from home depot.
I started by spackling the hell out of the blank and sanding it down well enough to the point where you start to get back down to the beads in the proud spots but still mostly have a uniformly white blank…(I have heard of folks coloring their spackle to create a base for the paint.)
I used Tempera/Tempura/Tempra (sp?) paints, thinned with water and sprayed…then I borked my gun clean up, couldn’t get it working and finished the last board with a dense 3" foam roller.
The roller board looked better than the sprayed board…but that’s mostly because my airbrush technique is poor…point is, as NJ points out, either will work.
The key, as conveyed to me by Mahana is to mix in Future Floor Shine Acrylic Something Something…this is true for acrylic paint and temperas as well, someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
I was told that the additive is a bonding agent that makes for a cleaner finish and better connection between layers.
Those FoamEZ paints are cheap and you get enough in a bottle that you can go nuts experimenting with color combos.
NJ, jeez, I almost went the whole day without learning something. What high quality acrylic additive are you talking about? The sky would be limitless with all the latex colors out there.
Afoaf, it’s tempra. You can steal from little kids and save nearly a $1.25 per bottle.
BTW, Michaels Art supply chain has little mini bottles of acrylic in a bazillion colors that go well on EPS. Good for foam stain. I use them instead of Liquitex for pinlines.
Try using the crafters acrylic that you can find at an art store. Even the craft section at Walmart will have it if you want to go there, but an art store will have a ton of color selections.
Mix it with Future floor finish (acrylic based clear floor finish, cleaning products isle) and water in a 1:1:1 ratio approx. Adjust the mix so that your sprayer mists fine and go for it.
I am still learning how to get clean lay down and nice fades, but I have had good luck with that mix both on the sealed EPS foam as well as pinlines sprayed on the sanded hotcoat. The recipe and all the painting tips are thanks to various people on this board.
P.S. As one of the above mentioned, don’t work the epoxy too much or you will get a cloudy look over your color. Some do their art on the sanded hotcoat to avoid this.
I buy mine at the craft store. Currently using Americana brand. Is it “the best” ??? No. Cheap and easy. Great selection of colors. Thinned with distilled water…
Here’s some tips…
Atomized is a pro…do a search with his name.
When you spackle the blank only fill in the voids…you do not want a spackle barrier between the foam and the resin.
Make sure your spackle is 100% cured before masking…don’t blow a fuse if the tape pulls up foam/spackle…
“Burnt Sienna” is the color I use for fake Redwood stringers…
Light coats are better than thick coats…take your time…
Add F is good stuff.Too much F over a dark color is not good. Gets cloudy…
Tri-Art, Davinci, and Golden make excellent, art-grade acryilc additives. The art teacher here at my school recommends them. Use the low viscosity varieties of the brands.
But the stuff I use (sorry, I don’t have the can in front of me) is from a local paint supply store that sells high quality paints and glazes for cabinetry. To be honest, I just bum the stuff off my buddie who’s a painter by trade, but also does amazing stuff on boards, too. He does faux finishes on walls, in kitchens, furniture, bathrooms… in obscenely expensive houses here in NJ. A great little niche market totally unaffected by the “economic downturn.” The dogs…
But everything I know about paint I learned from him. Too bad he’s not part of Sways.
I do fake stringers too! I use two or three colors of glazes and take a coarse artists brush, an dip the tip of the brush into all three colors. Then I drag the brush down the board, slowly twisting it back and forth to get that subtle “curve of the grain” effect. Fools anybody who’s not a wood geek - guy’s who can look at a pile of sawdust and say, “Oh… that’s 72 year-old Atlantic Cedar from southern Cape May County, harvested during the summer drought of '89.”
One of the best acryllic paints you’ll find out there is called “Nova Color”, it’s a bit pricey when compared to craft paint but it’s the Ferrari and the craft is more like a Volkswagen. Best place to find the product is online or if you can get some colors at Fiberglass Hawaii. To use, thin with water and future as mentioned above.
I knew someone out there had the D.L. on the good stuff! Checked the Nova Color store, not too bad price for quality. I’ll do the 1/1/1 , paint/FF/water mix ratio and
do a test spray soon as I get it in my hands.
Thanks a lot for everyones feedback!
This is a bit off subject to the thread, but has to do with the EPS foam. I know the guys that are EPS die hards and shape mostly that have a preference. I know I have my preference
for PU blanks. Whats ‘the good stuff’ when it comes to eps. I’ve been shopping the walker eps.
Epoxy and EPS are two different “medias.” Or are you saying that the resin and paint will be the same stuff? The problem with that, is that epoxies don’t always bond well with one another, or itself if it’s already cured and the prepwork isn’t done when you apply more resin to it.
Epoxy resin won’t melt EPS, but the propellant and/or other additives in epoxy paint might melt the EPS, or might not promote good bond with the epoxy resin when glassing.
I learned the hard way that just because a paint says one thing on the label, it’s not necessarily compatible with what you’re using to glass. Always best to do a test batch first!
As to the original post, I can’t believe Atomized hasn’t chimed in here, he does some fantastic work on EPS blanks.