I have searched the archival history but I still havent been able to completely nail this query on using posca pens!
I have a few pens some I have bought and some that have been donated of various colour and thicknesses. My mate wants me to do this freehand "spiral" pattern on his next board (freehand suits this application for the randomness/roughness).
I am thinking the POSCA PENS will suit this application well;
Now for my query;
When do I apply the artwork....directly onto the foam?; or directly onto the glass after fibreglassing (before the hotcoat)? or do I simply apply the artwork directly onto the finished/sanded hotcoat?
Howzit saltbush, If you do it on the foam you will dent the foam with the tip and it will not fill the airholes in the foam. Do it on the hotcoat.Aloha,Kokua
I always do my Posca artwork on finish sanded hotcoat and then finish with speedcote - alternatively you can use clear acrylic laquer - both obviously help seal glass but also protects pen.
Speedcote (brand name) is a clear laquer/resin that can be sprayed over a sanded finish board - needs to be thinned and applied with a gun. You can also get it pigmented with white to make your boards appear even whiter. The speedcote serves 2 purposes - it will seal the fibreglass (any exposed weave) so that it will not absorbe water and it also provides a low friction finish - traps water particles so you have a film on your board - thinking is that theres less friction between water to water than glass to water.
The acylic laquer can be bought from motor shops - usually just an aerosol can - I guess the stuff in artshops will be the same but I figure they would charge more than the motor trade.
Imagine - all this time I thought they were doing that artwork on foam! Is there anything (besides airbrush / aerosol can) that can be applied directly to the foam?
You can paint by hand with a brush straight onto the foam - I've had some great results painting base colours then dry brushing other colours over the top of them. I've done it both artists acrylic paint and plain old water based poster paints.
Seen some nice work done with a pencil in th past.
Howzit saltbush, I did a tiger stripe board a few years back and did the yellow base coat with a spray gun then did the stripes with a brush, lots of fun and even posted a pic of it here. came across the pic the other day while packing stuff to send to the mainland.Aloha,Kokua
Here’s a video from Lost. At 4:42 shows a speeded up demo of paint pen art on the sanded hotcoat. Before that 2:42 there’s footage of full size laminate being glassed onto the bottom of a board.
At ASR in maybe 2000-1 I sat and watched Drew Brophy crank out an amazing lion on a board for Kasey Curtis. He just gave the top a light sand with super fine sandpaper, laid down the art in about an hour, then used a 3M spray finish on top.
I use auto acrylic on the foam. Comes in an aerosol can, and you just tape up, and spray it on, then glass over when dry ( not that long ). MUST be auto arcylic though, i get it from the auto shop. Basically the cans are for touch up jobs on your car. Im thinking of doing plain white on a board to see if i can get a nice bright white board ( have to be a shortboard though hehehe )
The only problem i have is that i have no artistic talent whatsoever.
I did a design recently of the hokusai tidal wave which used alot of blue and white. First off, the white posca pens dont give a good clean finish when painted on, they turn out streaky and uneven and i had to sand all the white areas to give it any chnce of looking good. Secondly, when i applied the gloss coat, the day blue colour ran, luckily the black borders kept most of it in place, but some of the light blue was effected. i’ll post a before and after of the design, where you can see the colour change.
this time i am going to paint the posca with clear lacquer before tghe gloss coat.
It's not exactly recommended to apply hotcoat or gloss coat over pen art work. Most applications call for some kind of spray sealer.
What happen is the nasty stinky stuff in the resin errode the nasty stinky stuff in the pen...and makes it run. To be successful with the resin cover you have to kick the resin hot. if the resin has a chance to sit on the board ...all stinky (let's say more than 15 mins) then it's going to make a mess of your paint....It's going to make it run and bleed.
same thing goes for cheap tape. If the resin has a chance to get under the adhesive and errode it, the tape will fail or bleed.
I have gotten away from poly glosses unless it's over poly resin art work.
