water effect

[devdyl81]

Has anyone done the water effect where you spray water on the surface then paint over it ? If so any tips or problems.

[Serge]

Here's a little step by step...

First the colors...

You will need a color darker than your base, and a color lighter than your base. Lets say your base coat is blue, you will need to set aside a litte blue and make it darker and set aside a little blue and make it lighter...

Do your base, let it dry for 1/2 hour or more, it must be done sheading its solvants...Then using a spray bottle or anything that will produce some droplets and spray some water on the surface...

Then the trick is to decide where the light source is on the project. Don't forget that the more credible the light source is, the better the effect. For example, don't decide that the light source comes from below the car! Its an easy mistake to do when the parts are off the car and on a table...

The other thing is that horisontal surfaces are easier to do than vertical ones, but verticals are not impossible, you will have to experiment with the size droplets you want to use, the bigger ones have a tendency to run...smaller is easier..the best effects I have done are with droplets of varying size, its more realistic than all even droplets.

The idea is to spray at low air pressure, like with an airbrush, at an angle with the two hilight colors. The light one is sprayed in the direction that the light comes from and the darker one sprayed from the opposite direction. The idea is that the droplets are lighter in the direction from which they are hit from the light source.

The spraying must be done from a distance at an angle that is close to horisontal with the surface,this way you hit the sides of the droplets, not the surface.

You can then let it dry or do like I do put an infrared lamp on the pannel until all the water is evaporated. Then clear. Be careful as the basecoat that is deposited from the top of the water drops is only deposited and not fixed very well to the surface, if you touch it, you scrap it...

Here's an how to...that's the technique I use...

http://clringo.tripod.com/water_effect.htm

Hope this helps.

[devdyl81]

Thanks Serge , that last picture with the silver is the color I'm using , I was thinking I could just spray black from one side to get that effect if not what colors do you think I would need. thanks for the help.

[Serge]

On a silver background I would have a tendency of using a white with a tint of blue for the front color and the silver itself dirtied with a little black or very dark blue for the back color...

Try a test pannel to get the hang of it and check out some color combinations...