Reverse Wash Technique

This is a tutorial for painting small raised details over a surface without the pesky and tedious process of masking off everything, or even hand painting the details. The basic primes of the technique is identical to a wash. The different properties of paints are exploited, and is the reason why this technique works.

First, we start with the primed base. Since this is a resin part, primer is necessary to as as a intermediate layer between the bare resin and paint.

Since I want to use a metallic paint for the details, I first spray on a base coat of Finisher’s pure black, which is a lacquer based paint.

With the black base painted, next up is the gold. I use Finisher’s hot gold (red gold) which is also a lacquer based paint. The paint used in this step is important. I used a lacquer based product over the detail areas. This is allowed a day or two to fully set up and cure.

The crutch for this technique is the following step. The entire part is now painted with an enamel based paint. This will be the underlying color at the base of the details. Since I want the gold to stand out, I used a gloss black. I spray on tamiya enamel gloss black over everything and let this cure for a full day. It is very important to use an enamel based product here as enamels and lacquer paints do not mix.

Once the enamel has cured, I use Ronsonol lighter fluid, a paper towel, and q-tips for fine details; and lightly wipe the paper towel dampened with the lighter fluid over the detail areas. This process will remove the enamel black over the raised details while keeping the undercut areas black. Because I used an enamel product over a lacquer product, the lighter fluid only attacks the enamel layer, leaving the lacquer layer completely in tact. And any over zealous wiping can be fixed by just spraying on more enamel black, then returning the next day to wipe the details. This make for a very quick and easy method for painting fine raised details without having to resort to masking or hand brushing.

Video for the technique:

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