edited July 3rd 2017

So here’s a few more things I’ve learnt from experimenting with a third batch of hand-painted pedals.

Firstly, I gave them all a coat of the flat Krylon to help the posca acrylic take to the pre-painted glossy enclosures. After they dried, I painted them with the posca pens then gave them a second spray with the Krylon as described in part 2. There were a couple of bits that needed touching up after the second spray.

After leaving them to dry for a day on the radiator I came back and noticed a couple of issues all on the same bit of one pedal. see below.

Firstly I went over the black outline with the white, secondly the black outline was a little weak in places. Thirdly, the eyes hadn’t been filled in well enough, and finally, which was the biggest issue the white paint had cracked in a couple of places.

I’m sure this was because of the paint, and not because of the clear coat. I had let a lot of paint through, and guided it round with the nib of the pen. It looks like this was too much. The problem is, when you have too much paint like that it doesn’t dry well, even with a nice matte clear coat underneath.

I thought I would be able to cover this up with another, thinner coat of white, before giving it its final clear coat. Unfortunately after 3 or 4 attempts, I realised this wasn’t going to happen. Each time the paint dried, the cracks were still there. In the end I decided to just go with the flow and have a cracked skull on the back panel. I went over the outline and the eyes again with black, and went over the cracks with grey, and then a finer black pen to disguise them. So it looks like this now.

Also, quite importantly, when I was boxing these pedals up, I noticed that they were a wee bit sticky, not too bad, but definitely something I’d like to improve on in the future. When I handled the pedals, especially where my hands were clammy (from sheer concentration), after holding them for a while, there were some fingerprints left on the outside. They rubbed off easily, and like I say, not a problem, but something to think about improving. The first thing I’m going to try is leaving them on the radiator for a full day in between clear coats, instead of blasting them twice an hour apart.

One last note is the cans of Krylon I mentioned in the two previous posts seem to be good for roughly three decent coats of five pedals.