OK, my husband was telling about how his friend was making discoveries about red paint. How if he used grey primer under red that he was getting a dark red…how brilliant, he’s telling me something I already know, the man is shading red how smart is he. Note the sarcasm. :smack: Anyway, he was telling me how his friend thinks he is going to get a candy red from using white primer under a transparent red paint and repeating the process. I don’t think that result is going to happen. I think all is going to happen is a lighter red. I think in order to get a candy red you need the correct pigments. I have a feeling I am going to get really frustrated with my husbands friend :mad:
Transparent paint will make the surface blotchy. You’ll get some shade of pink, but darker where the roller/brush strokes overlap. Even with a sprayer, you can’t get a perfectly even coat. But of course it raises [sic] the question: why is he using transparent paint anyway?
Why the disdain for the guy who just made a discovery on his own about paint? Until we went to paint my son’s room this summer, I didn’t know that red came out darker if you used a grey primer. I never thought about it. The guy at the paint store told me. I guess I don’t understand why your husbands friend has you so riled up…about paint.
It’s mostly because he knows I’m in school for this and he could learn the same stuff I’m learning if he would just ask…but he won’t, he puts me down all the time. I was simply curious if he would be right about getting a candy shade of red…reds tend to be transparent…or at least the red oil paints I have are. I’m still learning…the disdain simply comes from a place of frustration with this person. He seems to look at me as some women who doesn’t know what she is talking about. I have personal experience with shading red with black paint so I know how that works… I typically use white primer under paint so the color stays truer. I just do not believe he will get candy red with white primer.
Would you say, a binder full?
Let it go. He hasn’t asked you for advice because he thinks he knows the answer. Maybe he’s right, maybe you’re right, but if he’s paying for the paint to find out, and doing the labour as well, then you’ll both know when he’s done who was right.
Try not to take it personally. It’s probably pretty galling that even though you know what you’re talking about, he still does not respect you or your knowledge base. Some people are just like that. Sexist, mysogynist, or just plain assholes, frame it however you think best, but don’t let it take up space in your head.
Whatever the hell it is he’s painting, just smugly smile when it looks like Pepto Bismol threw up all over it.
Yes, to get a brilliant candy red, you’d want the purest base pigments possible. He’s merely tinting a base color, which will only lighten the hue, not increase its saturation. What kind of paint are we talking here, anyway?
I KNEW it, thanks!
He’s painting a car, but what is making me more madder than anything isn’t so much my husbands friend. It’s my husband…he think’s his friend is right. I am doing research trying to find this crystal candy pearl red color for him and his friend thinks he can recreate the color for him. If my husband lets him experiment on his car a 1976 Chevelle he won’t let me touch or drive, it will make me turn various shades of purple. But, I think I will hold my tongue and keep my smug I told you so’s to myself and perhaps refuse to fix it. Well, maybe. What my husband doesn’t know is I was going to find the paint he wants and find someone who knows what he is doing to paint it.
I don’t mean to come across as mean or anything, I can let go of the irritation my husbands friend is causing…the irritation from my husband is another story.
Oh, and I’m not sure what kind of paint it is, but it’s called international red.
Ok, it being car paint, this changes it up a bit.
I believe with cars, you want to lay down a primer, sounds like he’s going white. To then get a candy color, you might indeed lay down a white primer, then start coating it with a transparent color in order to deepen the hue+saturation upon applying coat after coat until you’re happy. But it all depends on the base hue of the red pigment.
So yeh, if he’s not mixing, but coating, then with every coat, the intrinsic color of the base will deepen and amplify the candy-look.
But I don’t have any real experience with painting cars.
You’re both right. He needs the right pigment (regardless of primer) to get the color he wants, but if he’s using international red he does have the right pigment and his technique will get a candy apple red.
So it’s all good, everybody happy, let it go.
ok, what, you all?
…what?
is he using a translucent red?
red over (any color) primer will be red if you apply the coat evenly and in enough coverage layers, unless you are using a translucent red. red of any kind of paint is one of the thinnest paint colors and covers the poorest–doing murals w red acrylic sucks (not to mention red/orange/yellow has the lowest colorfastness). so dark undercoats (or primers) do not darken the red, it’s just shine through from poor coverage or translucence.
now.
candy colors usually require a metallic undercoat (that’s sort of the point, the depth and sparkle) with mixtures of clear and pigment for the candy layers. you can do it with whatever base you want, but candying was classically done with a metallic base.
i used to do guitar refinishing for a while (note: guitar paints were car paint) and got into various toners (same principles apply). there are two kinds of topcoats: one is semi-transparent (candy) and has a limit on opacity. meaning you can layer it without it getting “darker” looking or more opaque; the color stays even and the transparency stays the same. but most others are just how you’d imagine they’d be: each layer–or even overlapping coats or hitting a spot too heavy makes it darker/less transparent in that area and makes everything look blotchy.
getting a good semitransparent finish (aka candy) requires extremely well calibrated suspended pigments in a transparent base–calibrated by mixture and ratio–calibrated by spray evenness, good equipment careful application.
i am not sure why anyone would think “red over grey primer: red paintjob. red over white primer: candy paint job!” white is the typical basecolor for all red jobs so the color pops. for example, i restored an antique barber poll and had to use all white primers so it looked nice and bright.
it wasn’t ever candy, tho.
they make candy trans colors all mixed and ready to use…candy mixtures…
here’s a link for a good dyi tutorial.
just a random fun fact: after doing guitar and antique resto, i ran into a problem of having to repair sections of wood that had deep finishes (wood finish is essentially candy finish). in cases where i had to use either disparate wood or epoxy repair, i found i could basecoat the section in metallics (i usually used copper) then layer the toners (basically candy browns of various shades) to match the deep wood finish. no one can tell the difference, esp when i use a grain pencil to match the grain. the point being metallic bases really add to the depth. they give the light more particles to bounce off and shine back through the clear layers.
edit to add: trans red over white will not make pink. the only way it will be pink is if he starts with a transparent pink–or extraordinarily thinned red.
there are candy pink vehicles, and the base is gold or silver–not white. white base just keeps the color true from color “noise.” as in it will be the truest form of that color.
Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.
Yeh, in my defense, I assumed the OP was talking about mixing paints in a generally artistic/decorative/crafty sense. Car coating—using primers, metallic flake and clear coats is outside my experience.
This technique is more like adding gels to light. The transparent color is filtering the reflected light, and is a fundamentally different process of achieving a particular color and effect that just applying a mixed paint color of mixed translucent or opaque bases.
I was going to chime in with my horrible experience with trying to paint a red wall in our guest room. Everything I thought I knew about color just wasn’t working (why, yes, I do teach Color Theory to Graphic Design students… made it more frustrating). Turned out, red interior acrylic paint is much more transparent than you’d think. I should have used a red or at least grey primer… instead of a hundred coats over the course of a week until the family stopped mocking me.
But… once you said CARS, that does change things. The “candy” is indeed transparent colors over a metallic base. Maybe your husband’s friend* can get close with paint with powdered metal mixed in it (sometimes given the “flake” designation: “Candy Apple Flake” etc.).
*unfortunately, the male brain has some blind spots. One is the pecking order on “messin’ around with cars”.
It goes like this:
My Own Bad Se’f; My buds who know cars; My buds who don’t really know cars; My bud’s friend who claims he used to race cars; Any random old guy who’s ever driven a car; and, eventually, you get to… Women who know what they’re doing.
So this might be a fight you can’t win… but I agree you deserve more respect, and it’s worth addressing at some point … when you’re not at the end of your (candy red) rope.
I’m in the “let it go” boat. You freely admit not being 100% sure what the color outcome will be in this case (since you’re asking in this thread), so it’s not clear to me why he should assume that you would be able to give a definitive answer in the grey/red case or that it ever came to pass that he should have been asking you about. It also sounds like he only mentioned his revelation about dark red to your husband, who then mentioned it to you. Are you annoyed at your husband or at the friend for having a conversation about paint with your husband? It isn’t clear to me where you are getting slighted in this story. (Of course, I only see what is written here…)
Thank you for not begging. 