Spent yesterday spraying a beautiful 4 color desert scheme on my M114 for an upcoming show. Since I used both enamels and acrylics for the colors, I shot a thin coat of Testors flat lacquer overall to seal it. Today, I used a thinned acrylic black as a wash for the details. Having read that after such a wash, you can use a mosiened Q-tip to remove the unwanted portion of the wash.
None of it picked up!!! Black everywhere, and over sand color, it really doesn't look too professional, if ya get my drift.

I'm about to re-spray overall semi-gloss OD and put white marking and stars on it, as I don't have the luxury of time to reconstitiue the 4 color scheme again. How can I avoid such a thing again?

What works for me is to use artist oil paints and thinner for my washes. With an acrylic wash - they tend to dry fast, and as such - you can't go back and remove the unwanted color. Oil paints take up to 24 hours to dry - so I can go back with my Q-tip moistened with thinner and clean it up.

If I do an acrylic wash - I never apply it to the whole vehicle... just to portions I want highlighted, like tools and fittings, etc.... that way I never have to try and remove any excess.

HTH-
Jeff

I think what happened is you didn't let the flat coat dry enough first ....give it a couple of days to dry before washes...hope you can fix it up in time !!Good luck,

Rick

I'm sorry for your frustration.
This is why I never build for a show but rather show what I have built. Rushing things invites disaster. Okay, enough soapbox preaching.
Regarless of the base paint, I never use acrylics for a wash. There just too unpredictable. Second, I spot apply wash where I want a shadow. If there's excess, it gets blended in during drybrushing, so I don't have to worry about dragging the paint tinted clean up medium over paint I don't want tinted.

Best is to paint acrylics, wash with oils. But it's too late for that now.
What you need is a way to remove that wash, and to be honest I have no idea how you could do that. Try spraypainting something that dissolves acrylics ? You need something that's not too agressive, or you may damage the model. I'd suggest Instanet, the stuff you use to clean windows, but it's imperative you try that on a test area before hitting your model with it.
And when all else fails : coat the whole thing with a sturdy lacquer and repaint the whole thing all over again from scratch. Real life trucks get repaint jobs, too

thats stinks i did the same thing a while ago i used acrylic paints.
acrylic paints are not good for washes as i found out.
so use reg paint for the washes.
it stinks we learn the hard way sometimes
cause i had a lot of stuff happen to my models lol

This scares me as I have just sealed (flat laqure coat) a Afghani paint job that was shot (airbrush) with Model-Master and Tamiya paints. I wanted a special color arragnments and was not getting it with the Tamiya green.

Will see if I can give a good wash without distroying my pain job.

Dave

reg paint is fine as long as u have a coat of clear and let it cure for a few days

We've all BTDT.

In the future, seal your paint job with a clear gloss. Some folks use Future (acrylic) floor "wax" or equivalent, some use spray clear gloss-cote enamel.

After drying thoroughly, the clear gloss allows for better decal application, and, prevents the "creep" of your washes all over the surface. I'd suggest a second app of clear gloss after the decals, but before the wash.

After the wash, hit it with an over-all flat-cote, or selective flat-coat or chalk pastels to tone down the sheen in selected areas. - As some areas of a real tank would have surfaces worn to a sheen, while other areas would have weathered "flat".
JM2cents
Skip

Thanks for all the input. The acrylic wash DID dry very rapidly, and the attempts to remove the dried residue was a total flop. Of course, it was a very well done pattern that I oversprayed with a faded OD for an early 70's scheme. AJ had it right: submit a model for a contest that is alreay built, don't build for the contest, as time will NOT be on your side.

Thanks!

Jim Peterson