Well, today I got a little more cloud painting practice in.  I had talked about my initial efforts a few weeks ago in the post Navigating the Roadblocks.  In that exercise, I had used white “rattle can” spray paint with modest success.  Today I fired up my new Paasche spray gun and put it through its paces.

The results were disastrous!

I was using acrylic craft paint for the test.  The paint was spraying with a very course pattern.  I tried about four different paint consistencies, from virtually un-thinned, to very watery.  With each consistency, I tried several different pressures, from about 15 psi all the way up to 40 psi.  Generally, the higher the pressure, the better the result, though none of my results were satisfactory.  At the higher pressures, the atomization of the paint improved, but the volume of paint became too great.  Also, the thicker the paint, the better result I achieved.  Problem is, I wanted a very light, translucent effect for the clouds to help imply distance at the low horizon (based on my observations of clouds these past weeks).  If I need a denser cloud, I can simply use multiple passes of the spray gun.  But I found that spraying a heavy bodied mixture at high pressure (giving an almost acceptable result) just put down too much paint in a single pass.

With this disappointing result, I decided to spray another panel using a recently purchased (therefore, fresh) can of white spray paint.  The results were much better.  No spatter like I had experienced in my first panels a few weeks ago.  The spray can (surprisingly) had a much finer spray pattern and I found it easier to control the paint volume.

Conclusion:  I will not be using the spray gun for the layout backdrop.

One of the primary reasons I had  purchased the spray gun was so I could mix some darker shades of blue and gray for cloud bottom accents.  I’m disappointed that I’ve only been able to find flat colors of spray can paint in white, black and gray primer.  Yes, I know that you can get those tiny little cans of Testors model paint in more colors, but it would cost a fortune in paint if I elected to use those little 3 ounce spray cans.

So, I’m going to buy another spray can of white and one of gray primer tomorrow, and I’m going to shoot another panel or two during my July 4th holiday.  Hopefully I’ll get a satisfactory result which I can then use on the backdrop in the train room.

In the meantime, I’ll be offering my spray gun up for sale.  Despite the course spray pattern, it does fine if one intends to actually put a solid coat of paint on an object (I tested it in a small area, and it did fine in that capacity).

It’s a Paasche 62-2-3 spray gun, and it retails for $49.00.  I’ll let it go for half of that.  If you or someone you know might be interested, please drop me a line.

-Jack