Paints And Powders
Rosco Super Saturated paint is our favourite scenic paint. It is vivid strong colour with none of the chalkiness that you get with some other scenic paints and with emulsion paint. Use it on top of your basecoat layer, to colour emulsion paint and to create washes.
Emulsion paint is cheap and has great opacity. Good for priming and basecoat layer. It can be coloured with scenic paint or emulsion stainers.
Florescent and Ultra Violet scenic paint. This is used on panto cloths and for other shows where UV light is used. It's also good for lifting a colour's brightness if you are after something with real punch.
Metallic Scenic paint. Metal particles already mixed up with binder to form a scenic paint. Bristol metalics are particularly opaque
Powder paint gets over looked sometimes but makes a good cheap alternative to ready made scenic paint. Mix it with water and then add PVA (or even size) to fix it so that it's stable when dry. It's great for dirtying down and ageing.
Scenic Dye is dissolved in hot water. Dye makes cheap, bright, vibrant transluscent colour. They are great for backlit cloths or if you need to keep the cloth supple.
Vandyke Crystals. These crystals dissolve in warm water to make a great dye for staining and use in some woodgraining techniques. You will need to fix the solution by adding size or emulsion glaze.
Metallic powders make beautiful bright metallic paint. Mix them with either acrylic varnish or button polish to make paint. Don't mix more than you need as the mixture will oxidise after 30 minutes or so and start to dull down. The powder is very light and gets airborne easily so use a mask when mixing.
Glitter. There are now a multitude of different glitter products on the market to jazz up anything from "Cinderella" to "Hairspray". Most colours are available and the particle size varies from over 3mm down to .01mm.
Size is one of my favourite scenic materials. You can use it to bind paint, to prime cloths, to scrim 3D scenery and to create crackle effects. It's cheap too. It's a bit of bother to mix up but is easy once you know how and is well worth exploring.
