Acrysion - červená

A red for insignia and car bodies

A saturated red tone turns up on models on national insignia, on sports car bodies and on small items inside cockpits. It dries to a gloss, so it suits everywhere the surface is meant to reflect light and look factory new. A subdued look is reached by spraying a flat varnish over it at the very end of the build.

Red pigment lets light through much as yellow does. The best result therefore comes from a light coat laid underneath it; on bare dark plastic the paint loses its sparkle and looks dull. It is applied by spraying and thinned with water, or with the product that the manufacturer offers for this line.

Practical notes

• shake the bottle for several minutes before work, otherwise the settled pigment stays at the bottom
• thin passes hold the sharpness of the edges better than one heavy coat
• wait with masking until the coat has cured properly, not just flashed off
• flush the airbrush right after you finish spraying, a dried coat is hard to remove

The label carries the number of the shade in a color field and, next to the name, a note about the gloss and about the kind of subject the paint was intended for. For builders who stick to one era or one kind of hardware, that shortens the choice of further bottles noticeably.

Red is also the shade where the difference between a ready-made and a mixed tone shows the most. A home mix of yellow and magenta tends to be dull and you will not hit it exactly when touching up. A bottle of ready-made paint removes that problem: you can take the same tone off the shelf a year later and the join between the old and the new spray will not show.