#Painting clear Acrylic

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lament kindle
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I am aware that this isnt exactly a miniature topic, but I figure the general methods are close enough to fit here.
So, I am attempting to put together a cosplay, the Doomslayer's Praetor suit from Doom 4. I recently heat shaped a piece of acrylic to use as the visor, but hit a brick wall when it comes to painting it. I tried to airbrush Tamiya transparent acrylic onto a scrap piece to test, and it came out pretty awful. Cloudy and with a bizarre, almost sand-paper like texture. Any tips on how to get a smooth, transparent coat of paint on clear acrylic? It needs to be transparent enough so that I'll not be slamming into people at conventions.

frail stag
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Try using an acrylic artist ink like Liquitex or Daler Rowney FW. I've used this on clear plastic without any Ill effects. Obviously test it, and it may need a durability test as well to see if you need a protective layer too.

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Tamiya acrylics are solvent based so maybe that's what ate into your acrylic. These inks are water based. Then if you use a varnish or something you need to make sure it isn't solvent based and going to do the same thing. There are water based acrylic varnishes like Vallejo or Alclad Aqua Gloss.

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The inks have an artist labelling system which denotes how opaque or transparent the pigment color is. Roughly. As long as you don't get something with white mixed in to make the ink more opaque, it'll probably be good. You can thin with water or water based medium to make them more transparent.

lament kindle
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Thank you for the highly detailed answer! Was not aware that the solvents in Tamiya were eating away at my test piece, certainly helps to know that now.

frail stag
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It's a theory at least

lament kindle
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I've got plenty of random bits of scrap acrylic from learning how to heat shape, tons of test material

lament kindle
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Aight I just tested some Vallejo transparent acrylic on a piece of acrylic plastic, simliar result. No weird bumpy texture, so it seems like the paint isnt melting the plastic

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But it's still very cloudy and impossible to see through. Any ideas on how to make this actually usable for a visor?

short juniper
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Could try doing really tiny dots leaving really tiny spots in-between kinda like they do on bus ads

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But that will be a lot of work so maybe get/make a stencil

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Other idea would placing a bunch of tiny stickers / maskimg fluid paint over very lightly / with an airbrush then peel them off

abstract pilot
lament kindle
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I have actually been considering that, or one of those one way mirror foils. Would be neat if people couldn't really see my face thru the visor. Assuming I can't get the paint to work with some thinner, I'm going with that next.

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Haven't got any thinners I can use with Vallejo, and I never have a good time using water.