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Tinting Basics (Mixing Colors) - Primary Color Characteristics
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When mixing colors, it is important to recognize the characteristics of primary colors in whitening, transparency, and weather resistance, etc. Unless the problems of conditionally identical colors and the directions of metallic colors are well understood, correct colors matching is unlikely.
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White Mixing of Primary Colors
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The hue produced when white is mixed to a primary color is called ‘‘Whitened tint’’ of the color. It is very important to understand the nature of tone and its direction of the primary colors, particularly for mixing metallic base with primary colors, and mixing primary colors with white.
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The transparency of a certain color depends upon the amount of pigment in the primary color, but more than that, upon the size of pigment particles. Even if the same pigments are used, the more transparent it is, the finer the size of the pigments are. Transparency level is one of the main factors effecting the direction of the metallic color.
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Most primary colors have good weather resistance. But they can also fade quickly if incorrectly handled.
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Bleeding is a phenomenon in which the old paint layers’ color blots into the newly painted surface.
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Bronzing is a phenomenon in which a golden metallic luster appears on the surface of a newly painted layer. It tends to occur when blue or green colors are used without being diluted mixed other colors or liquid. |
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Primary Color Characteristics |
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Metallic paint has tiny dispersed aluminum particles. There are many types of metallic paints. When shooting metallic colors, it is important to understand their characteristics such as direction, size of particles, luster, brightness, whiteness, etc. It is also extremely important to compare the color from various angles and under different light sources. |
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A special kind of paint containing pigments with pearl luster (pearl pigments). There are many different kinds depending upon colors, size of pigment particles, etc. When mixing paint, the most appropriate pearl base must be used that corresponds to the color sample | |
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There are two methods of applying pearl paints, three-coat pearl painting and the two-coat pearl painting. Unlike normal metallic painting, deep tone color layers can be achieved, depending upon the luster and tint of the pearl pigments | | |
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Three-Coat Pearl Painting
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This paint is a compound of base colors and pigments with pearl luster. The paint layer visible to the eyes is comprised of color base, pearl base, and clear base.
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This paint is a compound of pearl pigments, chromatic pigments and aluminum power. The paint layers are the same as standard metallic colors.
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Differences between pearl pigments and aluminum pigments
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Pearl Pigments
Mica is a colorless and translucent mineral with pearl-like luster. It has been widely used for cosmetic products. The pearl pigments used for vehicles includes mica filmed with titanium oxide to give brightness. The pearl pigments used in pearl paint, are also called mica paint.
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Aluminum Pigments
Aluminum foil is powdered and ground into a fine flake form, and it gives brightness in the paint film by reflecting light. There are many sizes in aluminum flake particles (mostly 10 to 20 ?m) available. The larger flakes provide a more garish brightness and the smaller flakes provide a smoother brightness.
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Graphite pigment is one of the graphite allotropes. It has been traditionally used as a pigment for flexible primer for plastic parts. However it is now also widely used in paint topcoat colors. | |
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The particle size of graphite is almost 5 times of a carbon pigment, which is widely used for black. In spite of its dark gray luster, the gap between particles is too large to have a high covering capability. | |
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Comparison between graphite color and metallic color
When viewed from straight ahead, metallic or pearl shininess is visible in low light over the whole for metallic or two-coat pearl paint. Mixed with graphite pigment and viewed from low angles, its luminosity becomes much lower and deeper with less brightness and shine.
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MIO (micaceous iron oxide) is a ferric oxide of a crystal structure of size 15?m. This pigment has unique features that are not shared with the conventional pigments as follows: |
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It is very thick (almost ten times that of aluminum pigment) and reflects light on its side surface strongly. | |
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The paint surface is very smooth and reflects light strongly. | |
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When exposed to light, it shines strongly and three dimensionally like a diamond. | |
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Its drawback is that, because of its heavy specific gravity, it tends to be deposited in the paint. | |
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Indoors or in shade, it appears to be a dark and deep solid color. However under direct sunlight, it shines like many diamonds buried under the paint’s surface. Because of this unique feature, this color cannot be accurately mixed using a metallic or pearl base substitute. | | |
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Though the composition of pigments are the same as that for ordinary white paints, this paint is translucent as the titanium dioxide pigment’s size is very small. Because of this, coverage capacity is limited. It is normally used as opal base (opal color), with other colors or mixed with aluminum pigments.
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This paint has the same paint layer structure as that of metallic paints with fine grain titanium (micro titanium) used as a base coat. When this paint is applied, the yellowish metallic base color is seen from straight ahead. When viewed from a low angle sideways, it looks bluish. As a whole, it has a charm of a two-color opal tone
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Crystal Blue (Phthalocyanine Flake Pigment)
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The phthalocyanine pigment used as ordinary blue color is crystallized and flaked for this crystal blue pigment. The light reflected on the surface shines like bronze and light penetrated through the paint surface reflects blue.
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Crystal Brown (Plate-Like Iron Oxide Pigment)
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The main component of this pigment is a flake-like iron oxide that is also used for red rust colored pigment. It is thin and shines like pearl mica. | | |
