At the start of the Covid plague, all kinds of modelling supplies dried up, partly because of the cardboard shortage meaning stuff couldn't be shipped.
So yes, paint dried up too! 😉
First of all, prices went up by 30% and a couple of months later the particular brand of rattle-can I had been using to colour both the forest canopy mass of branches and the tree trunk supports was permanently out of stock.
For various reasons, it was clearly time I switched to a water based alternative:
- toxic fumes from spray cans is bad for the environment AND the user's lungs, especially when forced indoors due to inclement weather (to be fair, even spraying forest components in the fairly well-ventilated garden allowed the body to absorb far too much solvent)
- although conveniently ready-to-use, each can could only spray 2-3 dozen forest sets
- nozzles became easily blocked inside, as opposed to the spray hole (which could be kept clear with the can inverted and only spraying propellant)
- in warm weather (when it was healthier to work outside), the solvent-based spray paint could dry too quickly for some processes to work properly
- flock had to be sealed with solvent-based spray varnish for compatibility with the paint (which was also as expensive, toxic, etc as the paint)
- spray paint was not quite matt, in fact noticeably satin in places
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Switching to water-based emulsion made sense:
- readily available in many shades at DIY paint mixing desks
- cheap
- easily diluted to make it even cheaper
- compatible with PVA
- enabled 'short cut' merging of forest canopy manufacturing stages
- probably wasn't going to give me cancer or destroy what is left of the planet
So although the water component means the tree canopies take 10 or 20 times longer than solvents to 'boil off' it's a good trade off as the end product is identical.
