Testing Jo Sonjas paints mixed with Liquitex Ultra Matte Gel

Although I have settled upon Genesis Heat Paints being my paint of choice for reborning I often get emails and questions about the Jo Sonjas requesting more information and an updated tutorial.  There are times when I still will pick up my Jo Sonjas and use them so I wanted to come up with some current information for those who have been asking. 

I have been hearing good reviews from my friend Debbie about the Liquitex Ultra Matte Gel.  She has been using it in with her LDC paints with satisfaction.  I finally got my order in to Dickblick for the Liquitex Ultra Matte Gel, that I will refer to here on out as UMG.  It came Saturday and tonight I finally sat down and played with it a little.

Basically what the gels are is the base product that is in acrylic paints without any added pigment and matting agent added to increase matte texture and appearance.  The use of these gels increase the binders in your paint mix thus making the paints adhere better and the matting agents help control sheen.  Anything that increases the ability of air dry paints to bind to vinyl is a good thing and so that is why I wanted to try this product.  

I have this test arm here that has been through it all. It has been painted and stripped, varnished and stripped, rooted on and who knows what else.  It was the only test piece I had on hand so once again I stripped it down and pulled all the hair out to use for this test.

I mixed some Jo Sonjas Plum Pink paint with the UMG at about 50/50 ratio.  I would say about a butter pea sized glob of each.  To that I just added some water, enough to bring the paint down to a liquid state that could be stirred around in the bottom of a stryrofoam bowl. Once I get all this down I will come up with measurements and such for you all but this is the truly experimental stage for now that you will get to witness.  I plucked and wet my cosmetic wedge then applied the plum pink mix to the sponge with a paint brush, blotted it and then pounced it all over the limb.  The first thing I noticed immediately was the paint color is very true and the paint does indeed stick much better to the vinyl than when not using the UMG.  I then mixed up some flesh colored JS with the UMG and water the same way.  This time I did not pluck my wedge, just wet and squeezed it out and applied the paint to it.  This I pounced over the top of the mottling.  I did not take care to paint all down in the creases, palms, fingers etc.  I just wanted to get a decent overall coverage to the largest surface area of the limb.  I let this sit for about 20 mins air dry time then applied a 2nd layer, let set 20 mins and applied a 3rd layer.  The subsequent layers of paint went on well and the layers already on seemed not to lift off while applying the newest layer.   The paint looks nicely matte.  The limb itself was very shiny from having had so much done to it prior to this so it is not totally matte looking but nice enough considering.  Keep in mind this overall paint application has not been with great care, just a test. 

I have taken 2 photos with flash and the flash does bounce off the piece giving it more shine.  Here is what the limb looks like as I leave it lay for the evening.  I will give you more updates as I play with this.