I layered several pigments of acrylic paint, loosely mixed them with a wide brush, and spread it on with the blue tape mask i left on from before the laser engrave. It gives a nice activity to the letters.
I have yet to secure the pixels with some wood glue onto that background, but that will come tomorrow morning, after the paint is all dried.((update: it’s all set, and added a border for some extra sense of depth))
This is really cool! Pixel art has so many possibilities. I wonder what would take more time, painting each individual piece or sorting a design into separate colors of acrylic?
I’m pretty decent at calculus and geometry, so design wise and sorting wise, was pretty easy. Trying to mix paints to get the right color and applying it took a fair amount of time, as the small 1x1 squares would almost always by trying to flip over with the brush pressure, or would try to stick to the brush and get carried away if too little pressure is applied.
The most time consuming part was doing white touch up around the letters. I had a mask, but it seemed the paint went under it, a lot.
A trick for next time working with masks…
Paint first a coat of the background color (touch up color) so that this is filling the small gaps under the mask. And then paint the final color over that. Much less color creeping under the tape like this…
Some paint crept under the tape and most of the white around the letters had a water ring, from where it drew moisture out of the paint and wicked it into the ply.
Also had a bit of an issue where the air assist blew the dust from the engrave accross that background white, discoloring it.
If you had put another coat of white on (on top of the painters tape too), and then done the engrave you probably would not have gotten the bleed when you went back.
Also a rubber roller (not sure what they’re really called) that is used in inking is a good tool to make sure you get adhesion of the tape.
The other tip is to use a coat of sealer before the base paint. That helps prevent wicking.
