Tutorial - Using Dayglow Colors

Hey everyone,

as i recently found out about this little effect when i started using dayglow pigments i had some experiences i want to share with you.
At first you maybe never heard about dayglow pigments or colors.
Dayglow - with this term i mean the color somehow glows under light, so with a little light the color is much brighter than normal acrylic paints.

To get such dayglow paints with a good quality i decided to mix my own colors.

First you need dayglow pigments, you can order them online (google for a shop in your country) or you can buy them in artist shops. But inform yourself about the quality of the pigments, in miniature painting you want the highest quality possible.

Here i compared Orange and Pink Dayglow Pigments with the GW Colors .... you can clearly see how much more power the dayglow colors have!

Now you need some acrylic binder (Schmincke in my example) and mix it with your pigments, thats the way to make acrylic colors with any pigments ;)
I like to add a little drop of matte varnish and i put it inside a vallejo styled dropper bottle for easier use. I also add a small steel ball (from a BB gun) to improve the mixing ability.

You can then use the color like a normal acrylic color... if it is too thin, just add more pigments to the mix.


Now for the interesting part... practical use ;)

Normally i just paint the figure with normal colors and add thin glazes of the dayglow color to desired spots to bring in the light effect. In the photo above you can see the effect pretty well.

Another good example for the use of dayglow color... here i wanted to give the balls a mysterious look. I painted them normal and afterwards dabbed some dayglow color on it.
After this step i gave the balls 2-3 coats of gloss varnish to give them a glassy look

Here on my latest project you can see the use of dayglow color to give the fire a glowing appearance :)

I hope you liked this tutorial and you try out this technique!