Product Review: Liquitex Professional Spray Paint

Hello there fellow artists and modders, I have a little bit of a treat for you today, I just ask that you bear with me in regards to the video, because well... my digital camera sucks.  It's definitely showing it's age already, sheesh.  Anyway, scope the vid and then check out the rest below, thanks.

Image 01.  If you look closely, you can see the little bit of shimmer, from between my fingers and on to the right a little ways.  Yes, that's shimmer, not missed spots.

Image 02. In this image, I scraped a little off with my fingernail, roughly a good 15-20 minutes after I finished the video.  It wasn't very easy to do, but I did do it, and noticed that shimmer once more, where I'd scraped off the paint.

Image 03. Notice how well a couple of coats covers this mouse.  Even the original "Microsoft for Tiny" logo is almost completely covered, only leaving a slight fade to be seen.  Directly to the right of that, if you look closely, you'll see there are a few small blobs that got on there during the spray-on somehow.  Keep panning down to see how I fixed that.  ;)

Image 04. The underbelly of the mouse's top half, to show the original color.

Image 05. The front of the mouse shell top, where I sprayed directly, it surprisingly took very well.  That over-spray, in this instance, is of no importance.  We're just playing around with this stuff for now.  ;)

Image 06.  See that small missed space there above my palm?  Directly to the upper-right of that is another of those naughty little droplets.  *shakes fist*  We'll take care of that right now, and the other ones too!

Image 07. Danger Will Robinson, danger!  Hehehe, I whipped out one of my trusty razor blades and decided to do some light scraping, in a smoothing fashion, to get at those nasty little droplets.  I'll teach them to ruin my party!

Image 08. First, note that the little blemish from before is gone, of which I've no recollection how that came to be.  Secondly, notice that I scraped off that little droplet (the whole spot popped right off really easily).  Ideally, I'd liked to have just smoothed that out, but the droplet had other plans.  If I were doing this for real, as in for money or a serious project, I'd go over it again.  This is just a small sample can, however, so I'll save the rest for other opportunities.

Image 09. Take note of the unpainted edge below the LC and RC button covers.  That was painted, but I attempted to scrape it off with my fingernails and failed.  I used the razor blade and it was as smooth as butter.  Then I got a little carried away, as you can see...

Image 10. As you can clearly see, there's texture, however I did figure out that the texture is actually that of the mouse's surface, not from the paint as I'd initially thought.  This is a definite plus for 2 reasons.    First reason is that it shows how well the paint conforms to the textures of the painted surface.  Second, it means that the paint isn't crap, hahaha.  Also take note of the area directly below the mouse wheel section, where droplets previously existed.  On this section, the razor worked as intended.  It's as smooth as a baby's butt now, minus that texture from the plastic, but it's still nice and smooth regardless.

All-in-all, I have to say that the paint itself is wonderful and definitely holds lots of great possibilities.  One thing I do not like is that the paint likes to bubble up and build up on the nozzle, creating puddles, which is both a nuisance and a great waste.  The construction of their nozzles appears to be somewhat cheap, generic almost.  I have $5.00 USD cans of generic spray paint, from Wal-Mart, that have better nozzles than this thing does.  To me, this is inexcusable, especially for how expensive the retail cans are (and they appear to use the same nozzles).

The clean-up procedure is very easy, I really love that.  It's literally just a matter of washing with soap and water.  To clean the paint can and nozzle, I had to resort to an arsenal consisting of a toothbrush, soap, water, paper towel and a push pin.  This took almost as long as spray painting that mouse top.  Why did it take so long?  Because the paint (thanks to the nozzle's low quality) got all over inside the nozzle cap, on the nozzle, and in that little divot area where you insert the nozzle.  That was when I realized that the plastic used for this nozzle is very thin and flimsy, very cheap and flexible.  I am not impressed by such low quality at all.  If this were a product I'd purchased, I'd ask for a refund and a replacement, with better quality components.

As an artist and as a fiscally conservative individual, I have a big pet peeve when it comes to waste and quality.  I do not like to waste anything if I can help it, especially if it's expensive (the retail cans of this paint are 400ml/340g/12oz and cost $11.99 USD).  I also like my products to be of at least decent quality, not flimsy, cheap-feeling and messy.  I've had $1.00 USD cheeseburgers of better construction quality, which seems absurd really.

Anyway, I'll be checking this stuff out some more soon, will continue to see if there is any way for me to improve the output of this can and it's nozzle.  For now, I'm skeptical on that, but at least I can take some solace in knowing that the paint itself is low-odor, easy to apply, fast-drying, etc.  I can't say yea or nay on this product just yet, but we'll see what the future holds.  At the moment, I'm sitting on the fence here, just waiting for someone to tip me one way or the other.  A gentle nudge will do, no shoving, hehe.

Lastly, I present to you the color chart that came with my sample package:

So that's all for now folks, I hope you like what I've shown you here (forgive the crap quality video please), and as always, if you've any questions you can just ask either on here, Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail.  Thanks and happy painting!

Update 06-06-2013: I went to my local Michael's Craft Store and checked out their selection of these paints.  They carry the full line-up, best I can tell, and there is no clear coat/varnish, etc. made specifically for these paints.  Not to fret, however, because as I turned around, right across the aisle and a couple of steps to the left, I found Grumbacher Final Varnish spray cans (both the semi-gloss/gloss and the satin/matte finish) and labeled at just $12.99 USD each.  This is professional quality stuff, larger cans than these Liquitex Pro retail cans are, and made for both oils and acrylics.