Painting your Pal Tiya Premium Sculpture

Perfect Painting

You mean, you're not content with Pal Tiya Premium's natural 'stone' color? Ah okay…
There are many ways you can paint your Pal Tiya Premium Sculptures.

When can you paint a Pal Tiya Premium piece?
When the sculpture is bone dry, it can be painted.
This may take a day in direct sunlight or a few days in a cool studio.
Once it is dry, it can be either sealed or painted.
How to tell? When it cannot become any lighter in tone. Wet Pal Tiya Premium is quite dark. Very dry Pal Tiya Premium is a solid pale grey.
A sculpture can usually be painted after 5 days. Water can migrate through paint. Sealing is a different matter. Sealing makes the surface impervious to any water migration, in or out. This is why you must wait 28 days.

Clean pieces with soap and water.

(Optional) Burn away any unwanted fibers with a torch - in a well ventilated area.

(Optional) Primers are good but not required.

Exterior grade acrylic paints are excellent. Read on for more details on this.

Grafitti / spray paints are great and easy to apply. Do so outside with proper precations.

(Optional) Sealants can ONLY be applied AFTER 28 days of curing.

Download a painting summary PDF here

Why must sealants be applied after 28 days?
The sculpture needs to exchange moisture throughout this time. Both acrylic and spray paints allow the piece to still 'breathe' - sealants don't.

What paints to you recommend?
Paint and sealant manufacturers are upgrading and changing their products all the time and brands differ country to country. For these reasons it is impossible for us to recommend a specific brand.

Read on for more painting options and information.

Exterior Grade Acrylic Paints

Many folks use a "watered-down" acrylic exterior grade house paint.
As our product is amazingly impervious to water, paints need 'a little help' to stick to the surface longer outdoors.
'Lightly' pre-dampen your piece with a little water before applying acrylic paints. If you're really keen, we recommend you buy a pot each of white, black, blue, yellow, red and a mid-tone green.
Almost any color can be mixed from these. You may even want to 'experiment' with other types of paints and coatings. We like to 'age' our sculptures by building up washes of a very diluted Sepia color, then 'sponging-away' the flatter areas (don't forget to squint a lot while doing this bit).
You can also use acrylic concrete stains!
All of these pieces have been colored this way:

INDIA INKS
Pigment based India inks are very good colorants for Pal Tiya Premium.
They can be used either diluted or full strength and come in bright intense colors.
They can be layered for different hues and tones.
Apply on dry PTP after the 28 day cure.
Pigment based India Inks have more long lasting color than printers inks or dyes.

We cannot guarantee every single ink out there.
This is a recent discovery so we are not sure how light fastness and fading in extremely harsh sunlight will affect the inks over time.

See further down the page for how to seal your sculpture.

OXIDES
Before you even mix your Pal Tiya Premium you can add oxides directly into the powder. There are however, a few rules around this.

We recommend "Iron-based colored oxides" -mostly because these don't interfere with the crystallization curing process too much. (Except for "Prussian Blue", where its extra Nitrogen & Carbon 'Cyano bonds' do interfere a little).
The maximum we recommend is 5 percent (by weight) - any more will weaken your works.

Remember, the effects of any 'embedded color' on a finished piece only rely on the light absorption/diffusion.
Hence, a LOT of 'embedded color' only makes a small surface difference.
Acrylic-based/suspended colors 'will' interfere with Pal Tiya Premium's cured mechanical properties. Specifically reducing its 'impact strength'.

OTHER COLORING TECHNIQUES
Our customer’s are always experimenting with color.

Marcia Robinson-Rouse used Rust-oleum Metallic Spray paints to achieve a beautiful finish on her Emissaries Of Light Sculptures

Rachel Laundon used a watered down flat black exterior latex acrylic as a “primer”, doing a few coats of this before dry brushing color in a flat exterior latex acrylic then golden high flow acrylics for the detail work.

Eileen Gallagher used an old beach ball and sculpted this sweet gumball and once cured she popped the ball underneath. Genius. She used metallic bronze with green patina from Sculpt Nouveau

SEALING
It’s important to wait 28 days post cure (on any piece) that you intend to seal.
Why wait 28 days before sealing?
As Pal Tiya Premium cures it is using up and binding the necessary water into its matrix. If left to dry out, it will lose the needed water for a full strong cure. If too much water was used in the mix, this will naturally migrate towards the surface over the 28 days.
Sealing or painting the sculpture too early means the extra water is trapped behind this barrier. The water will get in behind this barrier and lift it off.
When painting before 30 days are up, we recommend painting in thin washes so the water can still migrate through this layer.
It is not necessary to seal at all, though doing so can improve the life of your sculpture and its paint finish. Sealers are an additional protective layer between your work and the environment.

Using a sealant such as Modern Masters Masterclear supreme in matte finish, (a specialized outdoor polyurethane) post 28 day cure may help to seal in the color and protect as it has added UV Blockers and Absorbers that greatly reduce the sun’s graying and fading effects on stained wood and painted surfaces.

Begin Your Pal Tiya Premium Journey Today!