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After moving into a new home, I'm getting one of the bathrooms remodeled. I figured I'd go ahead and personalize the place by doing a wall mural. I didn't want it to be the typical overly violent Nitroxinator image, I went a tad more commercial. The final piece is 4' by 3'. Time will tell if my method will hold up to abuse (it's actually going to be in the shower stall.
The water areas were first covered with white enamel primer, with the "exploded tiles" left masked. I used Createx T-Shirt acrylics (comart was a bit thin), mostly with an airbrush, to do the work. The seal is polyurethane. I tried this on a sample tile in October (a skull in a bunch of flames, not exactly mural material), it holds up quite well. I'll see if the mural holds up or not over time. I had a sample chip that I coated identically to the mural, it required the use of the edge of a screwdriver and a lot of force to scratch through the seal. If the urethane doesn't hold up, I just sand it down to the porcelain and still wind up having a nice shower stall.
I was a createx auto air west coast rep and worked for many years on R & D for the company, and made a video for them on the basics of auto air. I'm an airbrush artist also and work as an independant sign painter/ hand letterer and pinstriper.
I worked prior to that in body shops and now even do some marine gel coat work too.
I could make a suggestion as to the best stuff to use on those tiles aside of doing all the artwork in ceramic glazes then getting them fired. That technique is very tough because you have to work blind, in other words the colors don't look anything like what they will when the peices go into a kiln.
The material you may want to consider is using polyester gel coat resin with colorants added in to make your colors. They make white and clear base gel for color applications, then they also make clear gelcoat which would be used for bass boats where they need to bury all that heavy flake. The stuff is pretty nasty smelling and toxic but done outside it's not bad. Any polyester resin based products require mekp hardner which you add to the gel at a ratio of 10 - 15 drops per ounce of material. Gel coats are typically reduced with acetone (very fast evaporation) or styrene monomer (very slow evaporation) up to 30%. You have to work quick so the material doesn't kick off in your airbrush. You don't have to sand it between coats or passages of color and when the artwork's all done you can hog on as many coats of clear gel as you feel you need. After the last coat of clear gel (about 5-6 wet coats total - 15 to 20 mils) you spray a coat of PVA mold release agent over the wet gel and this will cut off the air to the resin product making it cure out all the way to the surface. Spray on about 2-3 coats of PVA which is greenish in color. When that dries about an hour to 2 hours later you can peel it off the gel like a sheet of celophane and the gell will be rock hard underneath. PVA is also water suluable so it can also be rinsed off.
Temperature has everything to do with success with resin based products as far as curing goes so all work should be done in about 70 degree temps or higher.
Gelcoat can be wet sanded (600 to 1000 grit) and polished just like paint to a brilliant shine and it is very durable just like a shower stall or boat. Your tiles then could be installed and grouted with out worry.
With automotive clears, they don't always hold up that well to constant scrubbing especially with commet and a scrub brush, it's hard to get enough mill thickness with them to withstand all the abuse of regular scrubbings. With gel if it gets scratched or dulled it can be polished right up.
Createx is great stuff but being a thermoset polymer it really needs to be heated to about 300 degrees to be transformed into a crosslinked material and impervious to moisture. That's why you see them heat set t-shirts at the airbrush stands otherwise it won't survive the washing machine.
I was a createx auto air west coast rep and worked for many years on R & D for the company, and made a video for them on the basics of auto air. I'm an airbrush artist also and work as an independant sign painter/ hand letterer and pinstriper.
I worked prior to that in body shops and now do some marine gel coat work.
I could make a suggestion as to the best stuff to use on those tiles aside of doing all the artwork in ceramic glazes then getting them fired. That technique is very tough because you have to work blind, in other words the colors don't look anything like what they will when the peices go into a kiln.
The material you may want to consider is using polyester gel coat resin with colorants added in to make your colors. They make white and clear base gel for color applications, then they also make clear gelcoat which would be used for bass boats where they need to bury all that heavy flake. The stuff is pretty nasty smelling and toxic but done outside it's not bad. Any polyester resin based products require mekp hardner which you add to the gel at a ratio of 10 - 15 drops per ounce of material. Gel coats are typically reduced with acetone (very fast evaporation) or styrene monomer (very slow evaporation) up to 30%. You have to work quick so the material doesn't kick off in your airbrush. You don't have to sand it between coats or passages of color and when the artwork's all done you can hog on as many coats of clear gel as you feel you need. After the last coat of clear gel (about 5-6 wet coats total - 15 to 20 mils) you spray a coat of PVA mold release agent over the wet gel and this will cut off the air to the resin product making it cure out all the way to the surface. Spray on about 2-3 coats of PVA which is greenish in color. When that dries about an hour to 2 hours later you can peel it off the gel like a sheet of celophane and the gell will be rock hard underneath. PVA is also water suluable so it can also be rinsed off.
Temperature has everything to do with success with resin based products as far as curing goes so all work should be done in about 70 degree temps or higher.
Gelcoat can be wet sanded (600 to 1000 grit) and polished just like paint to a brilliant shine and it is very durable just like a shower stall or boat. Your tiles then could be installed and grouted with out worry.
With automotive clears, they don't always hold up that well to constant scrubbing especially with commet and a scrub brush, it's hard to get enough mill thickness with them to withstand all the abuse of regular scrubbings. With gel if it gets scratched or dulled it can be polished right up.
Createx is great stuff but being a thermoset polymer it really needs to be heated to about 300 degrees to be transformed into a crosslinked material and impervious to moisture. That's why you see them heat set t-shirts at the airbrush stands otherwise it won't survive the washing machine.
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