Saturday 15 September 2012

An experiment with matt varnish

My ongoing experimentation with dipping continues…
Pre-dip

Pre-dip

Pre-dip

These pirate-era civilians (Old Glory Village Mob and a pair of Reaper barmaids) were undercoated with Army Painter Leather Brown. This gives a good hard coat without the need for primer, but it has quite an amount of shine and very low ‘tooth’. I block-painted the figures, spending a bit more time on the females (especially their faces). With the males’ faces I left dark areas around the eyes/ nose/ mouth and under the cheekbones. The sculpted faces are really nice and somewhat cartoony, and I don’t know if this was a necessary step. My feeling is that the face is the focal feature of a miniature and time spent here is not time wasted.

Anyway, I pressed on (they were really fast to paint, 5-10 minutes per figure tops) and painted over them with Walnut stain and left them to dry. I didn't water the Dip down far enough, and the miniatures are a bit dark for my tastes.
Post-Dip
Post-Dip
Post-Dip
I’ve divided the figures up and given each group a matt spray with either:
Army Painter. $A25 for 400mL
AKA 'Dullcote'. $A11 for 85g
Micador Mat Spray. $A11.95 for 450g

Here they are:
Micador.
Testors Dullcote. NB The barmaid is not matt varnished.
Army Painter. NB The scullery maid is not matt varnished.
My clear preference is for the Testors Dullcote. It's the most expensive and hardest to find in Australia. I'll respray the others and have a finished result post in the future. I can't confess to be entirely happy with them so far. I think I'll add a few highlights, which somewhat negates the point of dipping in the first place ie speed.

6 comments:

  1. I never used Testors but I've heard its the best matt finish but its so expensive!!! Nice blog btw, I've just joined up!

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    1. Thanks Ray, welcome aboard! Yeah, Dullcote always seems to get the vote. My feeling is 'you get what you pay for'.

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  2. Hi, Barks: I use only Testors to flatten out a painted mini. IMO, you dip-to-shade method has had some good results. These are a nice set of minis.

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    1. Thanks Jay; I'm going to wait until I've finished the miniatures until I can say how happy I am with them!

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  3. I tried using dip for a while. I have more or less given up on it now. It works, most of the time but when it doesn't it goes really really bad. I have gone back to inks and highlighting. Most of the time inks get the job done better with a little bit more effort than the dip. I am still using the spray varnish tho. It makes the figures a lot more resilient to handling.

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    Replies
    1. I think I'm going to save it for low-risk projects, where a muddy look is OK or where a consistent and/ or specific appearance isn't necessary. Still, it opens up a lot of options for when I'm time-poor.

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