6.04.2017

The Problem with Army Painter Spray Can Varnish

Notice the milky varnish on the helmets and gun points.
Fuck you, Army Painter!
Oh man, I'm royally disappointed.

In my last blog post I talked about how rarely I ever use a dullcoat varnish but that in the case of my Tau painting project that maybe I should break tradition because I didn't like how the gloss varnish was taking away from the weathered look of the models.

The truth is I got burned pretty hard using a matte varnish at one point where I spent almost an entire year painting up a Flames of War British desert themed army. If any of you have painted any kind of desert camo you know just how invoved it is to bring a model up to a nice cream colour that isn't ghosted by whatever you have as the underlayer.

Anyhow, I used an Army Painter spray can and almost immediately could see my models starting to fuzz up. In the end the entire army was ruined.

Flash forward about a decade and here I am looking for matte varnishes and I again got myself an Army Painter Matte Varnish thinking that it was surely a fluke last time.

The moment I started spraying I figured something was up and unfortunately the varnish came out all super milky and inconsistent on the models.

While they aren't completely ruined this time, the detailing on the models is very much lost. Truth is that at tabletop level they'll look just fine, but I certainly wouldn't enter them into any painting competitions now and again I find myself wondering why the fuck I went with Army Painter brand again.

All my crisp, clean lines are lost for the most part. So I think it's back to using Testors brand, which has been such a great and consistent brand for me.

Given this setback, I think I'll wait on finishing the rest of the Fire Warrior squad for now and instead work on something fun, like the Stealth Suits.

The part that really pisses me off is Army Painter looks like they've raised their prices on their varnish to $17 Canadian a can! If I'm paying $17 fucking dollars for a can of varnish, I expect some quality!

No comments:

Post a Comment