Miniature painting help?

[gurgleflep]

I recently bought some miniatures (reaper bones) and primed them because a lot of the tutorials I saw for them suggested it, but now they're feeling tacky. I used rustoleum 2x ultra cover and it's left them feeling sticky and weird. Is there any way to remedy that? Are they still able to be painted on even now? I've got no clue and don't want to risk ruining any of them or my brushes.

[Checkmate-Pony]

Ah fear not my friend, I'm a veteran of assembling and painting miniatures and know reaper bone very well, and Have done the exact same thing you have by accident before.


The reason they have ended up this way is because of the spray you've used. The reason is because spray paint is not just spray paint, spray paint bought at car dealers or home improvement stores like Bauhaus. They sell a lot of different types meant for different things related to arts and crafts. Some paints are glossy and sticky because of the protective coats and layers it provides, and rustoleum for example is used for furniture... outdoors furniture, or metals. which is why Rustoleum gets it's name, it has rust protection coating

When you use this type on a miniature model it's not good... depending on the model in question and what the model is made of you could damage it forever, because of the useless thick layers of protection it does not need filling out the details of the model, and only in a few cases can you save them. there are many ways to remove paint from plastic, but it ussualy involves elbow grease, and in case of metals having them soak in Acetone is a sure fire way to make it as good as new, glue and paint comes off with ease and metal is intact

Never use acetone on plastic, it melts.

Now about Reaper Bone and their brand of Miniatures

It's important we tackle the specific brand here because Reaper is special from many other companies selling miniatures.

Reaper has a reputation of being aweful, which is both true and false. The thing with Reaper is they are made from a very fragile and easily bendable plastic that does not allow for quality and detail. The good thing about Reaper is it's cheap! it's super cheap, so really you get what you pay for and despite it all, Reaper is a really good brand if you're looking for cheap fantasy miniatures. Because Miniatures are always expensive, not just Warhammer, and for there to be a cheap solution to more casual people and hobbiest is great.
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That being said, I'm affraid this is however very unfortunate for you because it is very hard to save your models if painted with something like Rustoleum if not downright impossible.

what you could do is to buy a proper matt black paint spray (or white depending on your colour scheme) a spray made for hobby miniatures specifically, which are abundant but different from home improvement and car sprays.

and then very gently apply another coat of paint to cover the sticky one (and when I say gently, I mean stand at a distance giving gentle swipes with the spray, don't get too close or tap with the spray, (tapping with the nozzle can make it squirt droplets)

This however is not not guaranteed to work, since you have already applied a coat of that sticky furniture solution spray, adding another coat might ruin details entirely, but it could be worth a shot.
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another solution is to try and look up online how to remove paint from plastic models, several chemicals can do this (ussualy combined with elbow grease). But I'm afraid in the case of Reaper Bones with their dirt cheap plastic it might not be resilient enough to survive such treament

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The Last solution is to try again by buying another model. I know that's a very unhelpful suggestion, but the fact of the matter is you used a rough, protective furniture spray for something fine and delicate, and not very robust to begin with.

[Erloas]

There is a reason model primers are like 3x the cost of your normal spray primers (and its not all just production scale) and that is because it is designed to do different things.

What I've found is that it is never worth skimping on primer. Even an expensive can (I used P3 primer before I got an airbrush, now I'm using vallejo paint on primer with the airbrush) will be cheap compared to the price of all of the models you can cover with it. Then when you take into account all of the time spent painting it just doesn't make any sense. Take $300 in models, spend 100 hours painting them, and try to save $5 with a cheap can of primer which is the base of everything you do on painting?

With that out of the way...
How long have they set since you sprayed them, and what is the temperature and humidity (roughly) when you sprayed? If you are somewhere very humid it could take a while to dry, same with it being cold. My ex wife used a lot of spray paints and I've never seen them not dry completely, but depending on thickness of the coat, the material it is on, and the atmospheric conditions it could take quite a while to dry completely. If its already been a couple days then there might be something else going on, you might try hitting them a bit with a hair dryer and seeing what it does.

If you can get them to dry then it at least gives you a good chance to practice. You'll find that you will improve rather quickly, so having a good dozen "learner" models isn't a bad thing.

[Checkmate-Pony]

He didn't ask or complain about pricing of the spray or models.

It's Reaper Bone and he's new to it.

He just needs to know to use a model spray (which is really not expensive, even Games Worshop sell them affordable)

And that home improvement spray is the wrong tool for the job.

you might try hitting them a bit with a hair dryer and seeing what it does.

DO NOT USE A HAIR DRYER ON A REAPER BONE MODEL

for god sakes don't do that.

[gurgleflep]

I actually did use a hair dryer on some minis BUT it had a cool air setting, it was brief, and only to blow water off. If it didn't have the setting, I wouldn't have risked it!
The weather when I sprayed them was about 82°F - humidity was pretty low. I brought them in after and it's about 73°F average in the house. It's now four days after and they still remain tacky feeling.

I did some research and saw mention of pine-sol being used to get the paint/primer off but had none... so I thought back to a school project from when I was itty-bitty and used a q-tip (later an old toothbrush) and rubbing alcohol to get it off. Worked quite well though the deeper spots still had it in, it got rid of the tackiness.
I'd also bought the minis I used in bulk (goblins, orcs, basic toss-away villains) and figured "Eh, I have extra brushes." and painted one despite being tacky - it worked surprisingly well! Here soon, I'll try and get a couple pictures of them posted Don't expect master pieces though, this is still new territory.

[Checkmate-Pony]

I'm glad you found a solution.

[gurgleflep]

Here are the two I did in all their glory! Not the prettiest things in the world, but I'm proud of `em and thank you both for the tips and advice.

[Checkmate-Pony]

for a first attempt at this those are phenomenal.

[Erloas]

He didn't ask or complain about pricing of the spray or models.

It's Reaper Bone and he's new to it.

He just needs to know to use a model spray (which is really not expensive, even Games Worshop sell them affordable)

And that home improvement spray is the wrong tool for the job.

Eh, most people new to painting say "why would I spend $15 on GW primer when Home Depot sells primer for $3." It might not be that $10 is too much (what everyone not GW charges for good primer) but why spend more for what seems like the same thing? Because you figure out that they aren't the same. And people do get by with using the home improvement primers.

Unless you have a very hot hairdryer or hold it on there for a while it really shouldn't be an issue, even for Bones.

I did some research and saw mention of pine-sol being used to get the paint/primer off but had none... so I thought back to a school project from when I was itty-bitty and used a q-tip (later an old toothbrush) and rubbing alcohol to get it off. Worked quite well though the deeper spots still had it in, it got rid of the tackiness.
I'd also bought the minis I used in bulk (goblins, orcs, basic toss-away villains) and figured "Eh, I have extra brushes." and painted one despite being tacky - it worked surprisingly well! Here soon, I'll try and get a couple pictures of them posted Don't expect master pieces though, this is still new territory.

The last thing I used to strip a model was Simply Green and it worked very well. Had to let it set for a couple days and a pick was needed to clean out the smallest parts but it worked really well. Since mine was on resin (and I'm sure Bones has its own issues, as do other plastics) you have to be careful what you put on them because some will destroy the model material as well. Not sure about pine-sol, but I know acetone aka fingernail polish remover, is really bad for most plastics.


As for your models, they look good. What types of paints are you using?
Now would be the time to start experimenting with different techniques and seeing how the results come out. A nice brown wash would really help the barbarian stand out. And some highlights on the goblin, skin especially, will really help define the details. It is a very good idea to start shading and highlighting early, as it seems to be the biggest barrier for most model painters. I've seen some very good model painters that just never learned that, and while they have very good lines and good designs they lack any depth and just come out flat and lifeless because they don't shade and highlight.

What you generally end up with is a model that looks great 6" away when you are painting it under your great painting lights, then you set it down on a table to play and it doesn't look like much more than a monochromatic blob that lacks detail.

And I hope you take that the right way. Your models are very good to start. I'm just trying to give you some tips so you can learn the right way right from the start.

[Erloas]

I hope you don't mind if I post a few pictures of my stuff here? Part to show them and I have a few that highlight the effects of highlighting.

When I first started these models I had two frigates and one I "finished" with all of the highlighting and the other I didn't. I don't have much of the pre-shaded models except really early on.

Spoiler: close up, and at a distance

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This one is very early on, you can see I've really inked the lines so they are pretty dramatic, which is more of a stylistic thing than shading specifically.

This is with some shading, just a basic wash on these.

This is highlighted. Yes, its a bit much at this range, and my blending isn't as good as it could be but it was one of my first models after a very long break in painting.


But these two are the point. Not great lighting and at a bit of range. You can easily tell which frigate has been highlighted and which hasn't. You can also see some of the reason I choose the rather dramatic lines for them.


This is a very "clean" design, it is also very flat and lifeless.

Here it is finished, with the lining, shading, and highlights.

Spoiler: finished fleet all together

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I'm not the best painted, but I still think its enough to demonstrate what I'm talking about and help illustrate why.

[Checkmate-Pony]

Eh, most people new to painting say "why would I spend $15 on GW primer when Home Depot sells primer for $3." It might not be that $10 is too much (what everyone not GW charges for good primer) but why spend more for what seems like the same thing? Because you figure out that they aren't the same. And people do get by with using the home improvement primers.

Yes the internet is full of people who cry, and cry and CRY about prices being too high, and that GW is the devil, but he didn't.

In the Country I live in, you cannot buy a primer for 3 dollars, and even if the car salesman has a cheaper primer. Why would I take my car around town to different stores to buy my things, burning gas for a few bucks difference. Gas that in my country is more expensive than others.

Sometimes you gotta bite down and just buy the tools you need to enjoy your hobby, and if they happen to be in the same store, then I'll gladly spend 15$ dollars on a primer in my local GW store,

GW store Owned by a friend of mine who is struggling to keep it running, in my tiny town in my tiny insignificant country that is not big America where you can buy anything for a dollar.

:( I'm not a fan of people who complain online about their luxury problems, assuming we all are as fortunate as them.

And talk about how much they hate The Hobby they claim to love.

When being a Newbie, I really don't think one should run out and buy super cheap tools and primers.

Because when you are new to this whole thing, you don't know what you're doing, and you don't understand the diffirence. And you end up making mistakes like he did. Thankfully he managed to salvage it.

[gurgleflep]

My apologies for the absense, I've been away from my house and without internet. I've been using cheap Walmart paint, AppleBarrel is the name and it's put out by a company called plaid; there's also a metallic line by plaid but it's got a different name - FolkArt by the look of it, it's a weird font (they come out really sparkly, but that just makes them cooler to me).

Financially, I'm not very well off so I did look for a cheaper primer and there aren't any local hobby shops - the nearest are anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour's drive from my home and most of what they have is out of my price range sadly. I probably put in a good $50 for paints and another $46 for the minis I've got, thanks to my tax returns - there's no job's around here, but when I get one I'll be dabbling later down the road with some higher quality paints perhaps, but... at the moment, I like what I'm using!

I DID get a sealer though! Mate clear acrylic sealer - same company so here's to hoping!

As far as posting here goes, if anybody has tips/tricks they've learned over time or wants to post their works feel free! Those vehicles look something along the lines of an airship, submarine, train hybrid - what are they for?

[Checkmate-Pony]

[IMG][/IMG]

I just finished this Mob here, I call them the disenfranchised.

What it is, is a little fun experiment, all of these models are stuff I've found laying around my house, in old boxes and bins and trash, it's incredible what you can just find laying around broken.

They will be used as Cannon fodder in my Rebel Army, the idea is that this is a mob of Scum and villans, aweful soldiers, they serve no purpose but to be expended at my command.

They are warm up for the much more serious units I will be making, of which I will step up my game in terms of painting and assembling because this unit right here is kind of a joke.

Bases are not done yet ofcourse.

[Erloas]

The game is Dystopian Wars. The army is the Empire of the Blazing Sun, and from what I've heard the steam trains were very much a stylistic inspiration for this army. Most other nation's ships are much more ship like. A lot of Steampunk in the game like the airships.

I'll preface my tips and tricks with a bit of a caveat, I'm going with the assumption that painting is going to be its own hobby. I get a lot more time to paint than I do to play and there is always room for learning and getting better. If your only real interest is getting paint on the models and the models on the table so they aren't just white/grey then a lot can be ignored as its a lot more work than is necessary for that sort of painting.

First trick, the wet palette. It might not be necessary if you live in a humid climate but where I live things dry out really fast and without one you probably use more paint on the palette than on models. Very simple, take a sandwich sized tupperware, put a few folded paper towels in the bottom, soak them in water, and put a piece of parchment paper on top. Paper towels should have a little more water than they can hold but you don't want things swimming, parchment paper is just like wax paper but without the wax and can be found at places like Walmart, it allows water to pass through but not paint so the paint can take up water from the bottom instead of drying out.

Spoiler: the ship is sitting on my wet palette

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Next is to keep notes on your paints, especially if you start to mix and blend. Basically an art journal. Since colors sometimes change as they dry and some colors have much better coverage than others I like to see a swatch of the color. So I took some basic watercolor paper (whole book is only like $10, though normal paper can work) wrote down the names of my paints and what went into a combination. Working on color schemes is also good there, though less important when you're doing one-off models instead of entire armies that will be using the same colors (better make sure they work together before doing that much)

Spoiler: examples

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The last picture there is of a set of special metallics I've picked up. They are more of a glaze so they don't have great coverage on their own, which is why the one above it was done the way it was. It shows how several different colors interacted with some of the glazes.

Learning the color wheel and color theory can help a lot. Especially when you start blending. It also helps figure out what colors will go good together and which won't. If you wanted to do green and purple for example you'll find some go really well together and some go badly together, and it usually comes down to the base colors "hiding" in the paints. Is your green a little more blue or a little more yellow? Is the purple a little more blue or a little more red?
This is actually the part that still gives me the hardest time, and I think that was because I had been painting 15+ years before really trying to learn it and probably wouldn't have if my (recently ex) wife hadn't made a point of how little I knew of color theory (she is an artist). Its done the most to improve my painting than pretty much anything else I've done in the decade.
Along with that comes highlighting and shading. The fact that we can look at something and we know its "all the same color" but from an artistic point of view it contains many different colors seamlessly blended together. It is the difference between a model looking like a model/toy and making it appear to just be a small but faithful representation of the real thing. A small ridge in a tank will cast a shadow but on a model that shadow will never show up on its own. A bright sun in the distance will cause bright spots that you'll never see on a model. So you have to put them there, to make it believable, to give it size that it doesn't have.

Spoiler: google example tank

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We know this tank is all painted the same color but from the eye's point of view it is clearly not all the same color. You can see the bright edges, the darkening shadow under the edges.

Spoiler: google random people too

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There is a lot of flowing clothing on models, and I think that picture does a very good job of showing how even though the shirt is clearly all one color there is a huge variety of color in the end. From a very light color all the way to almost black and no hard lines to any of it.
That is blending. A dry retardant is often needed to blend acrylics (paints we use), but it can't be done without mixing and understanding how the colors change.

There are other things, like highlights aren't just adding white and shading isn't just adding black. To shade blue or red then purple is often a better color, yellow to green gives a very good green highlight. Yellow is also good for highlighting red because it doesn't go pink like white. Black and white don't cancel either, adding both will give you the same hue but a different tone.


I haven't used AppleBarrel paints myself but I know some people who have. They aren't the best but you should still be able to learn and do a lot with them. Once you get more comfortable with painting and if you have any interest in doing it as a hobby rather than a means to not white model, then I would look at starting to pick up some model paints, Vallejo or Reaper. A few higher quality brushes will go a long way too, I wouldn't start with $15 brushes, but a few in the $3-5 range from a normal art store will be good.

[Erloas]

Here is what I worked on this weekend. Same game, different nation, in this case Australia.

Spoiler

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First one is a battleship, it has a moveable deck on the front that is magnetized but not on there yet. Also has switchable guns from a conventional canon to an energy weapon, which also go on the sub tender in the other pictures. The guns are magnetized but I can't find my green stuff to put the magnet on the ship (built in hole is larger than my magnet, the normal guns had a peg but the energy weapons didn't so I cut them all even but without a peg the distance is too far for the magnet).

I'm going to tone down the orange and blue a bit with the cinnamon brown from the last post, but I do want to keep the orange pretty vibrant, just not quite what it is. Most of the rest of what isn't painted will be a darker grey with the iridescent copper over it and a few pieces I'm going to wait a bit to figure out exactly what they'll end up as.

[Checkmate-Pony]

You should do some weathering on your ships to make them look aged

Although I must admit weathering is tricky on a model that small.

[Erloas]

On all of them or specifically the Australian models in the last post? Because the last post is still really early in the process, still have to finish blocking in the colors then I'll do my washes and highlighting which will give them a more weathered look.

[Checkmate-Pony]

On all of them or specifically the Australian models in the last post? Because the last post is still really early in the process, still have to finish blocking in the colors then I'll do my washes and highlighting which will give them a more weathered look.

well not the ones that are work in progress, I know those aren't ready for it.

[Erloas]

I'm not sure if weathering would add a lot to my EotBS fleet (green) because it has pretty high levels of shading and highlighting already.
I think some models would be a better fit for a more weathered look, maybe the Prussian fleet. I've got that fleet primed but haven't even finalized my color scheme for it yet. The tesla weapons they use I think would be a very good target for weathering and the effects that would have on the surroundings on the rest of the ship.

Also have a few terrain pieces, oil rig and fort complex, that would be very good places for a very hard used look. I'm planning on doing those as soon as the Australians are done.

I know a lot of people are using the straight pigments for weathering now and I haven't tried them yet but I've been thinking about picking up a couple and experimenting with them.

[Aéquitas]

I find the reaper bones really hard to paint, i usually try to prime them and then seal them with varnish before starting to paint this seems to help somewhat with chipping.