A Ghostly Experiment

 

Doubtful that I'll ever grow up - I laughed and had to download this one (I believe it's actually been taken off Makers as my downloads has a listing of "The print profile is no longer public"). 

I'm sure that I'll find a creative way to use these in a D&D session, rofl.

In the meantime, I used my little ghost friends as an experiment with Vallejo's Xpress Color paints. These ghosts presented a nice surface area to try and use the paints to cover something large like a cape. While I really really really want to like these paints and the concept of quickly throwing paint around, they're frustrating to me for a couple reasons.

1. I use high quality brushes yet brush strokes are everywhere

2. The way the highlighting and the shading works is based essentially on gravity and results in blotches

3. It dries fast, so you have to work quickly - else you tear the previous paint when it's in its drying state - you essentially can't start in the middle - work left, then work right - when you go back to work right you'll tear the paint you've previously laid down - so you have to work left to right, top to bottom or vice versa depending upon your model

4. Air bubbles - I have no idea why, but when I put the paint on my palette it looks like a drop of good paint - when loading the brush it bubbles into the brush which then results in tiny air bubbles - regular paint from Vallejo, Reaper, Games Workshop, etc. doesn't do this - I use sable brushes, I'll need to come back to this experiment with synthetic brushes - additionally some colors are way more vulnerable to bubble attack - my previous use of brown had no issue - red was minimal - white moderate - blue was very challenging as I had to work the bubbles out and there still ended being some - more examples of those colors which are more likely to generate bubbles can be seen on my Xpress Colors model swatch.

The best luck I've had with the Xpress paints is to use the slapchop method as done with the Frost Devil. Using slapchop gives control of highlight and shadow and makes it easier to paint with the Xpress paints.

As I noted the first time I used Xpress paints - they're not for beginners.

One last experiment performed on these ghosts was using a clear coat - I've tried using Testor's dullcote which is awesome on all miniatures except those painted with Xpress Colors as I found out with this troll and then confirmed with the barkeep. 

This time I used Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch 2x Ultracover Matte Clear which I find at my local Home Depot. I use this spray the majority of the time I paint a miniature that's going to be used on the tabletop - the protection against dings and scratches is top notch. However, even though it says Matte, it's not - not like the Testor's anyways (but you can respray with the Testor's on top and the result is really close to Testor's only but much more protected). 

Judging from the pictures above, there's no re-activation and washing away the paint using the Rust-Oleum product. Which is perfect - if I'm using the Xpress Color paints it's because I need the model asap for an upcoming tabletop game and my players literally have no respect for painted monsters.  They have a habit of tossing them in piles as they clear out the dungeons or worse, flicking them with their fingers to shoot them off the board - and I don't even want to describe the behavior they enact on my beautifully painted boss monster after an epic fight.