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Hey All,

I wanted to oil wash my Rat ogre but when I varnished it with Satin varnish (Vallejo), the following happend:

before:



after:



As you can see, the metal isn't glossy at all anymore (the only reason the gold/bronze part is a bit glossy is because I applied some extra gloss varnish at that point) and the colours are flat too (look at the red of his cloth, I have to say that since it's a cloth I dont mind that much, but still). Also the green pipe is supposed to glow a bit because of his warpstone liquit stuff, which it doesnt really do anymore now.
Also my black isnt black anymore, and thats really a shame...

Now my question: Is there a way to prevent this? I do not want to use gloss varnish on the entire model since its a rat.. not some shiny elf.
I also want to start painting a High elf Pheonix soon (fire) and a HelDrake, both of them should keep their bright colours, and not flatten out. (The heldrake contains alot of metal parts, and I like the to shine a bit (but not as much as gloss varnish will do).

Advice is very much apreciated!
When this model is finished I'll post a video of it on the showcase page .

Thank you!
Lodar

just one tiny, not completely unimportant note: The first picture was taken in clear daylight, the 2nd one in dusk. But this doesnt change alot.

Brush different varnishes on different parts. Mix a bit of gloss with a bit of satin and see if it gets closer to what you want. Try the satin from different companies and see if one is closer.

I will test the gloss and varnish suggestion, as it's kinda silly that I didnt think of this in the first place!

About the brushing part, the problem is that I like to do it with my airbrush, and its kinda hard to distinguise between very small parts with an airbrush.

Thank you for your reply!

Satin is sort of an "in-between" gloss and flat (or matte) it wont flatten your metals like matte will, but it won't preserve their shine either.

Best thing to do is use two different varnishes. A flat for what you want flat and a gloss for what you want to be shiny.

I have in the past used a gloss varnish to seal everything, as it seems to wear more durabley, then I hit everything with a flat to keep things looking good, finally I went back and brushed gloss on the things I wanted to shine again (visors and metallic bits).

Altogether that gave me three layers of protection for my figures. BTW I donated them to the public library along with a couple of rulebooks.