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I have only just been made wise to the ways of Testors Dullcoat. Such an improvement on Vallejo Matte varnish!

Anyway, I am painting up some marines and planning on my usual gloss varnish to allow a couple of washes on the armour. I'll now be using Testors to bring down the gloss afterwards. However, I have a couple of questions about how to treat 2 elements.

Metallics. My plan is to paint them during the base-coating and highlighting stage. The Testors will eventually dull them down but my plan is to brush some gloss varnish on afterwards. Will that work? I could leave until after the Dullcoat is applied but then any mistakes can't be easily covered and blended back in.

Plasma coils. I'm planning on painting these last after the Dullcoat is applied. Will the paint behave "normally" over the Dullcoat? I would expect it to as being a matte finish it should hold paint ok. Again, I could do them before the Dullcoat stage but I want the colour to pop rather than being toned down by the matting effect.

Hi. Recommend you do NOT gloss the metals. Feedback I got from Privateer Press' staff painters is for best effect, you want to shade and highlight your metals exactly like any other surface. Dullcote and then highlight only the brightest points with a bright silver (radiant platinum, VGA Aluminum, mithril silver - or whatever the hell GW calls their brightest silver now-a-days).

Paint should go overtop of dullcote with no issue.

 keezus wrote:
Hi. Recommend you do NOT gloss the metals. Feedback I got from Privateer Press' staff painters is for best effect, you want to shade and highlight your metals exactly like any other surface. Dullcote and then highlight only the brightest points with a bright silver (radiant platinum, VGA Aluminum, mithril silver - or whatever the hell GW calls their brightest silver now-a-days).

Paint should go overtop of dullcote with no issue.

An alternative is a light brushing of gloss only on the highest surface.

The trick is that too much gloss makes them look wet, but if you get most of the gloss off your brush (similar to drybrushing, but not nearly as much needs to be removed) then it will just knock the dullness off without looking wet. If you can keep the gloss out of the crevices it'll add a bit of contrast between shiny surfaces and dull crevices.

I think it depends how you want the models to look though, you mention that was feedback you got from Privateer's painters, I'd argue while Privateer's painters do an awesome job their metals are a bit on the dull side for my likings.

As for painting over dullcote, just remember dullcote is a lacquer, you can paint over it but leave some time before spraying it and coating over it so that the lacquer can outgas for a while before painting an acrylic over the top of it.

Thanks for the help.

It sounds like I should really man up and paint the metals after my Dullcoat (with the steadiest hand possible...)

I use Vallejo Liquid Metals for the main elements so they are very shiny. I might test one of the models painting the metals first and then dullcoating as the effect might be quite nice.

Honestly, you can probably just do the final highlights after the Dullcote.