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I've got a question or two about varnishing - I'm going to varnish my completed minis with gloss and then matte varnish, as recommended by Lukes Aps, however he talks about giving it several coats of gloss and then several coats of matte. Is this really necessary, or would a single coat of each do? Any tips on how to do the spraying?

Also, I'm assuming I'll need to varnish my mini before adding any grass tufts to the base. Is that right? Or does it not make any difference? I'd have thought tufts would get clogged up with the sprayed on varnish, but I'm not sure if that's the case or not.

What he means is likely is rather than coats is passes, so like, with the gloss, you go do like a pass, then come back a minute later and do another pass, same with matte.
What this does is protect your models from being all obscured details.
as to your second, you can do it either way. if you do gloss, dont put the tufts on, but a matte varnish can help seal it in.

Okay, thanks for that, I'll keep that in mind.

The gloss/matte thing is a myth. You'll get just as strong a seal just using two coats of matte sealer, which is also, from my experience, less prone to frosting.

I suspect that it was born from someone seeing that gloss enamel paint tends to be more durable than comparable flat paint... but varnish is not paint, and I've seen no evidence over the years that matte varnish is actually any less durable.

Unless you are really rough with your miniatures, plastic miniatures painted with decent quality acrylic paints don't really need sealing at all - I have unsealed miniatures that are more than 20 years old that are still looking just fine. But if you are going to seal them for that extra peace of mind, don't mess about with multiple different sealers... just find a good matte one and use that.

Ah, okay. I did think it was a little bit weird to need two separate varnishes. I went ahead and matt sprayed a couple of models, anyway. I think I applied it too heavily or from too close range, though, as they both came out very shiny. A few coats of Lahmian Medium seems to have matted it back down again, though, so no harm done, hopefully.

 insaniak wrote:
The gloss/matte thing is a myth. You'll get just as strong a seal just using two coats of matte sealer, which is also, from my experience, less prone to frosting.

I suspect that it was born from someone seeing that gloss enamel paint tends to be more durable than comparable flat paint... but varnish is not paint, and I've seen no evidence over the years that matte varnish is actually any less durable.

Unless you are really rough with your miniatures, plastic miniatures painted with decent quality acrylic paints don't really need sealing at all - I have unsealed miniatures that are more than 20 years old that are still looking just fine. But if you are going to seal them for that extra peace of mind, don't mess about with multiple different sealers... just find a good matte one and use that.

I do gloss/matte simply because gloss spray is a lot cheaper than the Dullcote I use. Gloss for protection, dull for the look!

You can add the grass tufts before you spray the varnish if you want them to be sealed, but you just want to make sure you don't overdo it with the varnish near the tufts so they don't get all stuck together.

You can see here an example on a miniature I did awhile back:



I messed up on the grass (I think in this case it was too much watered down Elmer's glue) but too much varnish could potentially cause a similar effect. It's not necessarily a bad effect if wet, muddy grass is what you're going for - but that wasn't what I was going for in this case. As long as you're careful and don't overdo it like me you should be fine. I'd personally still seal the grass as well, I'd just be more careful having learned my lesson.