So I ran into some problems with some minis I painted turning dull, gray, and fuzzy-looking after I sprayed them with clear-coat on a hot, humid summer day. As a refresher, my spiders and doppelgangers came out looking like this:

Glossing over the problem

I wanted to try to improve the look from here without a full repaint. I was considering just throwing a dark wash over the whole pieces and calling them done, but someone on Facebook suggested that going back over them with a clear gloss would help restore some of the original look. I had a little pint can of hardware-store variety Varathane brush-on gloss around, so I grabbed a few of the muted minis and spread a little onto them.

This did seem to help a bit! It looked like the gloss liquid was able to fill in the almost crystalline “fuzz” the spray coat had left, and they looked better. (Now, as I write this, I wonder if a matte paint-on liquid would have achieved the same, bit I’ve already put some gloss on the other muted minis so it’s too late to test that on this go-round.

With the colors still far from perfect but at least not looking like the minis had spent a month inside a vacuum cleaner, I was tempted to pronounce them done. But the glossy look (which the photo doesn’t convey very well) bothered me. The glossy look on what were supposed to be dirt bases was especially bothersome.

And so…

Tempting Fate

That night as my glossy minis dried, a storm came through, followed by a steady rain. Yesterday morning dawned the coolest and driest it’s been around here since early June. This meant that not only was I going to test yet another layer of clear coat – this time from among several brush-on matte candidates – but the conditions were right to try both another coat of the Krylon that was involved in the original problem as well as some Testor’s Dullcote I’d picked up locally to test out. My hope was to reduce the gloss without any further muting/dulling/fuzzing effects.

For brush-on testing, I used a matte version of the same Varathane product line I’d used for the gloss, since again I had some on a shelf in the garage anyway. I also used my monthly-ish 50% off coupon to pick up a bottle of Liquitex matte varnish.

The results?

Er, well.. they seemed to tone down the gloss just a little. Interestingly the Krylon did the best job of suppressing the shine. I’m still mulling over yet another coat of matte just to de-gloss a little more, but I think at that point these minis will be more clear-coat than plastic! I’m also still tempted to try that one last dark wash on the spiders…

Lessons learned

My take-aways from this little exercise are as follows:

When spraying, always wait for the right weather conditions!

When conditions aren’t ideal but you don’t want to wait, brush it on instead.

The initial results weren’t Krylon’s fault – they were mine, for not adhering to the first two bullet points above. While there may be some variations in the susceptibility to weather conditions across different formulations, the simple fact is that any of the products I tested are probably perfectly adequate for their intended purpose when used correctly.

Most of my spiders aren’t big enough to be “giant” spiders.

Bulleted lists look too small when there are only three bullets.

I just don’t know when to stop. Really. It’s a problem. It’s possible I need counseling for this. Let me list the reasons: <Thud sound as wife clubs me over the head and drags me away from the computer>

