Paint coming off, help requested

[Lior'Lec]

I haven’t painted any minis in well over 20 years and was generally content with ugly bare plastic or prepainted figures in my various board games. Recently I’ve started (slowly) getting back into warhammer and painting again. On the bright side I’ve gotten many times better than what I had painted all those years back, but I’d still only rate my painting skills at maybe a 2 or 3 out of 10.

I’ve been working on a set of Khorne Skullreapers and am having trouble with some of my paints. Whenever I paint the flesh tones there are areas where the paint just won’t stick to the model correctly. It is as if the base paint just doesn’t want to stay. I don’t know if I’m not thinning my paint enough, thinning too much (it frequently goes on and pools, almost like a wash or shade), or something else.

Just to clairify some of what I’ve done I washed the models with warm soapy water then the model was primed with Army Painter Black spray primer. My initial coat was a mixture of Citadel Leadbecher and Vallejo Pure Black (for the armor) and just painted all over the figure then I painted the skin tones which seemed to continueally wash away from some areas (even after many, many layers of it but this problem is only with the skin tones). In order to get coverage in those places I had to dab the brush on a paper towel to dry/thinken the paint some then touch up those areas.

I would have settled for this except when I later applied a wash to the figure the paint in many of these trouble spots came completely off leaving the black primer clearly visible. I’m sure there is something very simple I’m missing somewhere but I haven’t been able to see what i’m doing wrong yet.

I’ve included a couple photos of one of the minis that are giving me fits. The first photo is after the third or fourth layer of paint failed to cover the area. Second photo is after the wash. The paints giving me fits are: (Reaper Master Series Core Colors) Barbarian Flesh, Tanned Skin, and Pale Skin. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

[Curry_Supreme]

Hey man I have the pale skin reaper paints and can give some of my thoughts and experiences.

 

- the paints are not hardy like Vallejo or GW. You will always run the risk of the paint stripping from fingers. To fix this i use some Matt varnish on the end product ( if you want the ultra matte look like i can recommend ak interactive ultra Matt varnish)

- the pooling could be due to a couple of things. Firstly make sure you shake the reaper paints really well and add an agitator in to help with this. Secondly I have had issues with both the army painter primers and that Vallejo Black where washes pool incorrectly. If you can, apply some varnish before you paint and see how it goes.

 

 

 

 

[Lior'Lec]

Thanks for the tips, I did add agitatiors to the dropper bottles and gave them a good shake but I’ll swing by my local shop today and see if I can find a bottle of brush on varnish (weather is way too wet for sprays at the moment unfortunately).

If that doesn’t help I’ll just set the troublesome figures aside and give them about three more days of cure time between each application of paint and move onto my wrath mongers and second squad of Skullreapers (and avoid these skin tones). If nothing else I’ll end up just repainting all of the skins on the minis giving me problems with different paints. 

[Curry_Supreme]

To be completely honest, my reaper skin paints are sitting gathering dust. I find scale75 gives the same matte finish with a hardier finish.

 

also I forgot to add in my last post, you can paint some lahmian medium or other gw paint to try and give better paint adhesion?

[BobbyB]

I don't know if it's relevant given that the undercoat is staying on, but with plastic miniatures you don't need to wash them before you start, that's only resin and tbh 9/10 times I've painted resin I've not bothered and I've never had any problems

[Lior'Lec]

     I know it isn’t actually mandatory, but I tend to wash before priming mostly to remove any oils from my fingers. It’s just some old advice I remember getting years ago when painting some metal figures for the old Advanced Heroquest game (or maybe WarhammerQuest) and when I started getting back into the hobby around the beginning of this year/end of last year it kinda stuck.