To Varnish, or Not To Varnish
To varnish, or not to varnish: that is the question – to
misquote the Bard. I had never been fully convinced that
varnishing models after painting them with acrylic paint
was entirely necessary. I’d had good advice from expert
painters that it wasn’t. Unvarnished figures could retain
the finish of the paint and the paint itself was tough
enough to protect itself. After all, you don’t varnish a wall
after painting it with acrylic paint but you expect the
finish to last for years. I’d sadly seen figures after hours of
hard painting ruined by a few seconds of varnishing. On
the other hand, gloss varnish hid a multiple of sins. The
unnatural sheen on painted fabrics could be taken off by a
true flat matte varnish. But matte varnish left metallic
paint finishes looking dull. And spray varnishes were
sensitive to temperature and humidity. They could be
more worrying than throwing your figures around the
room. To varnish, or not to...
For my 1809 project’s 10mm playing pieces, however, I
resolved to give varnishing a go. I had a good-sized
collection of varnishes both bottled and in spray cans. For
this small size of figure, I chose to use Vallejo’s acrylic
varnish that came in small squeezey-bottles – a few drops
at a time being enough to brush on to the figures as it
dried quite quickly on the palette.
All the figures I’d based recently were varnished with two coats of the Vallejo matte
varnish then spot brushed with Vallejo gloss varnish on metallic areas like bayonets,
swords and sashes. I tried first of all with a primary coat of gloss varnish, because the
finish has a reputation for being tougher, finishing off with a final coat of matte.
However with figures this
small, I found it too time-
consuming to check
whether or not I’d managed
to brush over all the shiny
gloss. All-in-all, I was
happy with the results,
thinking the matte varnish
nicely dulled and brought
together the natural shiny
finishes of the various
acrylic paints – even though
small areas of metallic paint
lost a bit of their pop and
although the gloss varnish
did a good job at giving
shine to the weapon parts,
it wasn’t as subtle as the
original metallic paint
finish.
I’d emphasised here on the
1809 Blog that I thought it
important to mount my
10mm figures on 3mm
bases to encourage players
to pick up the bases rather
than the figures. Even with
the figures varnished, it
was a practice I wished to
continue.
ABOVE I opted to use the Vallejo varnishes for their
ease of use: they only needed a few shakes, then a
couple of drops onto a palette and the varnish could
be brushed on the 10mm figures with little effort.
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