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Post by indigo777 on Mar 5, 2014 23:59:24 GMT
I have ran into a painting problem on a couple D&D minis. One is a Balor's sword from the Legend of Drizzt boardgame and another is a Zombie white Dragon from the Castle Ravenloft boardgame.
The problem is that I can not get paint to stay on the the flexible resin wings of the White dragon and the flexible resin sword of the Balor. The paint sticks fine and seemed ok at first. It dried fine and I was able to paint it with Pledge floor cleaner to seal, followed by a testor's Dull coat sealer. A couple days later during gameplay the wings and sword displayed a little bit of paint flaking though.
When I went to repair the damage the paint on the sword and the dragon's wings completely started flaking off at the slightest touch despite being sealed. When I bent the sword and wings slightly the paint started coming clean off and I had to totally remove the paint from the area.
Yesterday I tried a mix of white glue and black paint to make a primer basecoat but after a day its coming off as well.
The rest of the dragon and balor or holding up fine though, even the balors highly flexible whip, just the sword and wings.
Any advice on how to get paint to stick to really flexible resin/plastic? Is there a type of brush on primer (can't use spray since rest of mini is painted) or something I can use to make paint bond to it better.
Edit: Found out why the paint/glue mix wasn't working as I had way too much paint to glue. 3 parts glue to 1 part paint seems to work great.
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Post by sgtslag on Mar 6, 2014 3:31:28 GMT
The only thing I can think of, is artist's gesso. I switched to this as my main primer last year? It is water-based, acrylic, comes in black, gray, or white; I've used it on resin, plastic, and metal figures, with great success, but none were terribly flexible. It goes on rather thick, but it shrinks as it dries, into a thin skin coating; look for pinholes, after it dries (couple of hours), as these can be touched up with a small amount of more gesso. Nothing is perfect, but this is what I would try.
Gesso is available at art supply stores, in the painting section. It is used as a primer for painting canvasses. It is not inexpensive, but it is quite good as a brush-on primer for figure painting, in general. Cheers!
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Post by indigo777 on Mar 6, 2014 3:51:58 GMT
Will try that sgtslag. Thanks.
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Post by indigo777 on Mar 9, 2014 4:17:42 GMT
Update.
Found a solution that appears to have worked.
I dug around the internet and found a recipe for homemade gesso since the store bought stuff is very expensive. The home recipes are basically white glue, white paint, and baby powder, and since I wasn't using a canvas I left out the baby powder.
For the Balor's sword I lightly scuffed up its surface, since it was extremely smooth to give something for the glue to bite into, and painted Elmer's white glue onto it. When that was dry I mixed 3 parts elmer's glue with 1 part white paint for a primer and painted the sword. When that was dry I did the same with 3 parts elmers and one part blue paint for a base coat. Then I painted the sword as I normally would. Sealed it with acrylic floor polish. Let that dry and applied another layer of polish. Then dull coated it.
So far the paint has not flaked off the sword even when I bend it.
For the dragon's wings I did the same things except I skipped the scuffing of its surface as it had a rough surface already.
Surprisingly little detail was lost despite all the layers of glue to strengthen the surface. Very pleased with the results.
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