Help! Sticky wash??

[Oldskool454]

Well I tried something new, I used "Les's" wash recipe (or part of it) and mixed GW Baal Red and washed some BA terminators really heavily.
I basically mixed 10:1 Distilled Water and "Flow Aid" flow release stuff with Baal Red, it works great visually, it really did what I was hoping for, but unfortunately, now for some reason the minis are "tacky" to the touch. This makes them very hard to work with since I risk leaving finger prints or dust anywhere I touch them. I have never run in to this before but then again I usually just use stock inks/paints with nothing but a little tap water mixed in.

Has anyone run into this kind of issue?

If I hit them with a light coat of "dull coat" with that cover the sticky-ness and still allow me to paint over it?

All advice is welcomed.

 

[Einion]

Too much Flow Aid in the mixture is the most likely culprit, since this isn't something that dries per se.

Secondly, don't handle minis while painting - mount them on some form of holder, even a wine cork is better than nothing.

A coating of Dullcote could well fix the stickiness, but I'd wait a while (a day at least) to make sure the paint is as dry as it's going to get.

Einion

 

[DarkStar]

Sounds like a chemical reaction between the Flow Aid and the Citadel wash. They sound like they don't play nice together. Nobody really knows exactly what is in those Citadel Washes (they smell unlike any other paint product I've ever used in 30 years of various painting jobs/hobbies/studies). Probably some kind of varnish or the other reacting with the flow aid.

I wouldn't recommend spraying yet another chemical on top of that to solve it, I would just strip the things and start anew. Les's recipe is for making washes using ink as the pigment and since you've added Citadel washes instead, I'd wager this is why you're experiencing this anomaly. If you shoot Dulcote on top let us know how that turns out out of curiosity.

 

[Einion]

Oh the Baal Red is a wash? In that case it probably has retarder in it and possibly some flow improver too, and both of those can interfere with drying (and proper film formation) if used in excess.

@Oldskool454, I'd add some matt acrylic medium into your dilution mix, that shouldn't interfere with it working the right way and it should fix the problem if I'm right about the cause.

Einion