Tamsin's Test Lab: Army Painter Speedpaints Test #4

 As promised yesterday, here are the results of my repeat test on medium mixing and reactivation.

Testing For Reactivation by Water

Mixes L to R: Water; Vallejo Glaze Medium; Vallejo Matt Varnish; Vallejo Thinning Medium; Matt Medium; Golden Matt Varnish (all mixes 1:1 medium to paint).

In all cases, mixing something in diluted the pigment and increased the tendency to run and pool at the hem, by varying degrees. The two which ran and pooled the least were Vallejo thinning medium and Golden matt varnish.

Testing for reactivation by water also showed variable results. There was no visible reactivation (tested by wiping the brush on white paper) with the Vallejo matt varnish and Golden matt varnish; very little with the Vallejo thinning medium and the matt medium; some with the Vallejo glaze medium and the most with the water.

That being said, very little paint was removed from any of the figures.

Testing For Reactivation By White Paint

I tested for reactivation by painting increasing numbers of coats on each quarter on the backs of the figures without any "smooshing".

L to R: as before

Anticlockwise from top right: 1 coat, 2 coats, 3 coats, 4 coats

Reactivation was seen with all of the mixes (tested the same way as for the water reactivation), some more than others as with water. The glaze medium figure looks cleaner, but I believe that was because it had the most pigment dilution and ran and pooled more. The two with the least pigment dilution and runniness also appeared to reactivate the least.

The fact that there was reactivation in all cases with paint, even those which saw no reactivation with water, suggests that there is something in the paint itself that promotes the reactivation. As the paint dries slower than the water, that probably explains it. It might be worth testing with thinned paint, which should dry quicker, but that will have to wait a while as I plan to take a break from doing these tests.