Various questions and thoughts...

Almost done with my Ultrasmurfs... Doing minor touchups, decals, dipping and basing...

1) The decals aren't near as finicky or fragile as I'd thought they'd be. I'm hitting the area with a thin coat of gloss varnish (as recommended by several sites and GW), applying the decal, and once it's basically dry, hitting it with another thin coat.

2) I picked up some battlefield and tufts from army painter. I'm kinda "meh" about the battlefields, other than I don't have to paint it like the GW modeling sand. As far as the tufts go.... anyone need a tub of static grass?

3)Anyone have some advice for metal models between the basecoating and dipping stage? Most of my metal mini (particularly the scouts) chip like nobodies business. Should I hit them with some matte varnish after I touch them up? Will that cause probs with applying decals or dipping them?

4) Most important question. I dipped my first mini tonight. My termi-sgt is drying. Its... thicker? than I thought. I gave the sucker about 20 swings and I still had to go back and soak up pools, break surface tension between cables on the arms, etc. and he looks like he standing in about 3 inches of water. Is this normal, or did I just screw up majorly? I'm holding of on dipping for now, as i still have plenty to do.

no, thats about what the quickshade will do if you physically dip the model in. if you wanna reduce the amount of dip used and control how much of it goes well, then use a brush like i do for my angels. you can control where the dip goes better that way, and once you get the hang of it with your minis, you'll have a good idea how to brush it onto your bigger models, like the dreads and tanks.

DONT USE YOUR GOOD PAINTING BRUSHES!!!

some people seem to think its ok to ignore me when i say that part. then they complain all week how they detsroyed their favorite brush. dips and varnishes will destroy a brush tip over time. it will eventually splay the bristles out and make it good for nothing but drybrushing and dipping, so just buy a cheap $5 pack of 5 or 10 brushes from walmart with the same style bristles as we use. if you sit down and just dip one mini after another with your brush, you might even get them all done with one brush before it even starts to dry and splay out.

if your familiar with who jawaballs is on youtube, look up his tutorial video where he demonstrates quickshade on a tau battlesuit and 3 imperial fist marines. he shows how the dip should behave just dunking a marine into it, and how the battlesuit behaves when brushed. i changed a couple of my own steps after watching him do those.

Okay, it was just behaving differently than I expected is all.

I remember the video you're talking about, specifically he mentions how it will pool around the feet with the dip method? If i remember correctly, that was actually where I heard of the dip first.

I was actually wondering about buying some brushes specifically for doing the quickshade. (with Natural bristles rather than the synthetic that most of the brushes you can get). Not sure if it's worth it to bother with turpintine for cleaning, etc. or just get some crappy brushes and toss them.

I'll try to post some pics of the test model, before and after I hit it with matte varnish. Just off hand I noticed a few things.
It's shading the back of the termie armor REALLY well. Really brining out the venting and panels. I was expecting more definition on the white, but it's decent. I may hit it with Devlan Mud before I call it a day.