Water based acrylic coming off diorama

[Juststu82]

I sprayed some thinned waterbased acrylic onto my dio that I'm practising techniques with. The colour is over the top of craft glued ash that is solid. After I had painted it I attached some static grass and turned it upside down and tapped it. I noticed later that some spots had exposed ash base. When I rub my finger over it the colour comes off but the ash is still solid underneath. Should I be sealing this at some point to keep the paint attached and what with and at what point ie under or over the paint. In all honesty it looks like there is areas of dried mud amongst wet mud so it hasn't ruined the affect but obviously every time it is touched more colour comes off.

 

[Elm City Hobbies]

Not sure what you mean by Craft Glued Ash.

Do you mean a piece of Ash wood as your base? And if so, did you have a varnish coat on it? Acrylic paints really need a semi rough surface for the paint to "bite" into for them to not flake off, especially the cheap craft paints.

 

[Juststu82]

Not sure what you mean by Craft Glued Ash.

Sorry, I mean I took some ash from our fireplace to add a fine grain texture and used craft glue to attach this. The ash base is solid. I even run air over it prior to painting to blow off anything that hadn't stuck although the glue was well and truly dry and the base that was painted onto was very solid. I thought the ash would be a rough enough surface to hold but it doesn't seem to be.

 

[Dusky]

Your best bet is to use a primer over it next time. That will bite into the base and give the acrylic something to bite into as well.

 

[waylow]

yes, in fact I can't tell you how important it is to protect your work. In acrylics when you have something the way you want it seal it with a varnish immediately. Most gaming figures are done this way. They are all being moved and handled but not losing paint. If you dont want a glossy tone use a matt varnish.If you want a wet look like wet mudd use gloss varnish. Vallejo offers even a semigloss and these come so you can brush or shoot with your ab.You can also use testors dull coat. To show you how good this works if you seal our work then decide to add some paint and dont like what you did you can use 70% iso-alcohol on a q-tip and remove the last layer without destroying whats under it. I paint. Im getting back into modeling to paint the models. Acrylics are the most forgiving paints for this reason. The other great thing is paint drys in minutes.