What in the heck is up with my Vallejo acrylics?

I don't have a lot of experience with Vallejo paints yet (I have some coming to experiment with), but in other paints this problem is usually caused by either surface contamination or small specks of oil or water in the air line.  Try wiping down the primer with a clean soft towel - washed out old t-shirts are good for this, and a cleaner compatible with your paint.   I've used denatured alcohol in the past with success, but again, test before using it on your model.  Testors  makes a product called plastic prep which I read works well too.   Also, if you don't have a moisture and dirt trap in your air supply line that is a good idea too.  Good luck!

I assume you are brush painting? IMO, Vallejo Model Color brushes like a dream and I've not experienced what you describe.

Are you thinning the paint and if so, with what?

The most common error I've seen with VMC is thinning with alcohol because that works with so many others acrylic model paints.

2nd most common problem seems to be thinning, cleaning with Windex. That doesn't work either.

No thinner--straight out of the bottle. And yep, brush painting.  Kurt might be on to something with the idea about debris on the surface. Two of the figures were highly modified to create zombies. Maybe the other two were contaminated as well with particulate matter stuck to them. Hmm.

Hmm indeed. FWIW, I cut my brush with distilled water when brush painting VMC. But it shouldn't be doing this straight anyway.

Chris, I use Vallejo quite a bit, and never had that problem. Are you painting over resin? If so, maybe the resin wasn't properly mixed or cured. It's possible for resin to "weep" oil if it wasn't mixed or cured properly. If so, primer and paint will never stick until you deal with that problem. If the pieces aren't resin, I'd have to guess maybe they are contaminated with something. Maybe they were too close to something you were spraying and they got hit with some high gloss overspray or splattered by something you spilled. Any chance  of those? Barrett

They're all styrene figures, Barrett. I'm familiar with resin's issues, but we can eliminate that here. I'm thinking yeah, some sort of contamination must be likely. I put a 2nd coat over most of the trouble spots today, and so far it seems to have cleared up. I'll keep an eye on them the next day or two to make sure.

Chris

Dirk, thanks for sharing your issue. I just bought my first bottle the other day; I'm getting tired of my Testors squares drying up.

I seal my Testors squares with kitchen shrink wrap.