Hello. I’m brand new to the group, and I’m trying various techniques with a stripped Donna RuBert Punkin kit that I received as a boo-boo baby. I’m starting with Liquitex air dry paints. I primed the doll with Liquitex matte medium. I put the flesh layers on with ease. I basically mixed the flesh tone and added in equal parts Liquitex matte gel. Then, I dropped in distilled water till the paint became wash consistency. That was all well and good. I repeated this to produce my vein color, and I drew them on very thinly with what I believe is called a script liner brush. Everything was great until I pounced with the narrow end of a plain makeup wedge. (By plain, I mean no aloe or other additives.) Pouncing seemed to widen the veins in such a way that there was a faint blue coloring where the wedge hit. Then, the paint became thick around the edges. What used to look like a fine, curvy line started to look like two, dark and distinct lines with a faint hint of blue between them. Has anyone encountered this before? If so, can anyone offer suggestions?
I definitely have and still do on occasion if I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. The outside of the bein dries faster than the inside, so the solution is to either add a retarder medium or work faster. The pouncing part will take practice because you do want your veins to fade out in a natural way. I pounce mine in a way where it drags them out a bit until they disappear. So it would be a very calculated pounce with the narrow end of the wedge or a dry brush, where when I come in contact with the vinyl again, I’m stretching the vein, not spreading it. I also dry the sponge off on a paper towel between veins.
I’ve had this happen before when I first started making reborns. I wondered why I was getting that second line when I pounced again with the wedge and realized that the excess paint from the 1st pounce was transferring to the wedge creating the second line on the vein when I pounced again. I then started pouncing the wedge on paper towel to remove the excess paint before I pounced again.
I use a thick paint mix for my veins and I use a wet sponge to thin and fade them out. I use Golden fluid and I mix it with just Golden satin glazing liquid and a small amount of retarder…you could just use retarder though. If I make the mix thin, like a wash, I just end up making a mess 
Veins are overrated. lol I do my veins before anything else so they really are under the skin. They look pretty realistic by the time I’m done. I sometimes blot them, but I never pounce them. That spreads the paint out, which is not desirable.
I use GHSP but I do veins the same way. I do them on the very first layer so they blend well.
Welcome to my world. I noticed this too and it’s one of the reasons I quit using air dry.
If you use too much of the matte gel in your paint it makes the surface sticky. When you try to pounce paint off, the sponge sticks to the surface and pulls the paint up with it. So essentially stripping the paint instead of blotting. That could be why the paint disappeared from the middle of your vein. I learned that lesson the hard way 