La Danse Macabre - Venom Complete

Rumours about my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I am still here and hobbying. Real life is busy (constant state of affairs nowadays) so I have had to adapt my hobby schedule to suit.
I am managing half hour to an hour sessions some evenings in which I can do a little painting and modelling. As you saw in my previous post I have been working on a venom for La Danse Macabre, which I finally finished this week. It has been a journey fraught with frustrations and mistakes (which I will touch on below) but also joy in painting colours again and letting my imagination go on the palette.

The start of my frustrations with this model started with the priming stage. I chose GW's Mephiston red rattle can to spray my mini (after a white primer coat) and for some reason it went quite bubbly in places when it dried. I had to get some fine emery paper and give it a good sand, but unfortunately some of the bubbling can still be seen even now.
The colour stages went well, although the red was a little tedious, and my blending was not up to the mark so I had to revisit it and work out the areas where the colour graduations were too stark. Black is still a colour I struggle to paint, and this model was  no exception. The varnish stage does alot to improve my deficiencies in this luckily, as it imparts a satin sheen to the model which makes the black have far more depth and reflection than my shoddy skills are able to produce. Definitely something I need to work on in the future (which I discussed last post with a couple of guys in the comment section). The yellow went surprisingly well (a bazillion coats were needed to get a smooth finish, but it was worth it). For the rider I wanted some colours to contrast the ones I had chosen for the venom chassis, so I went with a nice pink for the flowing cape (I wish I had painted this a more vibrant pink, but I don't seem to have the knack of the colour quite yet. It looks good but is a little dark I think). The blue helm however, is really vibrant, and creates a nice point to draw your eye to the top of the model. I chose yellow for the feathers, as it ties in the rider with the front of the vehicle for a little colour consistency.

So all well and good. The colours work nicely, My painting is generally ok, and the base has come out marvelously. Now onto the varnishing. I do this in two stages. The first is a gloss lacquer (from Halfords) which gives a hard shiny surface to prevent and damage or paint rubbing off during the models life, and the second coat is of a matt lacquer, the combination of the two leaving a slight satin finish to the model which I love. It adds a depth and smoothness to all the colours.
Unfortunately I had another problem at this stage. Once both lacquers had dried I noticed that on one side of the venom the varnish had dried with a slight texture, almost like it had pooled and then dried to quickly. I cursed myself at this stage for possibly overspraying the varnish, but I gave the side another pass with the matt varnish and this seemed to fix the issue a little. The texture is still visible if you look hard enough, but i'll be damned if I have to start all over again. I am pissed off it has happened, as it has taken me so bloody long to finish this model, and I will always know there are imperfections whenever I see that venom. On the bright side, it still looks good overall, and I have another party wagon ready for La Danse Macabre :)

Anyhoo let me know your thoughts on it, would love to hear them :)