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Is basecoating and or priming plastic minis essential. I ask becuae I live in a very VERY cold place. Right now the temperature is WARM at 10 degrees F. I would rather not go out in the freezing cold to basecoat/prime models so will it work to paint them without it?

Possibly, probably, why take the chance.

Enamel paints stick to plastic a lot better than acrylic.

You don't have to use spray primer. Use a brush on primer like gesso.

Brush on primer. Black Gesso by Liquitek happens to be my favorite, and it's available at art supply stores.

You can prime from the comfort of your living space.

It's not essential, but if you undercoat, say for example black you can leave it in the recesses for shading. If you forget to paint a small area of model thats hidden/covered away it won't be noticed as much.

While a white undercoat makes the colours nice and bright and it is easier to get a nice solid colour. Though if you leave white peeking out, its not that atttractive.

Cheers
Arran

I just use GW Foundation colours as a combination primer/undercoat, in whatever colour suits the model - works fine

I've primed at -30 degrees celsius, which is around -34.4 degrees farenheit, if my math is correct.

The trick is to put the spray can under hot water(tap hot, not boiling hot, that might be dangerous) for a bit, then go out and prime before the can cools down. Of all the times I've primed in such conditions, I've never had a problem using this technique.

LOL

We had the temperature up to about 110 degrees F for a few days - it was too damn HOT to head into the garage to do spray painting at that stage.

Had to wait for a cool change (95 degrees) to undercoat and gloss coat some minis!

;-)

Short answer? No. Priming is non-essential.

Honestly, I rarely if ever prime GW plastics. I rinse them and then dry them to get rid of any molding fluid that might still be on them and then get right to painting.

With plastics, priming really isn't all that essential, foundation paints and even normal GW paints stick just fine, unless you're purposefully scraping paint off, which I do to weather my Marines.

If you want a basecoat, priming is a good idea. But it's not necessary for plastics. METALS are much different matter... I used to paint my metals without primer, and the paint came off very easily. Now I always use primer on my metals. I use it on important plastics too...

I'd been wondering about this as well because it's been sub 32F here for some time and I wasn't sure how well my spray paint would hold on models at that temp as i've read extreme low/high temps (and high humidity) were surefire ways to screw up your priming.

I have a few models left in my force that I need to prime. I may just paint them with a thin layer of black paint and see how that works (as I do like to work over a black coat, generally speaking.)

It's not a corner worth cutting IMO.

might be a strange tîp.

butt when the weathers bad here(not as bad as you guys)
i take a cardboard box and spray paint them underneath the kitchen hood.
For a few models it's a good solution.
The hood helps with the smell and extra probs.

It's a temporary solutition, might help.

My opinion always primer,

greetz typhoon

I have to second the gesso suggestion. Im in scotland for a year and it is always humid here. gesso is a godsend.