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dear dakkites

as I sit here on my floor hand undrecoating my new bastion i was wondering do any of you sometimes get the urge to hand undercoat your models
I am doing this as it has not stopped raining for 4 days and i can't be bothered waiting any more

comments welcome
FM

I did it with my first army. It's really rather amazing that you can do a hundred models and it'll barely put a dent in the amount of paint in that tiny little pot, whereas you'll need several cans of spray to cover the same area.

But the thing is, spray is faster, adheres better and forms a thinner coat, obscuring less detail.

Yea, personally I only spray coat models anymore. The spray makes a much tighter and thinner layer, as Blackfang said.
One trick if the humidity is bad and you are priming a light color is to do a VERY light spray, mostly just covering around 50-70%. This is as opposed to solid color, so big areas of no primer is bad, but little cracks and the like can be left out. Then just hand paint on your colors. I find this adds enough tooth to the primer that the paint sticks well, but you don't get the "free" shading that dark primer provides.

If it is just crazy raining, you just don't have a choice but to go out and toss a taber in the wet.

I would note too that metals generally require better spray coverage than plastics. You could almost skip priming plastics in a real pinch, but I would recommend against it.

FM Ninja 048 wrote:dear dakkites

as I sit here on my floor hand undrecoating my new bastion i was wondering do any of you sometimes get the urge to hand undercoat your models
I am doing this as it has not stopped raining for 4 days and i can't be bothered waiting any more

comments welcome
FM

Ah someone else in the UK then
And not, sprays make my life so much easier for undercoating

When I painted my Mordor Orc army, I hand-based every single piece in that army....drove me crazy....and I couldn't buy spray-paint at the time. Nowadays, I spray primer as much as I can, its just easier, and with Krylon Primer at what, $3? It's just cost effective too.

Use spray primer. It has a certain "tooth" to it that paint will stick to better. Less chipping, especially on metal models. I hand-primed about 2 and a half armies, and it drove me absolutely mad. If I used spray primer, I'd probably have had a hell of a lot more painting done. That said, it's decent for touch ups in hard to reach areas, like in the armpits and crotch of your models.

HAHAHA!!! Get it? Get it?



Ghidorah

I don't use the sprays I paint everything by hand.

Ghidorah, I see what you did there

I always use a spray primer. Can't beat that thin, smooth and even coat you get. Painting on primer naturally creates a thicker layer that starts to obscure detail especially after additional coats of paint. And it can be tricky getting is smooth and brush free. Also the blast of the aerosol gets the primer down those awkward places like underneath arms and behind backpacks. Yes it can be difficult to get the cracks sometimes, but that's true of a brush too.

Not to say there isn't a knack to using spray primer and that it doesn't have its drawbacks; mainly weather related and that it's more expensive. But it's far easier to get a good quality primer coat with the added bonus that it takes a fraction of the time when compared to hand primer.

Well, there is always Gesso, right?

I almost always hand undercoat my smaller models. When I do an army, I do 10 or so models at a time; so I build/convert them, then undercoat them, then paint them, then start on the next squad. It's nice, because you have more freedom to decide what color to use as a base, and what tone. I just thin the mix a bit more than usual, and put it on in light coats. On larger models and vehicles, I almost always spray prime those, however.

Ghidorah - hilarious!!!!!

Us UK folks are depedant on the weather. If i'm desparate I tend to do the odd moderate sized model in the kitchen with spray, hardly ever undercoat by hand. Drives me absolutly nuts!!!!!

Seriously, have you guys looked into Gesso priming?

Gesso? Tell me more

There's an article about it.

I prefer to spray especially vehicles but I gesso individual pieces and anything made of polythene or soft vinyl.

I read a few articles about gesso, as I had a large bottle from priming canvases. Even thinned down, it distinctly different that spray for plastic and metal models alike, but I really do like it on metal. The texture it provides tremendous holding power for subsequent coats,

It's been raining so much for the past two month in Chicago that I've resorted to using gesso exclusively for a while...which explains why my CSM Battleforce box is still sealed.

Have you had bad experiences using Gesso over plastics?

Alpharius wrote:Have you had bad experiences using Gesso over plastics?

I am currently having bad experiences with Gesso over metal. Initially it kept pealing off like sunburned skin... I washed the mini very well prior and I had even let it set for 24hrs-plus each time. Then finally it seemed to remain stable enough for me to paint on. After painting base coats a few areas still came undone and really caused a strange and ugly layering result. Now that I've nearly completed 20 hours of work on this mini - I stupidly dropped it (while drunk) onto the table (about 4 inches) and the damned gesso rolled back and looks disgusting... it's basically not possible to fix that spot 100% without re-doing the entire F-n mini.

No more gesso for me... I never had these problems with spray primer despite a drunken fumble or two.

I too am forced to hand prime because of inclement weather. When it is nice out and warm enough, I'm off at work driving my trukk, er um, truck. Worse still, I can't afford nice paint so I'm going in with cheap light green for my black reach orks' base coat.

My first warboss I base coated with Testors' silver enammel, and it worked great, but the drying time, the smell and the cleanup are serious drawbacks. Also the paint is about as expensive as Citidel, so if I hadn't already had it laying around, I would not have gone out to get it.

Either way, I'm not expecting to get show quality out of the work, but it should do for table ready.

I tend to hand coat only on rare occasions, and not on my 'standard' models. I will hand coat patchjobs, small bits that are being added to or changed on a figure, or bits that I forgot to spray with the rest of it by mistake...

The main time I do it is for test models, for very major things like trying to nail an exotic skin tone or interesting armour scheme. In that case, I'll (reasonably roughly) hand undercoat one or two metal models, do my tests (wyches look strange in 5 different skin tones) and then strip them. One day I shall get a proper metal test model to do this on instead of the good 'army model that is all metal and has the least amount of conversion work'.

I always hand under-coat my models.
Have done it for 6000 points worth of models.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I always hand under-coat my models.
Have done it for 6000 points worth of models.

Well for my experience - Gesso is ok on actual Pewter models (old GW stuff) but the new GW models for some reason really dislike Gesso. I have not been able to make it sit properly on the new GW metals despite intense cleaning before hand.

So if you are painting a new GW metal - I'd recommend using the GW 'smelly primer' or Vallejo's white primer during those times when you cannot spray.