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Alright, the title is the question. Most tutorials I've seen base after painting, but I base before priming so I have a nice spray coat over my gravel, plasticard, etc. What do you think?

if you are doing something volcanic or urban etc, i do the basing before i paint. its cheaper to use 1 colour design such as desert sand stuff, and then using it sprayed over for multiple colours, such as rubble, stones etc.

for example my basing is urban, snowed out:-
model train track stones- light gray stuff. glue it on after you are happy with your assembled model. then i spray paint my model, and just drybrush over the now black stones with a bit of grey. after the rest of the model is painted i apply snow.

depends.

sometimes i prime the base together with the mini glued on to it,sometimes i prime the bases seperately.

some bases are really hard to paint when a mini is glued on.

So basically it depends on the base itself.

dark6spectre wrote:for example my basing is urban, snowed out:-model train track stones- light gray stuff. glue it on after you are happy with your assembled model. then i spray paint my model, and just drybrush over the now black stones with a bit of grey.

Exactly the same as I do. I use the woodland scenics train gravel. Is that what you use? Since I paint my bases as city, I find it very helpful to have black as the shadow underneath the drybrushed gray. Keep the comments coming!

If its just sand + flock , I'll but the sand on it , prime , paint and then but the flock on .

If it something cusom , or if its resin , I prefer do to it after painting the mini , and prime/paint the base first .

DarkAngelsRK wrote:Alright, the title is the question. Most tutorials I've seen base after painting, but I base before priming so I have a nice spray coat over my gravel, plasticard, etc. What do you think?

This is exactly why I base them prime. The primer helps hold in the rocks and gives me a basecoat to paint over.

DarkAngelsRK wrote:

dark6spectre wrote:for example my basing is urban, snowed out:-model train track stones- light gray stuff. glue it on after you are happy with your assembled model. then i spray paint my model, and just drybrush over the now black stones with a bit of grey.

Exactly the same as I do. I use the woodland scenics train gravel. Is that what you use? Since I paint my bases as city, I find it very helpful to have black as the shadow underneath the drybrushed gray. Keep the comments coming!

tbh i have no idea. i just picked it up in a local model shop and went: hey, this is good stuff.
btw i also use model train coal if i need larger chunks of debris

^That's a good idea... (the coal I mean). Might have to use that....

I always GS my rocks so they look just how I want them to (random OCD thing more than an elitist-snobby thing). That and I always have extra GS after working on a model so it needs to god somewhere or it gets wasted Honestly I do whatever I'm most excited about on the model first. If I have a cool base idea I do it, or vise versa. Most of the time my bases are just flock or sand with random rocks thrown in to help balance the model or break up some of the flat space though.

After. I paint, then paint the base green and then flock it. If I based after, I would probably drip paint on my flock.

The OC-D

kronk wrote:

DarkAngelsRK wrote:Alright, the title is the question. Most tutorials I've seen base after painting, but I base before priming so I have a nice spray coat over my gravel, plasticard, etc. What do you think?

This is exactly why I base them prime. The primer helps hold in the rocks and gives me a basecoat to paint over.

I agree! It is damn hard to paint unprimed sand. Very annoying.

Saintspirit wrote:I agree! It is damn hard to paint unprimed sand. Very annoying.

I use silversand (bought from pet stores, sold for bird cages or aquariums), which just soaks up the first layer of paint (I usually use a brown wash first) and then paints just fine.




For the actual question, it really depends. Usually after painting, but if I'm doing something unusual with the base, or if it's largely sculpted, I'll often paint it with the mini.

For me it also depends on the mini... and what kind of base im doing. Lately ive been painting my nids which i will paint, then base. but for my marines i paint the bases and the mini seprate then pin the mini to the base

I'm another "it depends" guy.

At the moment I am completing Hive Fleet Kielbasa, so I am painting the figures in bits, then attaching to the base, then putting sand and grass on the base.

That's because Nids are difficult to paint inside the arms if you assemble them 100%, and I want to use the basing materials to cover up the defects in the snakey bodies.

Keep them coming! "After" has made a comeback already.... drat!

I'm just trying to figure this out now. The way I'd like to go is to handle the bases and model entirely separately until they're both finished, and only then attach the model to the base.