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People never really talk about "how to" basecoat. All the painting guides I've seen just say, "Ok, lay down your basecoat, then..."

I've painted and stripped the same 3 SM 3 times now, and I have a scheme that I like (and will cover, damn those fluorescents), so how do I basecoat properly?

I've primered gray, am going to basecoat a white, then a coat or two of Fiery Orange over that. With my white basecoat, do I thin it down, or what? All the painting guides I've seen show that the basecoat is one coat that completely covers the primer color. Is this correct? It seems hard to do, even with my high pigment-count P3 White.

Any suggestions/disabusing of my incorrent notions would be more than welcome!

depends on hat paint you're using. Haven't used the P3 ones, but with the foundations I've found that after priming white, I need two thin coats of foundation to get a good base colour (i'm using mechrite red primarily). One thick coat just doesn't look as good.

With what you're working on, have you considered priming white? Regardless, you'll definitely need to thin down white as if you apply it too thickly it really shows (much more than any colour) and it can end up ruining your finish.

I'd probably shoot for 2-3 thinned coats of white, or, prime white, 1-2 coats of P3 White to make sure everything is even, then 2-3 coats of thinned fiery orange. A pain, but it would look better.

Also, you can use inks in the appropriate shade to tint a white basecoat, try mixing red and yellow ink and cover the entire area with it. You may like the effect (it's how i paint yellow for Iyanden)

A basecoat should, generally, be your basic colour for that surface. So if your main armour colour here is going to be Fiery Orange, then your basecoat should be Fiery Orange. It might be a good idea to switch to a white undercoat if the Orange doesn't work well on the grey undercoat.

Multiple coats might be necessary, especially with yellows and oranges. The key here is to be patient and use multiple thin coats.

Hmm, I'll look into a white primer. I've fallen in love with the Rust-Oleum "touch 'n tone" primer, and it only comes in gray & black. I've been burned by armory white, and now that I've found a primer I think is perfect I'm reticent to go out looking again, but I suppose I will.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Have your tried painting the Orange directly onto the grey primer and don't like the results? There are lots of ways to punch up orange with washes and glazes, as long as you can get a nice flat basecoat down.

Listen to plastictrees; he is a man of wisdom.

That said, I recently tried the P3 white primer with good results. Goes down nice and thin.

plastictrees wrote:Have your tried painting the Orange directly onto the grey primer and don't like the results? There are lots of ways to punch up orange with washes and glazes, as long as you can get a nice flat basecoat down.

I'll try this before I try white primer. Any pointers or links on how to punch orange up with washes & glazes?

Thanks!

There should be articles on glazes and shading with washes kicking around. I'll give you a rough idea how I'd approach it if you like.

Let's assume you can get a nice flat coat of Fiery Orange (FO). Probably 3 thin coats.
Your next step is shading. Mix some Asurmen Blue and Baal Red as your first shading step, and won't make the orange too drab like some of the other options.
Once that's dry hit it again with just Baal Red.

For glazing, this should really be done after highlighting. The trouble with highlighting an orange is that it can get chalky or pastel looking. Some yellow or yellow-orange glazes will bring it back to something bright and vivid.
Inks are usually the best option for glazing. Vallejo makes a glazing medium which will help you get a nice even coat. With a glaze you don't really want it to be pooling like a wash, keep it thin and that shouldn't be much of a problem.

I do have that vallejo glazing medium! Thanks for the tips, I'll give it a shot. Mixing white with orange for highlights does tend to get pastel-y. I think I'll try mixing my fiery orange with some of my fluorescent orange Testor's acrylic as a highlight.

Airbrush. I decided to get one a few months back when I realized I had about 60 marine models to paint. The very thought of basing them all in mordian blue made my wrist hurt. So I bought a badger 150 airbrush and after spray priming them all black, I was able to basecoat blue on about 30 models in 30 minutes.

That said, for using regular paint, I second (third?) the suggestions you've gotten above.

Orange is a tricky color to work with. If you want your final color to be a firey orange, then you have a couple of options for basecoats:

1. Prime with Rustoleum Camo Brown, overbrush with a foundation color like Tausept Ochre, then a layer of Firey Orange. This will give you a nice, brownish underlayer as a base for your orange. The reason I would suggest priming with the brown, is that your lines won't be as stark as black primer would give you.
2. If you want a brighter color, you can prime with a Khaki, foundation layer of Dheneb Stone, then Orange.
3. Alternatively, you can find almond primer, I use one for my Tyranids, and that should take Orange directly. It has a hint of brown in it already, so it won't shine through your Orange as much.

I also contest that how you use your paints is important. Painting directly from the pot IMHO is bad, I made my own Wet pallette this has made the biggest difference to the way i paint. I bought Windsor Newton Wet pallette Paper (about a £5 for 25 sheets A4 cut them in half) I bought a £1 tupperware box and a 50p Sponge. Cut sponge to fit Tupperware, place kitchen paper in bottom add a little water wrap one A5 sized sheet of the Wet Pallete paper and drop neatly in the container, seal with the lid for transport or to keep the paints fresh.

Regardless of the paints I use i get good results from a Wet pallette, just don't buy one they are a rip off. Lots of thin coats is better than one, i use cheap brushes to mix paints (£1 for 5) and expensive ones to (1 for £5) to paint with. I like the Army Painter ones.

I use the citadel foundation paints as i like how they go on, I then use Vallejo Game or whatever for all the other detailing. Citadel Washes are good, but i don't really buy their paints just foundation and Washes. Citadel paints seem to last at different rates, some dry up others don't Vallejo dropper bottles are much better and i use the minimun.

Light Colours are better off with lots of thin layers building up to a nice flat even finish you can then detail. Dark colours or paints with more pigment can be done a bit thicker and in less layers.

Primer/basecoat easy way. Buy black and white spraypaint and apply white if you plan on a light paintjob and black if you plan on a dark paintjob.

I'll definitely try the wet palette out soon. I just bought some macharius solar orange foundation today, hopefully that covers better than Vallejo Fiery Orange.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OKAY. So GW's Foundations (Macharius Solar Orange) totally solve all of my basecoating problems. Yes! Go GW!

I cheated the basecoat process by using Krylon Fusion spray paint. It just so happened that they made a sand color spray paint and the results were amazing!

Yeah as I said, I bought the Foundation paint set as it is a good set. Top it up your paint collection with the washes devlan mud, gryphonne sepia, Ogryn flesh and the blue wash (I cannot remember its name). Then buy all the primary colours from Vallejo, a Boltgun metal, silver, black, white and bleached bone (vallejo) and you have a collection of paints you can get any colour on a wet Pallette. The GW Foundation paints are fantastic.