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im after a brighter finish to my models and have herd that painting them after applying a grey primer works well, any suggestions as im curently using gw chaos black can. ive no accsess to an air brush. im in the uk so some makes may not be available over hear. if grey is better what makes, ive heard of halfords car primer but im not sure on that one. also will white be better again?

Army painter primer is pretty good, since it contains acetone so the primer anchors into the miniature.

I use Halfords & not just grey. I also use the yellow ochre & red oxide.

Here are my results:






Never had any problems with them.

thanks for that, i will look at halfords stuff, does it paint over easily too? ive found army painter sprays to be very tacky and slightly glossy to paint over

+1 for the Halfords Grey Primer. It sprays on really well, with no detail obstruction (Make sure you get the non-filler primer - Item Code: 473116, 500ml Can) and drys to an ultra-smooth finish. It's cheaper than GW's Chaos Black by around £2, and you get 100ml more. I can't really think of any drawbacks other than two:

1. You must make sure that you paint everywhere on your model if you're using a Grey primer (Halfords or otherwise) - otherwise you'll get some really bright grey areas in awkward recesses if you aren't careful Painting using sub-assemblies avoid this problem though - don't glue the whole thing together before painting, do it after so you can make sure you've reached all those awkward areas.

2. Because it's a car primer, and intended to be sanded, you may find that paint rubs off edges and corners if your not careful during painting (GW's does the same though). Hold your model by the base, unpainted area or temporarily attach it to something during painting to avoid this, and give it the usual coat of varnish afterwards to avoid it rubbing away if you use them in a game.

Other than that - Halfords really is a great alternative to GW.

Tamiya model primer comes in a spray can and lays down satin smooth with just enough bite for paint to adhere too. A lot of people also swear by artists Gesso (in white, black, or grey) as a great brush on primer.

For my 40k figures I use Rustolium flat white. For my Bolt Action WW2 figs I use flat black. And for the figures that I REALLY care about I will use Vallejo white primer ran through the airbrush.

+1 for halfords primer although i only ever used the grey its a great primer.

Sorry to res a relatively old thread, but I was wondering if anyone had any info on which of the two grey primer's they have you guys have used -

Grey Plastic Primer
Grey Primer

Apparently, the plastic one has a higher pigment count but I'm a bit worried about it taking some deail out of the models.

Any help appreciated,

Rich

Any grey auto primer works as long as the finish is matt, best one I used before moving to airbrush was from the local dept store boyes £3 for 500ml.
Another option is priming white and then washing with black adds a guide and shadow with a brighter finish

Halfords is great stuff!

Vallejo does spray primer in grey if you want Vallejo but don't have an airbrush.

Krylon's spray primers are awesome, cheap, and readily available from hardware stores. Army Painter's primers are pricey, but their colors are lovely and the fact that they sell bottles of the exact same color is really great for maintaining an even, consistent color.

Army Painter are great for painting, well, armies because you can base coat a whole squad at once.

You could do much the same thing with automotive spray paints but you'd need an appropriate primer, than a topcoat in the required colour, and then a varnish or lacquer to finish - assuming you could get the colour you needed.

For painting metal, resin or plastic minis's you only need the regular primer in whatever colour you want - white, red and grey are sold as primers, but I've also used Halfords matt and satin black sprays with excellent results as a primer and a basecoat (SM Black Consuls).

You can get lots of cool stuff from Halfords for conversions and terrain building as well - fibreglass, mesh, cabling and switches, springs and grommets, fillers. Well worth a look.

I use a quick and easy 3 colour prime system.

I use the Vallejo Black, Grey, and White surface primers through a cheap single action suction feed external mis spraygun (Under £20, I got it from Hobbycraft so probably paid more than I needed to.)

Start with the black and spray the underside of the model, switch to the grey whilst the black is still wet and spray from just above horizontal on the model, then finish off with a light spray of the white from the top in the direction the light is coming from.

Providing I keep the subsequent coats light enough and few enough in number, the different colour primers pre-shade the base colours and do some of the work for me.