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Many miniature board games come with miniatures in a coloured plastic. I was just wondering if you could use varnish to "prime" the miniature while preserving the colour of the plastic. This would cut out priming and base coating if you want to paint them to theme. Just wondering people's thought and if you have done it before.

Thanks!
Smiles!=)

Huh? Do you mean so you could keep the base colour for certain areas? Because thats not going to look good in any way shape or form. Plus varnish wont work as a primer. Just prime your models and paint them your desired colours. It will look much better

I'd say no..
Get yourself a proper primer and simply paint them up.
It will look far better. And you might enjoy painting them up.
As for priming. Please do yourself a favour.
Use proper primer. It will save you some headaches.
Oh and wash ypur minis for mould relase agents..
If you don't yu will end up with areas where paint will simply not stick.

Yes, you can, but I would still advise painting the entire miniature.

Varnish works nicely in that it does not obscure details, and is hard to bugger up when spraying, but it doesn't provide the same level of adhesion as primer. Matt varnish works best.

Farseer Anath'lan wrote:
Yes, you can, but I would still advise painting the entire miniature.

Varnish works nicely in that it does not obscure details, and is hard to bugger up when spraying, but it doesn't provide the same level of adhesion as primer. Matt varnish works best.

Plus... it's transparent, so it's hard to tell where you've "primed". When it's the last coat, it doesn't matter, but when it's the first, you want to cover everything, and evenly.

Some people do put on a coat of varnish part way through their painting (like after basecoat), so that they can "save" their work and scrape off the stuff that goes on afterwards. Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort, because if I want to redo an area, I might as well just scrape off the area, re-prime (with Gesso) and repaint that area.