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I'm in the process of making bases for my army....but it's too cold to prime outside...and I'd probably get in trouble for doing it with the pesky people living in my apartment....so heres the question...can I use a varnish to prime bases with? so I can basecoat and do whatever I need to to the base? something for the paint to stick onto

I suggest acrylic Gesso. Available at any fine arts and most craft stores, and it's quite cheap. Black works better on miniatures, for me.

oh I wouldn't prime miniatures with varnish...just the bases, I'm just waiting on an airbrush to prime with but I wanted something to do in the meantime while I wait...I have 80+ bases at the moment to...base

Probably. I believe I've seen people use it, though I'm not sure how well it works.

You can spray stuff outside as long as you bring it back inside immediately, regardless of the weather. I've spray primed in the dead of winter and the swampy heats of summer and been fine so long as I brought them back inside to a relatively temperate climate.

I would just get some Vallejo brush-on primer.

I have no idea how well it works but I know some people who use varnish as primer, they claim it works well on metals. Use matte or satin I guess.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Talys wrote:
I suggest acrylic Gesso. Available at any fine arts and most craft stores, and it's quite cheap. Black works better on miniatures, for me.

Isn't gesso designed to seal and prepare absorbent and/or flexible materials like wood, canvas, stone, etc? What benefit would there be in priming a non-absorbent plastic model with gesso over something like a polyurethane primer (like Vallejo's) or even varnish (which should mostly just be acrylic resin).

Gesso is relatively inexpensive and it shrinks as it dries, making it easy to apply. Not hard to find, either, nor does it take days to cure. It's less about benefits over the others, I think, than simply being another viable option.