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Hi

I am new to the hobby and have just started to paint some minis

I sprayed them with Montana Black Red Primer and have tried to base coat with Vallejo game colour moon yellow... the colour of the yellow is not showing up well and i have tried a few coats :/

is this paint not good for a base coat? is it because i am painting a light colour on top of dark primer? do i need lots of thin layers or something? :/

Many thanks

yellow & red are usually not that great over a very dark colour.
I recommend that you look a GW's range of base colours ('Citadel Base'), particularly Ceramite White - this will be good for all your light colours:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat800002a&prodId=prod1500068a

Good luck, good painting, welcome to the hobby & welcome to Dakka Dakka!

BTW where did you get the primer from (ie the brand name - sounds interesting)?

Legendmir wrote:
is this paint not good for a base coat? is it because i am painting a light colour on top of dark primer? do i need lots of thin layers or something? :/

No, yes and yes, lol.

The first, easiest (and arguably the best) solution is to not prime dark if you want your model a light colour. The general rule is black for dark palettes and white for light. Grey is increasingly popular though and offers a nice middle ground.

Yellow in particular is notoriously difficult to get right. Right here meaning a nice, bold, even coverage. You're going to want to start with brown and work your way up to yellow. Yellow won't go onto black, as you've discovered. Finally, multiple thin layers will give you those nice, even coats that will allow the colours to come through fully from the darker undercoats.

When I'm painting yellow I base the area in ceramite white, this is arguably the best paint gw do. I then airbrush thin layers of orange and yellow on top.
However of you don't have an airbrush paint thinned down layers instead,
more thin is better than one thick!!!

The trick they give you from the GW painting guide is to put a layer of say, light brown in your case over the dark color to make your bright color pop.

I avoid GW paints as much as I can, but their spray primer is really good. Except for the new white. Kinda pissed there.

I've also used a bone colour (for some reason these have always covered well) then done a wash of yellow over the top. You get a really nice yellow.
If you have Vallejo's glaze medium, try that. Mix it with yellow & a bit of water then brush a thin coat over the bone - don't load the brush, instead dip it in the mix then wipe the edge on the side of your palette so you only have a small amount on the brush.

I don't know about others here but, I have never had a problem painting on a black primer. I use Vallejo Black Surface Primer. It will be a little darker but, not by much. However try a grey surface primer. IMHO It's fairly neutral for base coating and isn't
to bright or dark.

Thanks guys, really helpful advice

i was expecting to make mistakes but not this many :(

shame list:

- spray primered everything on sprue

- tried to clean off mold lines, and then removing primer and model plastic in the process :/

- re primering areas i had rubbed off

- deciding to paint yellow on top of very dark red primer

- not basecoating

- this yellow is very watery and never going to look good

sigh.. oh well.. these are going to be 3 very special looking chaos heretics :/

Don't stress too much, learning that colours like red and especially yellow have poor coverage is something everyone figures out sooner or later, lol.

I suggest either Ceramite white or Averland Sunset from GW.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat800002a&prodId=prod1490037a

It's not as vibrant as other yellows, but it will cover darker colours in a couple of coats. It's what I use when I'm doing yellow/orange flames over a black backround. If it's not vibrant enough for you, you can do a coat of a brighter yellow after establishing a base with Averland Sunset.

Thanks all seeing sink

I only chose yellow as it looked like it would be interesting.. too bad that i had used a dark primer and not basecoated..

i will base coat them with a brown and see if i can do yellow highlights or something

thanks everyone

Yellow is a really tough color to paint. Generally for primer I go with a dark or light primer based on what the majority of the model will be. For example, if it's a Black Templar I will be painting white over black primer, but 90% of the model will be black so it;s not too bad.

What you don't want to do is primer a mostly light model in dark colors (which it seems you may have done). You will learn this pretty fast haha.

For yellow I usually use a grey primer. I use Krylon but any primer will probably work. If you want to be painting yellow over black you will need to build it up. I would recommend either a gray base paint over black or to start gray and then use XV-88 followed with averland sunset. This is a pretty mild yellow color tha tlooks kind of yucky, but when you layer on sunburts yellow or something it will look good and rich. Follow that with a wash of some kind (I like sepia). Then I usually just do the yellow of choice + ceramite white for highlights. This is an old model (and the mold lines are terrible) but the yellow is that formula.


hope that helps too!

- VardenV2

Thanks Varden, your mini looks awesome! i really like that kind of pale yellow

Funnily enough painting brown on top of all of that yellow ended up looking kind of cool! For my other models i have just bascoated them in brown and will try drybrushing with yellow to try to make it look more leathery / match the 3 units i made the mistake with

thanks again!