Shiny, happy primers
My biggest impediment to painting is not having primed minis to paint. Sometimes I want to paint a unit, sometimes I just want to paint a little do-dad. In the past I have used any number of aerosol sprays, from GW Chaos Black primer to Armoury Grey Primer to The Army Painter Colour Spray. I’ve used some Krylon auto primers on terrain projects, but I know many folk swear by them for minis too. Still, in the arid desert of Arizona, you get the bitter cold of high winter for about a month or the blistering heat of summer for about 8 months. This leaves aerosols out, more often than not unless you can spray in the dead of a hot summer night. I’ve tried Gesso with less than great effect. Enter the airbrush, which I’m still cutting my teeth on, and Vallejo Airbrush Primer.
I’m always on the lookout for new things to try, due in no small part to my not having any consistent techniques or products which I use regularly, (sad, it’s true). However, there is one brand I have been VERY happy with over the last 6-8 years, Vallejo Acrylics. By pure accident, I stumbled across an older article on Tale of Painters from Feb 2012 relating to using the Vallejo Surface Primer. While VGC/VMC/VMA products are usually easy to find, the primers have been a hit or miss proposition until very recently. Neal @The War Store to the rescue!
So, I am in the process of making a small purchase to see how these will suit me. I have long since taken to priming in grey rather than black or white. It’s not that I don’t find value in the absolutes, but rather grey affords me the ability to take it up or bring it down as I see fit. So, first on the list to try is a 60mL bottle of Grey. Of course, using TAP Wolf Grey Colour Spray has also made me a convert to colour primer, (oh boy has it ever!). So, while White Scars can be managed with grey well enough, I’d like to see how Imperial Fists or Armageddon Steel Legion might benefit from German Dark Yellow, aka: Dunkelgelb. I’d also like to play a bit with UK Bronze Green to see if that might help with Dark Angels or PanO Shock Army. For now, $20 or so for 3 colours is enough for me, but there are many more colours to choose from.
The other part that intrigues me is that this is just as applicable via airbrush as it is via standard brush. Again, if I want to add one model to a unit, hopefully no need to break out the airbrush. You can read more about it on Garfy’s post, but I will pen a review of my own once I have them in hand. Looking forward to this working as well as I hope!