PurityThruFire

Actually I had run out of Dullcote (just picked up some today). I usually hit it with two coats of satin polyurethane then I hit it with the dullcote. Shiny=no go! I think the fuzziness of the picture actually makes his cape look better. From where I'm looking now it's a little so-so. I mixed up a deep burgundy wash to deepen the red on the cape and (as all my washes seem to do) came out too spotty.

First off, thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. This is how things stand right now; I'm currently stripping all my primed minis (and a few painted one too!) of their black undercoat. And yes, everyone is correct, I was not using an actual primer, I thought I could get away with using a flat black paint. I was wrong. It worked when I was slapping thick coats of paint on a mini. Earlier, I took a ride out to a hobby shop and picked up a couple bottle of the Tamiya fine surface primer. Once the minis are stripped, cleaned and dried I will give a go at using it. I guess it's high time I ween myself off of black primer, no reason I can't do all the line-in with a brush instead of the cheating "I'll just leave a line of black primer here" method. I have to admit, white primer does frighten me though. As for my new Series 7 brushes, I guess it will just take a little getting used to. Last night I sprayed a big sheet of plasticard white, I'll fool around with that and see if I can't master my new brushes. I tried some "wet blending" last night. HA! Double HA! It's going to be awhile before I'll get control of that. Can you believe I've been painting for almost ten years! As I said earlier, by painting, I mean I slapped a coat of paint on my minis right out of the bottle, sealed them and got them to the gaming table. Took ten years for me to actually want to make my minis look nice. I feel ashamed. I don't know if I did it right (I'm a newbie when it comes to forums and code and all that jibber-jabber), but I'm attempt to put up a picture of Vilmon from Warmachine, he's the first mini that I tried to do "right".

So, should I be using a brush-on primer?

I paint with black primer, I guess I'll give a shot to using white, certainly can't hurt. Do different tyes of primer make a difference. I usually use Testors flat black enamel spray paint. I shake the hell out of the RMS, and I make sure I wick as much of the moisuture out of the brush as I can before it hits the mini. Then I make sure to wick out the excess paint before pinting. All this and it still really takes me 5+ coats to get nice coverage. I thought basecoating was supposed to be the easy part! What's Black Lightening? Sadly, there isn't a "flgs" anywhere near to me. Not a whole lot of people paint, because not a whole lot of people game in this area. I drive almost and hour just to get to my wargaming club.

I've been painting for awhile now. My style has been to slap a couple colors onto a model straight out of the bottle, seal it and move onto gaming. Recently I have become interested in actually making my minis look good. The master series line seemed like a good way to go after looking at what the world of mini paint had to offer. I realized that the first step I needed to take was to make my base coat look a lottle less sloppy. I searched high and low for some starting point for how much I should thin the Reaper paints and what I should thin them with. I found my way into this forum and discovered that water was just fine to use and that a 4:1 paint to water ratio was a good place to start. Ah yes, I should also mention that I invested in a set of Winsor and Newton series 7 brushes, I was burning through cheap brushes way too fast. This would be my first experience with Kolinsky sable. Back to the subject on hand. I thinned my paint (yellowed bone to be exact) and went to town on my mini, 4 coats later I still had a spotty (albeit streak free) base coat. Okay, I seem to be doing something wrong. I primed up a piece of plasticard and went to town doing some test with different ratios of paint to water. I got all kinds of wierd results. Also, it seem as if my new brushes retain a heck of a lot of water. I attempt to get a decent amount of water out of the brush before I go back to my mini, I even wick the excess paint off before my brush hits the mini yet it the paint still goes onto the mini almost completly see-thru. I guess my question really is, armed with my brand spanking new series 7 brushes and my RMS paints, how do I lay down a really nice basecoat? I'll worry about the more advanced techniques later on, as once I lay down a nice basecoat, I sure as hell can get the paint transparent enough to do layering.