Priming with gesso

If you like to do a little bit of research before you start working on something, like me, you probably heard about priming your minis with acrylic gesso. There is a lot of talk about the effectiveness of it, so I will spare you of yet another gesso article and talk about my personal experience with it.

First of all, if you don’t know what priming with gesso is, take a look at this great article from WeeToySoldiers site: http://www.weetoysoldiers.com/wp/?page_id=34.

Ok, so after checking my painting skills with the Battle for Macragge starter set, I felt confident about trying new stuff on my IG army and I went out to buy some acrylic gesso. Altough is rather easy to find acrylic gesso in any art shop, I discovered that finding black gesso is not an easy task here in Montreal. I visited a couple of stores, including Omer des Serres, but could find only white gesso and 1 single silver gesso pot. I was resolute to find it in black though and after some more research, I found one last pot of it in a store called Art Tec. I grabbed it and went rushing back home to try it out.

The only pot of black acrylic gesso I could find in Montreal

I ran two tests with it. On one of them, I watered it down little bit and in the other one I used it straight from the bottle. On both tests, I applied it freely and without care, just as mentioned in the WeeTouSoldiers article. Unfortunately, at least with the brand I bought, it did hid some of the details of the mini.

As you can see from the picture above, the gesso hid some of the details under the 2 left-most arrows, but not from the inscription in the center

It’s up to you to test it out for yourself and see what works for you. In my experience, you can still apply it freely, but just make sure to take the excess out with your brush. Also, I prefer the watered down version as the thickier one leaves the surface too rough for my liking.

I would like to finish this post with some pros and cons of using gesso for priming your minis.

Pros

• Very good coverage, sticking easily to plastic miniatures;
• Fast, as you can apply it freely and without too much care;
• It shrinks after dried, leaving you details intact (please check above);
• The paint sticks to gesso better than it does with regular Games Workshop primer;
• Cheap: one 250 mL bottle cost me around CAN$ 11.00, as opposed to a CAN$ 4.50 12 mL bottle of chaos black, and
• Chips easily off of your minis, allowing you to easily strip it out if you make a mistake.

Cons

• Chips easily off of your minis, so you must take extra care while handling it. Also, some varnish coat will be needed to protect your job.

Stripping paint out of your minis

I originally named this post “Good job gone bad”, but I decided to change it after giving it a little thought. As mentioned earlier in previous posts, I’m collecting an Imperial Guard army to play Warhammer 40k. I still haven’t written the fluff for it but I have some ideas. From the name of the site, you can tell where my army comes from: Valhalla; and since Valhalla is an icy world I opted for a light blue color scheme.

I had primed a few of my minis with black gesso while creating my army list for combat patrol. After I primed the first infantry squad, I started the paint job on it. I used the same color I previously applied on Lt Varras Battle for Macragge mini: a 1:1 mixture of Mordian Blue foundation paint with Skull White. The color stuck easily on the gesso primed surface and only 1 coat was required. I was happy.

I proceeded to paint the rest of the squad’s flak armor and when done, I started to think about the second color. I just realized that white would be a good choice, but then I remembered: I used black for priming. I was avoiding white altogether just because I read somewhere that black is easier for beginners. I have no idea why and just followed the advice. I had some trouble with red paint over a black primed mini while painting the nids from the Macragge box. I had to apply several coats until I was satisfied with the result. I knew I would face the same problem with the white color.

Surprisingly, the gesso proved himself a good option for priming once more: I had to apply only 2 coats of white paint. Great! . The results can be seen below:

First try at the 13th Valhallans

Although I was happy with the results, I decided that applying two coats of paint would take too much time. It was time to try some paint removal tips. From the various methods I read, Pine Sol was the only one option I had at home. But since I used gesso for priming, I thought that it would work great.

My minis take a bath into a pine sol solution

You can already see some of the paint peeled off of the mini in the bottom of the image. I used a regular dishwashing scrubbing sponge (the one with a hard and soft surface) and an old tooth brush to take out the paint. I will update the site when I’m done re-priming them with white gesso. Until then.