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.