Painting minis; getting started

[Aeson]

I've seen some minis packaging say no priming needed. Are there plastic minis that don't require priming? Is it always good practice to do anyway?

Someone mentioned putting something in the bottle to help with mixing. Any suggestions on what works best?

Anyone have a preference on glue?

 

[payn]

I've seen some minis packaging say no priming needed. Are there plastic minis that don't require priming? Is it always good practice to do anyway?

Someone mentioned putting something in the bottle to help with mixing. Any suggestions on what works best?

Anyone have a preference on glue?

My Battletech minis are plastic and I have been priming them. I have a ton of Reaper Bones and those are resin and do not need primer. I guess you just need to look it up or ask.

 

[Aeson]

I gotcha. I see little guys made out of grey stuff and call it plastic. It might be resin instead. I'm learning all kinds of stuff in this thread.

 

[payn]

Awesome and Catapult. Moving on to some fine details soon.

 

[el-remmen]

I've seen some minis packaging say no priming needed. Are there plastic minis that don't require priming? Is it always good practice to do anyway?

Someone mentioned putting something in the bottle to help with mixing. Any suggestions on what works best?

Anyone have a preference on glue?

I am Team Prime-It-Anyway.

I usually thin my paints in the palette with some thinner. For thick paints that starts to coagulate in the bottle I have little metal ballbearing things that help agitate them when shaken.

As for glue: I just use Gorilla Brand super-glue.

 

[payn]

I am Team Prime-It-Anyway.

I usually thin my paints in the palette with some thinner. For thick paints that starts to coagulate in the bottle I have little metal ballbearing things that help agitate them when shaken.

As for glue: I just use Gorilla Brand super-glue.

I used to use Citadel paints and they are pretty thick. I am now using Vallejo and they are just the right consistency for me. Easy to thin more if I need to.

 

[MGibster]

I've seen some minis packaging say no priming needed. Are there plastic minis that don't require priming? Is it always good practice to do anyway?

I am also on team prime. I even prime models made by companies who say I totally don't need to prime them.

Someone mentioned putting something in the bottle to help with mixing. Any suggestions on what works best?

Little glass beads/balls are fine. Some people use BBs, but I suppose those might rust over time.

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm also an err-on-the-side-of-priming guy. You just want to make sure it's a fine, light coat to not obscure any detail. Try to ensure that if you're using a spray can (my preference) that you're doing it from at least 10-12" away and that it's not too humid or cold when you're doing it so it doesn't clump or get "fuzzy". Make light quick passes and rotate the minis.

I remember back in the 80s Mithril Miniatures' MERP line actually came with a fine grey primer coat on them, which was nice. Not that I ever actually painted them. The couple I had were such nice sculpts that I didn't dare. Didn't want to mess them up with my inexpert fumbling. But they still looked gorgeous just in that grey primer.

For years when I first started painting large quantities and getting any good at it in the late 90s and early 2000s the maxim was that you always needed to wash minis with soap and water to clean off mold release chemicals and then let dry completely, then prime, for best results.

Later many companies seemed to get good at pre-cleaning their models.

I remember when I got the first Reaper Bones kickstarter they were supposed to be no-prime-needed and I tried it, but had inconsistent results. Some definitely had bad/patchy coverage when I painted straight onto the white Bones material. So I went back to default of always priming first.

 

[Aeson]

I bought some Vallejo paints. I'm going to give painting another try. It's been close to 20 years since the last time I tried.

 

[Mad_Jack]

The first-gen Reaper Bones were made of a fairly hydrophobic plastic, which meant that thinned-out paints wouldn't stick particularly well. The plastic also didn't react well to a lot of spray primers, and occasionally remained sticky even months after priming. The generally-accepted solution was to prime them with brush-on primer before painting. (It was also discovered that, for some bizarre reason, Reaper's Brown Liner made for a really good primer.)
Later generations of figures didn't have that issue to the same degree as Reaper changed the formula of the plastic several times even before they changed to using their current grey color instead of the white. (And Bones Black minis use a slightly different formula in their plastic than the regular grey Bones.) Which may or may not indicate that the hydrophobic quality might be related to the amount of plasticizer in the mix...