The Next Step: Primer

I've finished assembling the first squad of space marine scouts, which was a lot easier and faster once I'd realized their main limitation (see my previous post). I pretty much banged them out assembly line fashion. The biggest help, really, was the switch from super glue to plastic glue. With traditional modeling glue, you have time to make the minor adjustments you need to get the model assembled properly; moreover, it actually melts the plastic pieces a bit thus creating more of a weld. So I'm quite happy how Company 10, Squad 1 turned out. Time to move on to the next phase: Priming.

Normally, I prime my miniatures in black. I generally believe it's more forgiving as a base, because if you miss a spot it generally looks like shading and not a glaring mistake. But it's also a bitch to paint over with lighter colors like yellow and red. Games Workshop now makes something called "foundation colors" which is supposed to clear this little problem up. But I've never used them (because I got out of the hobby before their introduction) so I have no sense of how well they work. I want to expand my horizons a bit, however, and stretch myself and my painting skills, so I'm actually going to prime these miniatures in white.

The reason for this is the issue of opacity. When you paint, a little bit of the color from the previous layer shows through. That's what makes painting yellow over black so difficult, because the opacity of the yellow allows the black to show through. What it (opacity) also does is determines how bright or dark your miniature will look. So if you prime in black, you're going to get a darker or duller miniature than if you had priming in white. Since I generally paint things in darker hues, I often get figures that look indistinguished or just plain difficult to see.

With the Helljumpers, I want to go with a more traditional military look. An army in bright blue armor just never made sense to me. My palette consists of grey and olive drab, with just a bit of color to denote unit designation (1st Company, 4th Company, 10th Company). It's actually the same color scheme used for Boba Fett's costume. And since these colors are drab, I want to prime in white so that these colors really pop.

I'll be doing this on Saturday.