Tutorial - Kong's Priming Thoughts

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

Alao Jungle,

In the nighttime when the world is set as rest you will find me in the place i know the best :)

i never had done a tutorial before in which i really explain step by step what am i doing and why am i doing so. After being asked lately how i do so, i have decided to write a tutorial about it. I guess it is always good to have the basics at hand before too much blabla about colours can make your eyes bleed. Here we go...

Please make sure this is just the explained way of how i do this task, not meant to be the truth or the best - just my way.

Materials

- Black or dark Primer

- White Primer

- Miniature

I use Games Workshop's Priming spray here - never tried something else before, no other spray or technique then spraying. So i have no hell of an idea what to talk about more stuff you should need to hear - so please be gentle with me, this is just my way.

Technique description

Shake you spray and when you think you have shaken it enough shake it once more the same time.

I first prime the model after cleaning and preparing it up with chaos black priming spray. But before we go to this step...

 Priming Thoughts:

Never smoke, if you smoke while priming:

Don't do it in your room:

 Go outside to do it:

Don't press the button for a long time, it makes your miniature drown in colour and gives you less control:

Make it Pft! Pft! Short controlled bursts, you know.

Try to find the right distance, you have to know that too far away makes an not so nice ground on the miniature, to near makes it drown again. Find your middle - i found mine in about 25~30 centimetres away:

If you got a lot of gaming models you can take a box, which you may call Priming Box for the next year and prime some miniatures in them. You really learn to love your Priming box, somehow - it is something special someday you'll see. I would lay the miniatures in there and let them dry and turn them a bit further, but really only if there are a lot of army miniatures to do, if i only got 5 unit members i would bring them on a cork like this.

A Priming box can look like this:

 Also think about your distance here:

 

Priming Process

Black Priming makes your miniature look like this:

(Ancient Hero) King Maulg from Artefactory

At this point i have a problem looking at the miniature - get your eyes above again, really - i am not really able to see something from the miniature, no chance to focus on something, no chance to define anything. I don't like this a lot. Sure there are some cool options while starting from a complete black basic - ahh...

Painting on black Primer

... makes your model look darker in the end. Somehow can't really describe it, there is a bit more Darkness surrounding your end product, can not describe it in a different way i guess - the colours don't pop out that much in my eyes - i mean really popping out. What is really good about this way of Priming only black is that you can leave the dark places (deepest shadows, dark lining) way easier dark as you want. It is not so easy to achieve a bright colour tone here when you don't want to work on it for months.

Painting on white Primer

... makes your colours brighter in the end and it is easier, quicker to achive it, results do arrive faster in your eye, but it is harder to define your shadow areas and you have to do darklining manually, i mean seperating different things from eachother by a dark line ;)

The key could be using a Combination Priming Method with both good things, ignoring the sad things about the single techniques.

So after your miniature is primed black you can now put some thin layer of white on it.

Why?

1. You see more from the miniature

2. You combine both good things from the above description

3. ignoring the sad things about the single techniques.

4. When working with thin glazes your colour has more grip on the white dust ... huh? Dust, what the heck is he talking about...

6. Your colours will have more grip on the combinated priming method, it will be easier to glaze and work with water thinned colours. And it lets you see something of the thing you wantto paint soon... Huh? Why? - here you go, thanks to Raffa for making a graphic to this:

 

Working with the combination technique

I know two different ways to it. You can spray the white from one single angle to define a light source, the other one goes complete over the miniature - 360° stlye - from a low 45° angle and over to a 45° angle from above. I mostly do it the second way and maybe bring in a light source by making on angle burst stronger then the other - be sure if you do it more often you find your own personal choice on how to do it.

Ok now in pictures... the 360° move looks like this, unmoved - try to start your Pft! Pft! not over the miniature as some blobs can be spit out by your can, you never know.

Now while you are rotating your miniature spray it in the lov 45° angle and the same from the upper 45° angle... ah weirdo:

Ok... Ok...  

... sounds totally weird i know - i made a video some time ago to describe it better. The text is in german, sorry i am not aware of the place where my hard disk has lost this videomaterial, but i promise it says somehow the same as the above description. 

I guess most important is the moving sequence of me actual doing this in the end of this video:

Your miniature will then look like this - somehow, shit, i did not shake it as much as needed (lazy idiot!), that is why i now have some sparkles everywhere - or the spray was old... ahh - no problem at all, i just paint over it.

Orc Hero from Avatars of War, with a bit too much white in the upper sections:

Asian Magician by Helldorado, here it went good:

Leo bust from Yedharo Models, also fine for me:

But painting still works even you've got some sparkles around:

Hope this helps to show my go at this basic and important step.

Ok... now i guess i have talked my brain off... offline - Keep on happy painting!

Regards

Roman