I had heard wonders about stuff known as gesso - for any canvas painters out there, that term will not be unknown to you, but for the miniatures painters, before I read it on some forums, I'd never heard of the stuff.
Gesso is a painted on substance that when used with canvases is designed to cover over the tiny bumps and holes in the weave and give a smooth base to work from, whilst providing a keyed surface to get your paints to stick a little better. After a bit of experimentation from those who have painted before me have found is that it also makes an excellent undercoat for miniatures, as long as you get a decent brand (some of it has quite large particles in it, so can give a somewhat bumpy finish - everyone reccomends Liquitex brand, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and im not quite sure its even available in the UK except by mail order/online, so instead I got some Daler-Rowney brand Gesso from my local Hobbycraft store.)
What Gesso does is it forms a 'film' covering the miniature, which dries similar to PVA glue (if youve ever just painted it on a sheet of paper and waited for it to dry - it can easily be peeled off when its dry. Now whilst most people would then be saying that this is exactly what paint does (it leaves a film on top of whatever you've painted) you'll soon see the difference if you paint a layer of paint on a piece of paper and try and peel it off - it cracks, and theres basically no surface cohesion (probably the wrong word, but its brittle and doesnt come off in 1 lump)
What this means is that for the figure painter, as long as you leave it to properly cure (its reccomended to wait for at least 6 hours, preferably 24) it gives a much more durable bascoat which should be a bit more resistant to knocks and scrapes - if you drop your mini, your basecoat wont shatter and loosen the paint.
Of course thats only a minor concern if the models arms and legs have flew off... but nothings perfect.
Anyway... to the practicalities.
I've been told that Gesso can be applied direct from the bottle, theres no need to be particularly clean/tidy with it, as it will shrink to the miniature and not obscure the details. I was a little skeptical of this, so I watered it down slightly in a ratio of about 3:1 (gesso:water) and painted it on.
One such article that I've used can be found on the DakkaDakka forums, and is always a good starting point.
I preferred undercoating in black whenever I was painting on primer (it seemed to always cover better when painting on, the white was always blotchy and needed a second coat - plus it has the added benefit of meaning that you dont need to paint the deep recesses and hard to reach places as these were already the darkest they were going to need to be) and saved priming in white for spraying, but since I had a bottle of each I gave each one a go.
The white was very poor at covering the miniature, and due to the 'film like' finish I dont think I would want to try multiple coats of Gesso just incase it obscured details a bit too much. The black covered like a dream, and shruk-wrapped the miniature perfectly, without any loss of detail. In the future, I may well mix the white and black together to try out a grey colour base for any miniatures that need to have a lighter base coat (yellows etc) to see if that works any better.
The image below was taken about an hour after the Gesso was applied - its still drying out so as you can see it still seems a bit too thick, but when it was fully dry the next day, it was perfectly formed onto the miniature.
No comments:
Post a Comment