Primers

 This year I have set myself the goal of painting up all my first born marines and this involves painting up half a dozen vehicles and about three dozen marines in orange. This is not a colour that is very easy to paint and in the past it has taken a few coats of paint to get the orange to a good level. Previously I had to paint on a couple of coats of Jokaero orange to get a nice base layer before painting several layers of Troll slayer orange. This was a time consuming process, although it did give a nice even colour to the model. However, with so many to paint and with a number of big vehicles I decided to see if there was a quicker way. With my son's Tau I purchased a Colour Forge Tempest Blue to use as it is a match for GW Kantor Blue. So with this in mind I decided to have a look for a colour match to Troll Slayer Orange and was surprised to fine Colour Forge Convict Orange. I was surprised as this is not a colour I had seen before and was not listed in a lot of places, it appears that it is quite new. So one purchase later and my primer collection has grown a little bit;

Black, grey, blue and orange

These are the two coloured primers, blue and orange. The blue is almost empty after priming various models for my son's Tau army. This primer has been really nice to use, has gone on nice and evenly with very little issue. The colour match is really good, there is the usual issue of finish, as there is a different finish between spray paints and brushes but this only shows in certain lights or angles. The orange however has not been quite as good. To be honest I think this might have been more to do with how and when I used this can than the actual paint itself. Now, in terms of colour, it looks to be a very good match again, however, one thing I have noticed is that it goes on a lot more opaque than the paint. I initially thought it might be a my old paint that I’ve added thinner to a couple of time to revive it but even with a brand new pot it is still fairly transparent out of the pot. This means that it is great for getting the orange doesn’t on a model quick but it has acted a little bit oddly in places. I suspect that some of it was due to the old paint that was one the models when I over sprayed them but I have also found that it  very consistently, even on the same spray \ pass with the can. The second thing that I notice was that the paint dried very quickly and covered the floor with an orange dust and when I say covered, I mean covered and which then got trapped through the house on the bottom of my slippers from the conservatory to the kitchen as I went back and forth to get different models. Now, I don’t think this was all the fault of the can, I think that the conditions that I was spraying in were ideal, probably a little bit to cold, the can probably wasn’t warmed properly and I hadn’t prepped the models at all. However, I’m not that worried as the models that I was spraying were the first born marines destined for the Eagle Knights space marines and I am really just painting these up so that I can say they are fully painted as its pretty clear that first born will be going to legends fairly soon. 

The other two cans that I use fro priming are just cheap car spray paints, one black, one grey. These are from the local car supplies shop and cost about half the amount of GW spray for a bigger tin. These have been great for just spraying up both metal, resin and plastic model equally. I usually use the grey over the black but that’s just as the colours I use work better over grey than black. 

I have to say that I don’t think that I will be using GW primers again, as these all work just as well and are colour matched which the GW sprays don’t seem to be. The only thing that I do buy from GW is the varnish, however I have a varnish spray from another company that I have yet to test out but when I do I will let you all know how it goes.