Follies with Spray Primers

 Fellow hobbyists, I have been a fan of The Army Painter's brushes and their colored spray primers for some years now.  I know there are better and worse alternatives for each, however, they work for me.  Typically, I keep my spray primers on a shelf in the garage and have had no ill effects until yesterday (August 6th, 2020).  I have their white, black, demonic yellow (Imperial Fists shortcut), Desert yellow, and pure red.  I cracked out the Pure Red about 3pm, 85 degrees F, with 64% humidity.  Now, I have primed year round here.  The Pure Red is a new color for me and I was priming some Royal Imperial Guards for Star Wars Legion.  Oh, I have also sprayed the other colors thin, sometimes too thick, and have had solid results.  Here's my Red:

Nope.  Ok.  A little heavy on the trigger this time, and sprayed about 6-8 inches away from the model, but have done that before with no real ill effects.  Let me try that again....  same result mini #2.  I posted my errors on the Paint Hub for War-games and Miniatures Facebook page.  Fantastic tips, advice, empathy, hilarious memes, etc... ensued.  I do want to mention that this is a great community page.  

After conversing with some people on the page, I did the following to try to improve my results.  (I have 2 more models from this kit to screw up, so why not?)  This time, I set the primer can in a mixing bowl, turned on the tap on hot, waited until hot water was coming out, filled the bowl, and left the tap running over the can for about 5 minutes.  Then, I reshook the can for a solid 3 minutes...rule of thumb is 2 minutes, so I went on a little longer.  Took the 3rd model outside, still 81F with 74% humidity, this time I sprayed about 10-12 inches and made sure not to go heavy on the paint.  Result #3:

Better!  Still not results I'm used to.  Grainy.  This time the consensus was the paint was drying before it hit the model.  Model #3 in the Simple Green bath too.

I stopped to think for a bit and well, decided that I would do what I typically do when I paint Imperial Fists with the Demonic Yellow Primer.  Prime with white first, then use the yellow as a spray paint base coat.  Grabbed the 4th model and primed it white like I have numerous other models before with that can of spray primer.  I didn't take a pic of that model, but it was even better than the one pictured directly above, still a bit grainy.  At this point, I chalked it up to a bad day of priming environment, with a possibly bad can of Pure Red.  Currently, all 4 are hanging out in the Simple Green bath.  

Put them in around 3pm on a Thursday, gonna let 'em soak until I get 99% Isopropyl Alcohol in from Amazon on Saturday.  Then it's a strip down and try again.  I'll update myself and anyone else who finds interest in following along.  Oh and I want to mention again, if you aren't part of the Paint Hub for War-games and Miniatures page on Facebook, it's a great group hobby group.

So, to begin stripping, they sat in the Simple Green overnight.  The Force Pikes became a little extra pliable, but as they stayed out of the bath, they stiffened back up.  (Same is true for the Isopropyl Alcohol 99%.)  No real progress with the Simple Green, so I started a 99% Isopropyl Alcohol soak.  I would leave them in for about 30 minutes, pull one out, scrub with a toothbrush, scrub with a q-tip soaked in the the alcohol, rinse, let them dry, do it again.  I kept doing it off and on throughout a couple of days.  Here is the final result.  

(I will work on the one I primed white again to get more off, but I'm about done.)  Now, just to wait for a less humid day and try again.

...and that's how you destroy a Nighthaunt.

For some reason, I really like the Nighthaunts manufactured by Games Workshop.  I subscribed to Rob Baer's/Spikey Bits Patreon for a while at the tier where you received some swag and when I did, I requested and graciously received my first Nighthaunt.  Cool!  BTW, Rob Baer is part of the Pantheon of Hobby gods we have here, but I digress.  I also liked the way that GW was painting these bad boys up with their Hexwraith Flame and Nighthaunt Gloom paints, so picked those up.

To get started, I spray primed TAP Matte White.  Put a coat of Nighthaunt Gloom down, quickly realized I wanted it thinner, so I essentially glazed it down.  Great!  Put a few more coats on there, dry brushed up with Reaper Master Series Rainy Gray, then put a Secret Weapon Miniatures Cool Gray wash on the recesses.  Feeling proud of myself and letting the wash dry, I moved to the green flames.  Thinned down the Hexwraith Flame, slapped it down a few times and said, "I like it!"  Here's the pics:

...and here is a pic of materials used so far:

L to R:  Vallejo thinner medium, Secret Weapon Cool Gray, Scale Color Rainy Gray, GW Nighthaunt Gloom and Hexwraith Flame.

...and then the roller foam we keep on the top shelf of this hobby space decided to roll down.

Well...I guess he is done.  I'm missing some sections of his arm and the staff.  As small as they are, I'm thinking maybe some brass rods to recreate them, but honestly, for my skill level it's too small to drill through the hand, or to glue to the staff, so I'm counting him done and destroyed.  The plan was to highlight up through gray and then white.  I'll put those next steps in when I crack open the Start Collecting Malignants Box.

Reaper Mini: Lou the Chibi Chtulu (Bonesylvanian model)

Lou, Bonesylvanian Chibi Cht

ulu

In an honest effort to stretch myself artistically/hobbywise, I'm trying 2 things here.  First, get outside of my own rigid thinking that colors don't have to start/stop at particular areas.  For example, an arm doesn't have to be one color only shaded and highlighted.  So, I slapped colors on randomly.  I thinned them quite a bit to try to get transitions, but also, I wanted to work on glazing to try to transition smoothly.  Right now, it's a hot mess and needs lots of work.  Let's see how this goes.

I used Scale Color Violet, Tesla Blue, Sunset Purple, and Caribbean Blue for base coat.  Then Citadel Hexwraith Flame to give a wash.  This all goes against my rational brain, so stretching...stretching.  Oh, and I thinned either with Vallejo Thinner Medium, or just keep a lot of water in my brush from cleaning.

Colors and paints used for base coat and first wash.

Here's what it looks like with the first slap of paint...and I did just slap it on there.

                                  

                         

Ok, so I went to the Reaper Mini forums asking for some help.  Now, many more colors have been added:

The suggestion I received on the forums included many layers of glazing (still working on getting that technique down) and/or using a transparent blue to tie the colors in together.  I stared with the transparent blue:  tamiya color on the left.  It darkened Lou up more than I wanted, but I liked what was going on.  So I started glazing with the Scale Color Sunset Purple, and Caribbean Blue to bring a little brightness back in.  Transparent blue some more, a little more glaze.  Still darker than I wanted so I began dry brushing the Caribbean Blue.  Liked it.  Pulled out that light green on the far left, Scale Color Autumn Green, and highlighted with it.  Really liked that.  I then used some Tamiya Clear Yellow to help blend that in a little more and hopefully cut out the "roughness" of the dry brush.  This is how it looks at this stage.  I'm going to pull that Autumn green out again and do another Clear Yellow, then move onto the finishing touches.

        

So, the process continued to glaze various shades of blue, purple, and green.  I really liked the Autumn Green highlight so I kept working on it and glazing with either transparent yellow or blue until I had it where I liked.

I then painted the eyes and toenails/claws/talons black, and coated with a Citadel's 'ardcoat brush-on sealer.  This was to prep them for a couple of coats of Green Stuff World's Colorshift Metal Storm Surge Green.  I do not have an airbrush so my color shift doesn't look as awesome as when they pull it off with an airbrush, but I do love these paints...if only for the idea of what they do, which I haven't fully succeeded with yet.  The base is a Simple Reaper Master Series Rainy Gray, some places of Scale 75 Rainy Gray, and a Secret Weapon Miniatures Armor Wash.  ...and I'm calling Lou done.  Overall pleased with the outcome, even if I had a brighter image in my head of how he would look when I was completed with him.  Here he is:

 

 

I do have a cheap light box on the way to hopefully get better pictures.  There's some washout on his head.  Will update pictures in a while if I can get better/more accurate pics.

Jack Scarecrow: Soda Pop Miniatures

I painted this little fella, Jack Scarecrow from Soda Pop, a little over a year ago.  I liked the sculpt, and instead of taking a year to paint, I really did finish him in a week or so, putting in 15 minutes here and there.

Starting out, I used The Army Painter, Flat Black Spray Primer.

For the Pumpkin/Head, after the black primer, I used Scale Color Mars Orange as the base coat.  Gave it a Citadel Baal Red wash.  To get the "lines" of the pumpkin to pop a little more, I drew them on with a Brown Prismacolor Premier .05 Fine Line Marker.  I painted the interior of the mouth and eyes with Badab Black.  Moving back to the pumpkin, I then gave a drybrush of Mars Orange to tidy up the wash a bit, another drybrush layer of Reaper Master Series Fire Orange.  Then for the eyes, I dotted them in with Scale Color Deep Red.

                                

     

Broken Toad: Toad in Carbonite, Star Wars Tribute.

This was a limited edition from Broken Toad, and I have the Wonderland Bust set from them too (unpainted), but high quality products from here.  Top notch.  I love their sculpts.

Primed with TAP Black Spray Primer

I am weak at this whole blogging thing, so I did not capture all of the WIP pictures I needed, but the steps I then completed are as follows:
Base Coat P3 Pig Iron.

I then drybrushed, heavily, Scale Color's Decayed Metal.

Heavy Wash of P3's Armor Wash

Drybrush of Scale Color's Old Copper
Light Drybrush of Garnet Alchemy to give a reddish tint.
I painted/highlighted the edges with The Army Painter Shining Silver
Then I used Scale Color Pure Copper as a drybrush on the lightest highlights in the main body.
That was all I did, it's not crazy amazing, but I did have fun trying to play with different colors trying to keep the copper looking more worn and old.

Decorating with letters and wine corks.

This is a project I completed for our dining room.  I have seen different ideas regarding corks and recently found online where someone took wooden letters and affixed corks to them and hung them on the wall.  I wanted to use metal and since Hobby Lobby opened up in town recently, let's see what we can make.

I found what I wanted, but the hollow parts in the back and when you flip a letter such as an "R", it doesn't work.  Oh well let's pull out the metal cutting discs for the dremel.

I ended up burning through roughly a dozen of the dremel discs to get the letters dismantled so I could get them the correct way for this project.

Now that they were cut, I had to figure out a way to put them back together. Unfortunately, I'm not a metalsmith nor do I own a welder.  Therefore, I ended up buying a tube of Gorilla glue construction adhesive that did indicate it can bind metal to metal 

To make it work, I had to place a bead along one side, let it set, then use clamps to hold other parts in line, make a bead, let it set, then move along until the whole thing was complete.  My beads are ugly, but eventually they will be hidden by the cork.

This is the finished letter prior to painting. 

I painted it with Rustoleum forged beaten  Amber and one can worked both letters.

After placement on the wall, I used the corks we had on hand.  It will take a while to fill both up, but here is where the project currently stands.

As always thank you for looking.

Wumby