Your Undercoat of Choice?

[Jolemai]

When I last visited my local GW they were painting up the new BA Tactical box. After fifteen minutes of trying to sell me stuff I finally got a word in and asked about the undercoat they were using. The answer genuinely shocked me.

 

Mephiston Red.

 

Basically, they store models were being painted without an undercoat. Simply three of four coats of mep red and then highlighted, etc, from there. Isn't that a cardinal sin of painting?

 

Anyway, I was wondering what everyone else uses. Do you use white, black, grey or red?

 

I still use white...

[GrandMagnus]

Black undercoat. Always black. Doesnt matter if the mini is yellow, blue, white, black or pink. Black is the answer for me.

[Remtek]

I spray black, then do an overspray of light grey to get some free highlights. Then a blood red or vallejo scarlett red (something not to opaque). It's fine to start with Meph Red if you are mostly displaying them. The colour is so opaque, so the undercoat won't have much of an impact. 

[Slyfox1990]

I'm doing Flesh Tearers at present and using a black undercoat as a result. If I were doing standard red Blood Angels I would use white.

[ChapelXIII]

I use red as an undercoat. I spray once with army painter dragon red and then once with army painter pure red. I guess it always made since to me if they are red I should put red on them.

[Kevlarshark]

I used to go the whole hog and do the black under coat then mephiston red (or whatever the older version of it was called?) then a combination of brown/red inks and washes to do my world eaters. 

 

I progressed to skipping the black undercoat, but with the same wash/inks. 

 

Then I discovered the Army painter red spray... Now I spray them red and use the army painter soft tone wash with a bit of dark tone in deep recesses.

 

When varnished and based the three techniques look pretty much identical and have no noticeable difference with wear and tear.  The main difference is speed.

 

I can do a squad in three main steps... 

1. Spray

2. Wash

3 .Detail

 

I think most modern paints are good enough that unless you are painting on a tricky surface (like resin or finecast) then you wont miss a base coat. 

 

Unless you are using black to give shadows in the recesses.

[Karhedron]

I always used a white primer in the past as I paint my BAs a fairly bright shade of red. I have recently picked up a can of halfords red primer which I will have a go with. Initial impression is that red primer and mephiston red basecoat gives a darker base than I normally use. I will need to experiment with the highlighting to see if I can achieve a similar overall shade to what I normally get (I don't want a mix of bright and dark red units in my army).

 

My old style of painting was BA red and then highlighting fairly heavily until they were almost orange. The whole thing was then given a fairly heavy wash of the old magenta ink to knock it right down and give a vivid red colour. I need to experiment with Carroburg Crimson wash to see if it can give a similar effect.

[appiah4]

Grey undercoat for infantry, red undercoat for vehicles.

[The Red Thirst]

Black undercoat for my Angels and Tearers

 

White undercoat for Sanguinary Guard [really makes the gold pop]

[Midnightmare]

Black, and GW brand - I find it is genuinely the best despite its price.

[Charlo]

The bulk of my successor is black so I go with that. It means theres less faff trying to get to recesses too as its already blended with the model.

[Ovidius Incertus]

I prime my FTs with Vallejo German Red Brown primer.  Good base for the scab red I'm going for.

[Bryan Blaire]

I paint my base color directly onto well washed plastic or metal. It may be a cardinal sin, yet it is the method I prefer most, as I will not use spray materials ever again and haven't really had that great a result with brush on primers. I give it a couple of coats of brush on matte varnish by Vallejo and my models stay good and chip free for a very long time. My biggest issue is always paint rubbing off while I'm painting, but that is because I handle the model itself directly too much while painting, and no primer has ever actually avoided that problem for me.

[Beta galactosidase]

because of the ozone layer?  are you perennially pregnant?

 

What's the deal?  

[Bryan Blaire]

Every single time I've used a spray, it has screwed the pooch on me. I follow the instructions specifically, and yet I get varying types of coverage and grit on it. It doesn't matter what time of year, brand I've used, etc, I've had to clean too many attempts off to care to ever do it again. I've moved on and sworn them off and had no ill effects on my painting from it, so haven't even looked back since.

[Vettanker]

White for anything like my nids where the bulk is a wash over white.

Vallejo Dunkelgrau for anything that's staying predominantly black.

Black for everything else.

[Reldn]

Every single time I've used a spray, it has screwed the pooch on me. I follow the instructions specifically, and yet I get varying types of coverage and grit on it. It doesn't matter what time of year, brand I've used, etc, I've had to clean too many attempts off to care to ever do it again. I've moved on and sworn them off and had no ill effects on my painting from it, so haven't even looked back since.

 

I've always had the same issues with sprays. I just can not get them to go on correctly. I've sworn off Spray primers for good now. I've had better luck with brush-on primers and now am going to try out Gesso.

 

As to the topic at hand, I primarily prime with Grey.

[TheHarrower]

Army Painter Dragon Red. I would't bother with spraying them white or black first. Did some tests and it never made any difference.

[TheHarrower]

 

My old style of painting was BA red and then highlighting fairly heavily until they were almost orange. The whole thing was then given a fairly heavy wash of the old magenta ink to knock it right down and give a vivid red colour. I need to experiment with Carroburg Crimson wash to see if it can give a similar effect.

 

I used to paint my Blood Angels like that. Carroburg Crimson won't work. It's way too dark and, um, crimsony. I'd try either the Bloodletter Glaze (though I don't think it's dark enough) or making your own wash mixing Lahmian Medium with either Evil Sunz Scarlet or Wild Rider Red.

[awilden]

I went on a shopping binge a while back (the site I normally buy 40k/hobby stuff from was closing down so bought up a lot of stuff on deep discount) and got a series of Vallejo Polyurethane Surface Primers, bought a  black , white, grey, german r ed brown, russian green and desert tan, all those should cover any colour requirements.

 

The black should be good for my Necrons (metal on black is a good combo), and undercoating primarily metal or just dark parts, white for bright colours (like i will probably undercoat parts of my scouts white, and the heads of my BA devastators/assault squads to hoipefully make them a little more bright/vibrant and require less blue/yellow coats), grey for general use, the german red brown should be interesting for a deep red for general blood angels armour and vehicles (haven't tried it yet but will try out a test model to see how it goes), russian green (which I think is close to caliban green?) i was going to try use for nurgle vehicles for my CSM, and not sure but would be good for the green/non-metal parts of the Necrons? (or worth just going all black?) desert tan I'm going to give a try for the interiors of vehicles (with a layer of Vallejo Model Air Sand colour), also for flesh heavy models (may give the cultists a tan base coat, since they have a lot of exposed flesh, and will generally be a brownish cloth colour. Basically i like having more tools/paint than i need, so i can try new things, and if i see a guide, have all the necessaries ready, it probably wont make too much difference to the end result, but they're all nice to have.

 

The grey would probably be the best all round colour if you have to pick one and stick with it, I just bought up a lot of cheap bottles when I had the opportunity.

 

Although having said all that, i am airbrushing, and vallejo primers go beautifully on with the brush out of the bottle, create a very durable hard coating without obscuring detail, and (correct me if I'm wrong, and this is only for the model air or such range and not primers) they self-level so make a nice smooth finish. You probably can brush it on, but not 100% how that'd turn out, i used to use the GW black spray before i got my airbrush, so if you don't have one then like most of the other guys in the thread suggest, go black THEN another colour if you want, i wouldn't risk going directly to mephiston red spray, it is quicker, but i dunno, i wouldn't want all the work i did suddenly peeling/flaking/chipping off because i was in a hurry and couldn't be bothered doing one coat of black undercoat.

[Helias_Tancred]

My only army is Blood Angels. I use primarily Mephiston Red, and sometimes I will use black. Its situational. 

[Ushtarador]

I usually prime black and dust it white from above to get some free highlights and transitions, which helps a ton if you paint with thin colors. For vehicles, I then also apply a thin red coat of Mephiston Red spray, for infrantry I prefer to do it by brush. That being said I also know people who just apply 2 layers of Mephiston Red spray and it seems to work out very well, the GW sprays are very good in my experience :)

[Helias_Tancred]

Is there any off-brand that is a match for Mephiston Red? I would love to be able to go into Wal-Mart or Home Depot and buy a Mephiston Red clone.

[appiah4]

I believe Army painter has something that's similar. Dragon Red? Someone who knows better should help.

I have a question for you guys who undercoat black. How can you paint what you can't see? Whenever I undercoat something black (say, Death Company) I find myself suffering badly from being unable to see things. That's why I go out of my way to find black paint sprays that aren't exactly black, but a grayish off black (normally a poor quality for a black paint ).

[bigted]

I use some red spray paint I got from a hardware shop. I bought it because it was cheap . When I'm doing a centerpiece model I spray with black that I got from the same shop.