Zenithal priming and delay between coats

[NiceGuyAdi]

I’m trying to think of ways to speed up the glacial output on my Raven Guard whilst still being happy with the results. And I’m thinking of this as a recipe for the black:

 

-black primer all over

-grey primer from the top

-white primer, quick squirt from overhead

-glaze with a mix of Abaddon Black/Dark Reaper

 

I’m just wondering with the curing time on the primer. Usually I’d leave 24hrs before painting after I prime, but if I left time for each primed layer to be touch-dry before going to the next one, will it still cure properly?

[Daigo Cannon]

Don't do the white, just black and grey, wash from light to shadow and then edge highlight with a 50/50 of white with a light grey or sky blue

[NiceGuyAdi]

How come avoid the white?

[Arkhanist]

You don't have to wait until primer is fully cured before continuing to paint. Badger stynlrez and Mr surfacer primer are bonded well enough to sand after 20-30 minutes for example, though they take 24 hours or so to reach full strength against chipping. They're fine to continue painting before then though.

 

Whereas vallejo primer definitely needs the extra time to cure to lower scratching risk, I've had times it's still peels off after 48 hours.

 

Spray primer 'enough' cure time for painting depends on the formula, but I've found halford's car body primer is fine after a couple of hours for example.

 

That all said, I've done a bunch of attempts at zenithal black highlight with dark greys and black washes, and not been happy with how grey they still end up looking for my Death Company. It also makes correcting edge highlight or other mistakes much harder, so it slowed me right down in total.

 

I'm switching back to near black (black with a bit of kantor) and edge highlighting as I think it's going to ultimately be quicker.

[Vykes]

Pure white will likely look pretty stark unless you're going to be using some heavy oils or those Minitaire ghost shades which do a decent job at covering most of the surface available.  

 

I'll be honest and say I use Zenithal highlighting in basically every painting project I do, and I tend to only wait about an hour until it's decently touch dry then let it properly cure in the end.  It'll depend on local conditions, anything less than an hour and the Vallejo surface primers I use tend to just turn sludgy and start to bleed more than I'd like (I skip grey for the most part but that's just because of the usual colours I use).  

 

I might suggest using black, then a medium to light grey, then glazing with the abbadon/dark reaper unless you want to give the armour a bit more lively colour and go with Abbadon/Drakenhoff (like Diago Cannon mentioned, blues are often better highlights and shades for black in general unless you're going for a certain effect.  I used thinned P3 Coal Black for Ravenwing/Heresy Dark Angels a while back for... kinda obvious reasons).   Personally I hate edge highlighting for most stuff, prefer using some chipping on edges and weathering.