Priming the miniature
The priming is meant to give to the paint a regular background and to improve the
adherence.
Generally the leading color can be of three types:
- white, when you want to show up the colors of the miniature and when the miniature
has light and bright colors.
- black, for miniatures with dark and dismal colors, good also as base for the metallic
colors.
- gray, for all the intermediate situations .
The base color can be painted with the brush or as spray, the second method is surely
better, when you will have made practice to avoid the excess of color.
It is advisable, to avoid problems, to use the inside of a box to spray the miniatures, in
this way you can avoid damages to the furniture and the clothes.
When the base color is dry you can start to paint. It's better to have clear the color
scheme and the colors to use for the miniature.
To gather some information you can use:
- historical books, useful for historic miniatures and heraldic signs.
- fantasy books. useful for the descriptions and the illustrations.
- miniatures or RPG magazines , like White Dwarf, but also other books and magazines
exists.
- miniatures boxes, sometime on the boxes you will find some photos of the finished
miniature where you can draw some inspiration.
In this case I have used a variation of a color scheme of a Bretonnian Knight taken from a
old White Dwarf.
The first coat of paint need to be accurate and cover uniformly the selected
surfaces.
It's better to start with the lighter colors and from the inside of the miniature, then
continue with the darker colors and the external parts, easily to paint.
In this stage the errors can be corrected but it's better to be more accurate to avoid
to start again.
For this example miniature I have selected few colors:
- silver for the visible parts of the armor.
- gold for the helm, the studs on the arms and the belt.
- white and blue for the tunic, to use the same color scheme of the horse and the
flag.
- red, for some details on the helm and for the tunic border.
Looking the miniature you can notice that, despite the accurate coloring, it lacks
depth and details.
The difference between a "colored" miniature and a "painted" one will
be clear in next pages, where we deal about the washing (or shading) and the
highlighting.
