Primers and Spray.

Remember when we first started? For me I did not even know about priming minis prior to painting. I simply applied paint directly onto the miniatures. The results were horrendous obviously, however I still have that mini, I can remember as clearly as I just began, it was a plastic chaos warrior. The one were it was a single pose, before the first sets of multi-part plastics.

I guess we have all gone down that slippery road before. Trying to find the elusive "perfect primer". Experimenting with various brands/kinds of spray paint. And more often than not we get frustrated with the results, if not totally in love but realizing it to be too costly.

Honestly I love the Games-Workshop primers. They have a perfect consistency, easily available (back then) and were relatively cheap. At least back then when I was working in GW. The staff discount was seriously serious.

But before that and ever since GW left Singapore, Hobby specific primers eg. Tamiya, GW and various others, were just too expensive for a struggling student to afford. Therefore I resorted to cheap spray paint from Hardware stores, and even the supposed "better" spray paints being sold in Paradigm Infinitum for 2-3 times the retail price found in hardware stores.

So I decided I could not afford Hobby Primers anymore. (I can now but choose to distribute my funds more effectively to many other things, like food and more miniatures!) And went ahead going through tons of spray paints. From the RJ paints found in Mustafa to the London paints and of course the infamous Nippon PLYOX. Most of these paints could get the job done. Cheap, good coverage and most importantly, really flat.

The same can't be said for PYLOX. It absolutely suck balls of fury. Prices were highest among the normal, coverage was blotchy, and worse of all their flat black isn't really flat at all! I had to waste time re-coating my minis with chaos black to get rid of the gloss!

After much spray paint "brand-hopping" I finally settled on a brand called "KOBE". I had alot of success with them, getting a good clean flat surface which was genuinely matt. And being one of the cheapest was a nice bonus as well. $3.50SGD a can. Guess it can't get any cheaper than that!


Did a little spray spree. Total cost $21SGD.
Great price!

~Although it seems like a chore, priming and undercoating is an important part to our painting journey. It would be interesting to know what you guys are using to prime your minis and maybe even share some more useful tips and lobangs for them!