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EDIT ... Vexillia was posting while I was typing and seeing his text reminds me that I think he was the person who put me onto the Hammerite ... glad to have taken his advice.
I have been using brush on Acrylic Gesso.
Is there any advantage in using a special primer for miniatures? Or is it the same as any regular car primer that can be found anywhere (and cheaper)?(I thought somebody would have already discussed this, but i havent found it on the forums)
Cheap brand of red brown spray primer works for me. I barely go near any hobby paints anymore - way too freaking expensive and despite all the claims, I don't see a difference. All in the manner you handle the paint. I only use acrylic paint, either craft or artists (cheap student versions). Craft paints can be as much as twenty times cheaper than hobby paint measured per ounce. When I tumbled to that, I never looked back. Of course, I paint my miniatures to be gaming pieces, not museum pieces or to win contests.
That is interesting. I have personally yet to come by an off the rack artist acrylic (W&N, Liquitex...) which can hold its candle to the hobby acrylics available. Generally, the pigmentation is less dense, sometimes the medium is to gloopy.
I paint using a mixture of artist acrylics and vallejo paints. I think artist acrylics offer many advantages, and there are plenty of high level painters who use them for at least some part of their process. Matt DiPietro for example uses the Golden heavy body acylics exclusively, and Ben Komets uses heavy body white for his "loaded brush" technique. I could talk on this subject at length but in the interest of not going too off topic in this thread I'll just say:TL;DR: Don't be shy at the art store, use artist acrylics and mediums, there is a whole lot of useful stuff there for the miniature painter!