I also primed some of those British troops that I put together last weekend. What an adventure.

My "go-to" priming method/product is to brush prime with Liquitex black Gesso.

As I mentioned though, I am on a constant quest to paint faster! The unfortunate side effect is that I often spend more time experimenting than if I had just painted things the "slow" way.

I was hoping to try a few spray primers on these guys, not only because Red is tough to paint over Black (although the old GW Foundation Paint "Mechrite Red" rocks!), but also because brush priming in general is a bit slow. The reason I usually do it is because I like the end result, and I almost always have to end up going back and brush priming the parts I missed when I spray anyway. Another benefit to brush priming is that you can do it inside so the weather is irrelevant, and I've had one bottle of this stuff last me for years!

But anyway, I tried a few different sprays on the British regulars, and was not crazy with the results.

White, Black, and a couple of Reds. The actual Red spray paint was the worst of the bunch. It was not flat (could only find Satin), and looked terrible.

Yuck!

My favorite was actually a brownish red called "Red Oxide," which was a dead flat paint/primer by Krylon.

This was what they looked like after a coat of this stuff:

At the end of the day I went with this for a bunch of troops, but then added a wash of Black Gesso with some matte medium and flow improver. It darkened it up and got into all the crevices, but still provides a better base coat for Red than pure black would be.

After all the futzing around with priming, I didn't get much painting done on them. I did test a bunch of colors to see which facing color I might like for the Orange. I've chosen to make these guys the 35th, Otway's Regiment. They were at Fort William Henry for the events depicted in "Last of the Mohicans," and of course were part of the Quebec campaign that I've been fascinated with lately.

I did finally spray coat those Marines from last week, and popped then off of their temporary bases. Here is a shot of them on one of the "woodland" unit bases I made up. I'm using the GW "War of the Ring" bases for my Muskets & Tomahawks units, even if it ends up only being for the display case.

Of course this meant that for the purposes of this shot, the Indians that had been residing there had to be relocated...

Guess it's time to make up some more of these tea bases!