My miniature painting has not gone well. I am deep in guilt. A fellow gamer gave me all his 28mm dark age armies when he decided that he was not going to play that period any more. It was a very generous gift and I am grateful. I did not like his Norman army's painting, however, and so decided to repaint them. I stripped 27 figures and primed them. I used a priming method I had not used before on the advice of another gamer I trusted. The primer is a mixture of black gesso and a medium used for painting on glass. My results were not so good. I am sure it was my fault. The consequence was that the figures sat on the worktable for months. My guilt set in. I had made the gift useless.
Months later I was reading about primers, as you do, and was inspired by the article on using Krylon ColorMaster ultra flat black primer. I stripped all 27 of the figures again and applied the primer. My results were not so good. I am sure it was my fault. Again, the figures sat on the worktable in limbo. My guilt grew heavier.
This weekend I stripped all 27 figures again. They are, as I write this, sitting in a second round of stripper. Each of my successive primings seems to have actually added tooth to the figure's surface and so has made cleaning them more difficult!
I have learned a few useful lessons form this experience. The small lesson is that the primer I have used for years works and I really don't need to experiment. The big lesson is I can't work on so many figures at once. If I had only worked on 4 figures at a time then by the end of each week I would have 4 painted figures. Within two months all the figures would have been painted and have been on the table killing the Anglo-Saxons.
When the second round of stripper has eaten away at the bond between primer and figure I am going to pack them away. Too much bad karma has enveloped them. I and they need to rest. Instead, I am going to paint some old Warhammer 40K space marines. 4 at a time.
