Tips starting your 1/72 army from an old newbie

Just a few additions/comments to your excellent post.

After washing your plastic figures many folk find it useful to paint them with PVC glue. Pure glue, no water added. It looks like it will blot out all the detail but it won’t. This provides some additional strength for the more flexible parts of your figure - especially bayonets and muskets - and because of its rubbery nature provides a flexible base for the paint to adhere to, reducing flaking. Of course this layer goes on before your first layer of paint primer.

Again, after painting it’s crucial to protect your fragile paint work with varnish. You can spray this on or paint it. Some folk swear by a layer of handpainted gloss varnish (yacht varnish even) followed by sprayed layer or two of matt varnish.

I find artist acrylics in tubes are pretty good for mixing your own colours, with a few caveats. First, avoid the acrylics intended for primary school kids, they are next to useless. The cheapie or “student” tube acrylics are generally okay, though browns, reds and yellows are often very thin with little colour saturation. But most are fine, especially blacks, blues. And everyone should own a tube of the old standbys such as yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna. In general though it pays to buy “artist” quality.

A few bottles of Vallejo for your base colours is well worth the money. They cover well, have great colour saturation and thanks to the dripper bottle, they last forever. I have ten bottles in all and find that together with my artist acrylics I can produce every colour I need. (The only problem colour is brown - oddly enough I find it very difficult to get the correct brown hues by mixing, especially when I want subtle variations for horses and wood effects. Looking to pick up another bottle or two of dedicated modelling paint for that.) I avoid Citadel and other overpriced proprietary paints, not only because of their nonsensical names: the bottles have a tendency to dry out long before they’re half empty.

As for choosing your period. Well, having started my armies almost as long ago as you, when all that was available in plastic was Airfix, I don’t worry myself too much with the nuances of whether my Frenchmen are wearing post- or pre-Bardin. I try to stick to the same fashion within a unit, and don’t go before about 1806, when the fashions really were quite different. Of course Airfix forced me into Belgic shakos for my British line units, but that’s not gonna trouble me too much when I play a few Peninsular War scenarios. More important is whether you want a parade ground feel to your force, with bright colours and white trousers, or a more grungy “campaign feel” with greatcoats and overalls. The tendency of late has been the campaign look, but there’s a lot to be said for parade ground attire. Of course, if like me you have a lot of Airfix figures in the mix, you’re pretty well stuck with the full dress approach.

One last point. I find it really useful to have my separately-based officer and ADC figures in metal, as they get handled a lot more. The extra heft of the metal keeps the figures where you put them on the table. My officers are mostly Minifigs, which are slightly larger in scale. But since they are representing “big men” this doesn’t bother me too much.

Hi,
Great topic.
I put a cover of WOODLAND SCENIC PVA stickie glue before priming. It really stick it and there is no loss of details.
I use the Vallejo polyurethane primer series that provides an additional cover that looks and feel like a full plastic cover.
When all the figures are over I varnish them with Vallejo polyurethane Matt varnish and so far even ZVEZDA figures are resist the time and manipulations.
I hope this helps.
Great topic again.
Have all a great hobby weekend.
CPN

Hi,
I mentioned the brand Woodland scenic because it is the only one I found that is really sticky. I tried other from hobby shops but really are not good at least for what I am looking for that is the sticky property. I give you it is pricy but this is the best I found for me. For normal regular PVA, yes I use whatever is available at low price.
Kind regards.
CPN

Hi cpn,
Perhaps there is some extra ingredient in Woodland Scenics PVA that makes it very sticky? Or perhaps it's just highly concentrated? There is a type of PVA used for certain construction tasks which has added solvents that stink to high hell when drying. Does the WS stuff smell more than ordinary PVA? I have two different bottles of cheap PVA from different manufacturers and I have noticed they are not of the same quality. One is slightly less pleasant to work with but I find it hard to define why, perhaps the concentration, the consistency and/or smell.

Anyways, if you think it's worth it, then it quite simply is!

My only tip, from over forty years experience, is don't start something you don't think you can finish. Luckily with the number of manufacturers on the scene you can usually form most elements of most armies of most eras. But there's always something that irritates ....... just be prepared!

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I don't coat my figures with blue; instead, I prime my figures with a spray plastic-bonding paint such as "Fusion." I usually use a darker brown, flat as it provides a good backdrop that highlights detail, particularly on lighter colored plastics without being too stark. I've also used the brown undercoat to give my troops a "weathered" look like they've been in the field on campaign for awhile instead of stepping straight out of the laundry.

I also don't varnish for the same reasons stated above, but use a clear acrylic spray sealant (I learned this trick from my artist days sealing my sketches and watercolors) - here you can use gloss, matte, or flat. I prefer matte, but be careful of your brand as some leave a film. I've found some that have worked well, but for me the best is "Plaid Patrician Nimock's" sealers.

To each his own, but I struggled for years (since the 1960s) to find a system where paint would stick to plastic figures. Enamel was no good so I moved to acrylics; the original acrylics were too thin and lacked pigment for my taste. I moved to craft enamels and found they worked better but would rub off the figures. the spray primer fixed that and since I started spray sealing I've had virtually no issue with chipping or cracking.

Thanks waynew, I hear the voice of long experience speaking here. I will give your methods a try. I have no idea how long the figures I have already done that were only cleaned, primed then painted will last. I do intend to game with them and would prefer to avoid the bitter disappointment of seeing the gunmetal silver-gray from the bayonets clinging to my fingers.

The Army Painter White I tried came out granular for lack of a better word. Figures look like they're covered in fine sugar. Maybe the humidity was too high and it was clumping I really don't know. It did not adhere well to the plastic at all. The Testors gray worked fine and came out very smooth

I have done some testing with brushed on varnish and the gloss is out imo - way too shiny. I had the thought of doing shako covers, polished leather and metal bits with semi-gloss and everything else with matte. I will try that with the spray fixative on top and see how it works out.

One reason that I like HäT figures is the boxes they come in -- really, not kidding, though admittedly not as important a reason as, say, the quality of the figures. ;-) Most of the HäT box fronts are white with just a representative figure portrayed -- no background. When I begin to paint the figures, I write on the white part of the box the color and brand that I use to paint each part of the figure. That way, the next time I'm dealing with more of those figures I don't have to remember what color I used -- in order to keep consistency. This notating is really important in my case because I have about 10 different "tan" and "khaki" colors of paint, 5 of blue, 20 of brown, etc. (If the figure on the box does not portray some piece of equipment that appears on some of the figures, I simply write it in a corner of the box cover. I also write down the brand and color of the figures' base. I also write the company's code number for the paint color, because when I go to buy more "Teddy Bear Tan" it may have been renamed "Golden Brown" but the code number is usually retained. The old Polly S acrylics pulled this stunt, renaming the yellow "Mud" color "Bugbear Fur" in one case!)

This practice has saved me a lot of time that would be wasted painting little swatches of color (many months after painting the original figures) in order to check the color once it dries -- or, worse, painting a whole unit that uses the wrong colors. In WW1 and WW2 a lot of the uniforms have a very subtle difference. I need to be able to distinguish armies not only by the figures but also by the variations in color (say, of khaki tan, for example).

Availability of figures is often very difficult. Many go out of production for years at a time. And when they do return the moulds are often so worn they will, inevitably, have a little flash. Today, I heard that Revell is permanently suspending the sale of all its figure ranges; some of their older figure packs were getting especially bad in terms of flash, but I will still mourn them.

Trimming mould lines is a pain in the asche, but waiting for promised figure ranges that never turn up is even worse.

Looking back at all the figures I’ve bought over the past two years, both plastic and metal, I think it would be true to say that every single one has required some trimming or cutting off of unnecessary mouldings, in one form or another. It’s just part of the hobby.

I second both of these observations. 

Have a stash of surgical blades.  invaluable!

I do a messy undercoat in the primary color of the uniform, using an old scruffy brush.  Then paint in details more carefully.

for my part i use pva glue diluted 50/50 with water (hot, then let it cool) as a varnish. It's a bit glossy but not much, and really helps protecting figures

Hi
I`m looking at puting my army on a base now. What size of a base would people recommend Please?
Thanks for the help.
Cheers
Dave