Losing Steam

I'm losing steam over the Venators. I finished the main armor, now working on the gold trim. The armor/trim I have found to always be the hardest part for me. Not in terms of painting, but more akin to "I don't wanna do it". Part of the reason is I just noted that some of the primer spray paint gummed up in areas by the trim/armor. I want to avoid stripping paint, but I may have no choice on some. Hopefully I can hide it.

I'll gun for them to be done by Friday, instead of today as I had hoped.

I did base all the completed models though, so now everything that had been painted is absolutely complete except for sealing the models.

So goal for the weekend:
Finish Venators, including Catapult crew.
Xerxis
Bronzeback
Cannoneer
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Since I brought up the topic of the spray paint gumming up, I figured I would discuss briefly priming models. I use several different kind of spray paints (not intentional), gesso, and paint.

Spray Paints
Testors Spray Paint - easy to find, sprays fairly well. I usually use their grey when I want a subdued tone - mostly for when I was painting Iyanden Eldar back in my WH: 40k days. It applies fairly evenly and clumps only in the worst of weather. Prices have risen, but Amazon shows $5.19 a can.

Armory Spray Paints - This is what I used after I stopped using Testor's (simply due to laziness). It's not cheap by any means, but I had been buying in bulk orders from the War Store, so I just threw in a couple of cans. Originally, the spray paint worked wonderfully. However, I have noticed now that most of the time the paint clumps at the slightest mention of humidity. Which is no good, since I live in Dallas now. As such, I have two or three cans left over, ready to be used, which I only use as emergency cans when I need it primed. Flow is choppy and it sprays more like flakes. War Store prices a can at $5.95 - I'm not sure what Miniature Market's prices are.

P3 Primers - I have only used the white and only one can, so my experience is limited. But I did want to note that I did get a fairly consistant flow and application was even. I like the nozzle - the nozzle actually makes a vertical spray instead of conical, which reduces the area of overspray. Additionally, if you line models up, you can get more in the spray area (two to three if you line them up vertically). It worked well for me. The only setback? Price per can is $9.99 ($7.99 on War Store). I did get to cover a lot of models, but at that price point I might switch over to air brushing.

Army Painter Base Primer - This spray paint is phenomenal. I have sprayed models in my garage with the door open when it was raining. The paint applies very evenly, although you do need to be aware of overspray. Additionally, it keeps the detail nearly pristine (again with overspray). I also find that I can spray more models with this paint - I have stretched a can to cover nearly 60 to 100 models without clumping or gumming. Drawback? Price and overspray issues. This primer is easier to overspray with and standard pricing comes in at $18.99 a can! $18.99! However, the War Store sells it at $8.99 now, $1 more than P3 Primer.

Gesso
I have just jumped on board with the Gesso priming and I have two - Bob's and another brand. Gesso works wonderfully during the days that it's raining or I just have one or two models to prime. I typically use Bob's - the application was much better. However, I just had an experience where I lost a lot of detail. It's really easy to over-apply the stuff since you want to avoid pincushon effects. The other draw back is the amount of brushing that I have to perform, so I typically try not to do bulk batches. It's a little more tedious, but there's been plenty of times when I could not use spray paints.

Paint
I also use watered-down black paint from time to time. Usually it's in conjunciton with spray primers or gesso. It works well, but it's more tedious than gesso. Gesso is forgiving if you overapply a little - usually that's what you want to do. Paint is not and you lose a lot more detail. Because of this issue, I find that I have to brush more than gesso, which consumes probably ten more minutes.

I'll take pictures of the different primers and their effects.