Priming with Gesso and some stripping

So, I linked to an article earlier that talked about using acrylic gesso to prime miniatures.
Most of the article spoke about using black acrylic gesso(liquitex brand) to prime. I have been trying to find a way to use the white gesso(also liquitex) in the same manner. The white does not share the shrink to fit property of the black gesso. To account for that I have tried diluting the white gesso with water about 1:2 water:gesso. So far this has produced some good results. The following pictures are of a dwarf warrior that was stripped using 50/50 pine-sol:water. The first pic is pre gesso, the next is right after application and the final pic is after drying (with a king done earlier). The drying is done fairly quickly but I usually wait overnight before painting. It takes very little of this mixture to coat the miniature. While not as fast as spray priming, doing this allows easy priming anytime anywhere, is non-toxic, water soluble and can be removed by pine-sol stripping. It looks like a reverse wash, it makes the deeper recess look white instead of dark. The details are still there as you can see. The only issue is this: it is easy to put on too much. Just dip the very end of a medium flat brush into the gesso and you will be able to cover about 50% of a typical 25mm model. Getting excess off is easy, just wipe it off or take a brush that is dry and soak it up. Any big bubbles have always popped, while small bubbles go away by blowing on them, yes blowing.


























So I took some pics of pine sol stripped vs simple green stripped mini's some of finished models. Head on over to Stoney point refugees for a post on simple green. The model on the far left is pine-sol, next simple green, then new, then primed with black gesso, then white gesso. Next pic is finished product.