Before painting, I hand brush Liquitex Gesso on the sculpture. Originally this was a polymer clay sculpture, but I have used Liquitex Gesso as primer for many things, including resin minis, garage kits, epoxy sculptures, etc. It is best to get no brush strokes by working an entire area at once. Clearing any area that appears to have air bubbles. Once dry there will be no brush strokes. It can take some practice to get the consistency just right. Too thick or too thin is no good. Once dry for 24hrs, the surface should be scratch resistant. Recently I got some Folkart chalk acrylic paints to try out. They are really used for furniture, but I got them because they are supposed to be scratch resistant and also no primer needed before application. Using regular folk art, Americana, Delta, etc brands of craft acrylic paint alone on a sculpture will peel right off if you were to scratch it. For the chalk paint to claim no surface prep necessary, it must be a really scratch resistant paint. The other paint in the picture, and what I ended up using mostly, is Vallejo model color acrylics. These are specifically formulated for mini painting. I've only ever painted minis for display, but supposing you use them for gaming, you would be handling them a lot and so you want strong paint that won't come off easily. These are my go-to paints for any model kit or sculpture.
The consistency of the chalk paint is very thick. For the purpose of painting a sculpture, it should be thinned down to prevent brush strokes. I ended up only using it for the red of the mushroom cap shown below.
I put a little bit of paint onto a regular welled palette, all the colors I am going to use at one sitting. I am just painting the base coat so that everything is uniform in color before I shade with water mixable oils. So I am not doing any shading with Vallejo paints for this sculpture, except the eyes slightly.
The red now is the folkart chalk paint. I thinned with water. once dry it really was scratch resistant. I'm not sure how it would do for shading, but its fine as a base coat. At this point the base coat of acrylic painting is finished. Now I work on the eyes. Here I do the same step one eye at a time. Last step was painting the white of the mushroom caps. Thats the end of part one of painting,
Watch My Painting Process:
If you'd like to see a quick video of my acrylic base painting progress, you can watch it here:
Painting a Polymer Clay Elf Pixie | Part 1: Acrylic Base Layers on Fantasy Sculpture WIP
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