writes:Next, I decided to "paint" up some crossbowmen and a three-man cavalry unit, using markers only, followed by dip. Note that Battlelore uses little flags of different colors (red, blue, green) to differentiate unit strengths of the mostly gray figures. Some players who paint their figures keep them in some similar-colored livery. I don't. I paint them in whatever colors I want (I often paint medieval figs in strikingly unhistorical and bright colors), and the flag icon and color, as the rules call for, still determines the unit type and strength.
Preparation
Some of the soft-plastic figures come out of the boxes literally bent out of shape. The standard technique to correct this with some kinds of plastic or resin figures is to dunk in hot water, remove and reshape, and then dunk in cold water to set the new shape. I had to do this with some of the figures. Then I just rinsed them off, to remove any of the proverbial mold release agents/oils.
Priming
I used the gesso as a primer again. It is pretty thin, and the upper half and lower half of the figs got two coats each. I wanted a fairly light, white surface, since most of the markers are not opaque.
There is probably something to an argument that gesso is too thick to retain the detail of the figures. Any primer is supposed to give some roughness, I think, so the paint will stick better. Anyway, as an experiment, this is what I used. My usual painting is not so detailed or excellent that the final result really suffers. I suppose I typically paint to an acceptable table standard of five or six out of ten.