Painting over a base coat?

[Droz_64]

I painted some marines in green (Only a Castellan green basecoat over primer). If I wanted to paint over that in orange, should I strip them first, or just paint over it? The detail is still there on the models, and its really only on the armor anyway.

[Jolemai]

Depends on the orange, is it a base paint or a layer paint? If you're going to change colour like that, it's worth using an intermediary base paint that's close to the colour, or something neutral like Celestial Grey.

[Fajita Fan]

Thin coats of Jokero orange I think, whatever the base orange is.  And it's not worth stripping, getting primer off plastic can be annoying.

[Droz_64]

Thanks for the help guys. I think I'll do a neutral gray, and then a coat of orange. Also - what shade works best with orange?

[Razblood]

Thanks for the help guys. I think I'll do a neutral gray, and then a coat of orange. Also - what shade works best with orange?

If you want dark shading then reikland fleshshade, if you want vibrant carroburg crimson.

 

Best advice I can give is to do a test model, base coat it orange and shade half with reikland and half with carroburg.

 

Probably a good idea to use the wash in a half and half mix with lamian medium, as this with make the shading less stark.

[Fajita Fan]

Keep lengths of sprue and prime them before your models - a good way to make sure it’s not too hot or cold or humid - and paint some base coats on them. That’ll let you test shades which is really useful on metals. I tried out nuln oil gloss on sprue and was like, “wow I’m glad I didn’t put that on a model...”

[Syward]

Personally, I'd recommend stripping the green paint off 1st. Even if you paint over the green with a gray base (adding another layer of paint that will potentially cover some of the finer details) your orange may be darker more on the earthy/brown side than what you're looking for. 

 

The easiest method (from my experience) to strip off the paint as well as the primer, is 2-3 days soaking in Easy Off Over Cleaner in an old plastic Folgers Coffee container. It's safe (it won't damage them - I've also forgotten about miniatures once or twice and let them sit for months, with no damage to them.) for the plastics, resin & metal miniatures from GW and will remove several layers of paint including the primer (the longer you let it sit, the more layers it'll remove) and if you use super glue for your models instead of plastic cement, it'll also break/loosen those bonds. 

 

Simply use some latex/vinyl gloves and an old toothbrush under some warm water to gently scrub/rinse away the old paint and you have a clean (literally LOL) slate to work with.