Black Base Coat

[gone2long]

Just curious does anyone ever base coat with black? I'm putting together an order for more paint and supplies and I see paint chips with the same color over different bases for affect.

[woodieb8]

musky baits blk base coats work fine. we even get blk primers here. but as a base color on musky lures as blk perch blk shiners etc.. black is also great for contrast such as bars,scale patterns

[gone2long]

Sorry Woodie probably worded it wrong I mean black under coat and lay color over it?

Edited December 19, 2013 by Gon2long

[BobP]

Color undercoating's main purpose on wood baits is to hide the wood grain color irregularities.  You can use any highly pigmented color to do that but there are differences in how later paint layers will look over various basecoats.  My default is white.  But I use black or gray undercoat and shoot white scale effect over it.  Most chrome and metallic paints also require black undercoating.

[RayburnGuy]

Gold and silver paints are much more vibrant when applied over a black base coat. It's amazing how much difference there is when applying these two colors over a black coat versus a white coat. It's simple to see the results for yourself. Just paint a couple swatches. Two with black and the other two with white. Now spray the gold over one set and silver over the other. They won't look anything like what came out of the bottle. I've only tried this with Createx and Auto Air paints so if your using a different brand of paint you may come up with different results.

 

Ben

[Fishwhittler]

What RayburnGuy said.  I'll use black or grey base coat if I want a different look for metallic paint.  I'm using Createx, if that helps.

 

Sometimes I'll also use a black base coat when I need to cover bold colors and don't want to use a ton of white paint.  Black covers faster and can then be covered with white, without needing as many coats of white.

[gone2long]

Yeah I was looking at Createx website and they have PDF files of their paints and noticed they show different paints on top of different base coats and some have quite a different appearance within the same color of paint.

[fatfingers]

Base coat color makes a day and night difference when using urethane paints, which is all I use. Shooting pearls which is something I've experimented with for years, yields results that are directly dependent on base coat color.

I'll the to post some examples later.

To answer your question, black yields the most intense results (which is a choice, as opposed to an effect you always want to employ) when using pearls. Fo example, blue pearl over white yields a pale, sort of pastel blue, whereas blue pearl over black yields a deep, almost navy blue result. Gray base with blue pearl, gives an in between result.

The same rules probably apply when using water based paint, but I've not used those in many years. I don't care for the stuff for a variety of reasons.

Then there are candies over different color base coats...which takes too many words to go into here, but suffice it to say base coat color is critical to the effects and results at your disposal. Until you've toyed with all the latitude available from the spectrum of base coating, you have not utilized all the results that are available to you from the medium.

Edited December 20, 2013 by fatfingers

[gone2long]

Well what I'm going to do is make a story pole if you will out of a piece of PVC pipe and going to paint base coats of white, black, grey and silver and when I'm shooting a color will shoot over these and then will have a visual record to refer to and see how that assists in color choice.