Do-It-Yourself: Painting Resin
Casting resin pieces is a great way to make game pieces. Depending on the resin color, you may want to further enhance your pieces with some custom painting.
In a previous blog, the white resin was great for a casting the chess pawn because it matched the stone-like quality of the piece. With other shapes, a little paint can go a long way.
This was the case of casting Lewis Chessmen pieces for various Hnefatafl sets. The white resin made them look like cheap plastic pieces. In order to solve this problem and make the pieces look more pleasing, I dug back into my art major college days. There is a painting technique called scumbling which modifies a base paint color by applying a very thin coat of paint (of a different color) on top. The bottom layer still shows through and the result is a canvas color that is richer. This technique can be applied to resin pieces.
Starting with a dark base color, paint the piece until the white resin is completely covered. I found something like a raw umber is perfect in that it is dark but not as hard as a straight black. Once the piece is dry, take a little bit of an accent color and lightly brush it over the piece. An iron oxide over a raw umber looks pretty good.
Let the piece dry and spray some protective acrylic coating and you end up with a pretty nice piece to play with.
