Paint or Prime?

[MYX]

Hey all,
I am working on a ms. pac machine that was converted from a QIX. (Don't kill me the conversion was started long before I got my grubby hands on it). I have painted the machine to Ms. Pac colors except for the front which I decided to paint black. Now seeing it start to transform into a good looking piece i am having regrets painting the front (kickplate area) black. I want to  paint it blue like the sides. Do I need to reprime or can I put the blue over the top of the black? Will spray paint show the under color at all, will it make the blue darker?

[ArcadEd]

Personally I would sand it, prime it and then repaint it.

I'm a bit anal that way though. 

[mahuti]

1. You don't NEED to prime for the paint to work over other paint, as long as it's the same type.

2. You MAY need to prime with white primer if the blue paint is translucent. Look on the can for some sort of translucency index (they have them sometimes) If it's a blue like ms pac man, that's probably pretty opaque, so there's probably not much to worry about.

3. If you are using spray paint, use many light coats, rather than one strong one. When I did my defender stencils, I used about 15 very, very light coats and built the color up over time, rather than one heavy spray. It helped that I had one of those spraypaint pistol grip add-ons. They're cheap, but effective.

[MYX]

Yeah, I got a pistol grip mid way through the process. It sure did take the abuse out of my fingers. Thanx, I will check for the transparency issue. How long did you wait between coats? I will be honest and tell you it was hard not to totally coat the thing as I was painting it. I would see speckles of primer and would keep going back over it. Then I would get a blotch of paint. After some gnashing of teeth, I got a brush and smoothed it out then gave a thin blast of paint to blend it.

[Stingray]

Be aware that spray paint, particularly enamels, tend to bleed through topcoats pretty badly.

-S

[RayB]

Definitely should at least prime to a grey that's close in intensity as the blue. Otherwise you're going to need hundreds of coats.

(hundreds is an exageration... but "many")

[MYX]

Doop! Ok Thanks for the heads up. For the future, what would be the best way to paint. Is an oil based pain through a electric sprayer going to be beter than a can o spray?

[mahuti]

Is an oil based...

Yes. See the following tutorial. http://www.tutankham.com/painting.htm

As for me... when I did my stencils, I followed the directions on the can... which happened to be enamel. I planned to paint all of my cab & art with enamel... on the can it said that you could recoat after between 15 minutes and 45 minutes,  or wait for 48 hours. SO, I recoated at least 15 times the first day... maybe more. It was a lot, but the result was fantastic. I started the red & yellow directly on black without a light primer... it took a bunch of coats, but it looks great. If you have a nice big square area, though, it might be easier to just sand & prime.