HOBBY: Deadlift’s Adventures in Airbrushing – Pt.6 Painting a Model!
I’m going to post my experiences of airbrushing over the last 18 months. I hope to pass on a little help to those who are thinking about giving airbrushing a go, and give a little confidence to anyone who may be a little daunted about the technique.
A hobby series by the Lounge’s Deadlift
Painting a Model!
Right then I’ve talked about airbrushes, compressors, paint, your hobby area, practice airbrushing, and I’m now going to talk about what you’ve all been waiting for – It’s time to paint a model!
We’re going to start off with something large and flat with this. We all know painting tanks is a pain in the bum. Not with an airbrush. Something that could take you hours will take far less time, when you have practiced airbrushing you can do the main bodywork of a tank to a good tabletop standard in minutes. No I’m not joking either.
We’re going to be using various colours here so between colour changes, a quick drop or 3 of water into the airbrush, spray onto kitchen towel until clear then add your next colour. Always test on paper 1st to make sure your paints running nice and smoothly. Always give your paints a good shake too.
If you’ve read my Iyanden painting posts you will have seen these pictures before. I think they are good to demonstrate painting a tank, and also a technique called pre-shading.
You will notice I didn’t completely build these wave serpents before painting, sub assembling your models when airbrushing is crucial really and makes life a whole lot easier.
Right then, these 3 Iyanden wave serpents were primed in Vallejo grey airbrush primer. I then grabbed a colour darker than the yellow I would be using to “pre-shade” or paint the areas I wanted to appear, where shadows would be or recesses in the lines of the armour plates. You could use black or dark grey but I felt with yellow a dark brown red would be better. In this case bloodstained earth by Minitaire.
Once that was done, I then grabbed some white paint and airbrushed the areas I wanted to appear slightly lighter. Some of the edges on the top of the wave erpents. “Pre-highlighting” it’s subtle but the hulls then looked like this.
Now the yellow, called Craven by Minitaire. Airbrush your paint in smooth even lines all over your tanks surface, don’t paint in one place for any length of time or you will get a build up of paint, we don’t want that. We want a nice smooth even coat. Imagine you’re watching car sprayers and how they go back and forth. Do the same with your airbrush. Also keep checking for build up of paint on your needle and occasionally give it a test on some paper. Once you have done some nice even coats you will end up with something like this.
I should add never, never spray over a wet layer of paint, it gets nasty and you will lose you smooth finish. If your in a rush and can’t wait for your model to dry between coats, a hair dryer will help speed drying time up. However to be honest airbrush paint usually drys so quickly it won’t be an issue for you.
Once your models dry you could start to use masking tape and airbrush templates to create stripes and patterns on your models, masks areas off and have some fun. Don’t forget that airbrush over spray though, make sure you cover anywhere you don’t want getting contaminated with other colours. I use a low tack masking tape by tamiya. It comes in various widths and won’t peel paint off your models. Just make sure the areas your sticking the tape to are completely dry. Have fun with it and see what you can create. I should add as with any painting, if your trying to paint lighter paint over a dark base it will effect your colours. Like painting yellow over blue will get you green etc etc.
Eventually my Waveserpants ended up like this. Still need a little work but here they are 95% done.
I sub assembled all three, painted parts as I went along and then used Humbrol clear red to tint the glass. I even masked off the gems and airbrushed those too. All in all from start to finish these 3 took a morning. Sure they aren’t golden daemon or anything like that but as gaming pieces they do the job.
Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this but I have sold tanks painted to a similar standard on eBay for a £100. Not bad don’t you think. Oh and don’t ask me for commissions, get airbrushing and you will have cool looking minis too.
Any questions on paint don’t be afraid to ask here or PM me.
Ask away everybody, I’m here to help. Until next time – Deadlift.
