Airbrushing 101

So there are a few things to consider when you want to start out in airbrushing. To start we will begin with just the equipment in which there are 3 main considerations.
Equipment

Airbrush
The most obvious place to start with is the tool that you will be handling and that this is all named after the airbrush itself. There are many different tools that are available from various companies and each is unique in its own way. Were going to go over some generalizations about airbrushes and the types available.

Internal Mix vs. External Mix - The item were going to consider is how the paint and air is mixed. Regardless of the method the point ends up being that we are mixing air and paint together and pushing that paint at something. The most well known external mix airbrush in this community would be the Games Workshop Citadel Spray Gun, while not really being a "real" airbrush it is a great example of external mix just because even at a quick glance you can see it has two parts that meet one that pushes air and one that pulls the paint. External airbrushes generally end up with a coarse and stippled but can also push thicker paint through as well. Internal Mix airbrushes as one would assume mix the paint and air inside of the brush itself causing the paint to be atomized inside the airbrush thus mixing the paint far finer.

Single Action vs. Dual Action - This one thing makes a big difference in what you are going to do with you airbrush. If you are going to base-coat things only then you can get a single action airbrush otherwise you will want to be looking at dual action. Single action airbrushes are just on and off the flow of paint is always the same (there are ways to change it but it requires you to swap parts out). Dual action actually lets you control the thickness of the paint (amount of paint) coming out of the airbrush with the movement of your finger. It comes down to on and off vs off on-low, on-medium, on-high, and everything in between.

Top Feed Vs. Bottom Feed - Bottom feed siphons the paint up through a tube into the airbrush using the airflow. This means that you can just pop on and off the cups your using for the paint and swap between colors and cleaner really quickly without really worrying about having to totally clean the brush however the siphon feed makes thicker paint harder to get through. Top feed actually uses gravity and the air to pull the paint through so its actually quite easier to get thicker paint though.

I have seen quite a few tutorials on airbrushing popping up all over the web lately and as a new airbrush user I figured I may have a few good thoughts to help people out. Next will be the rest of the equipment and some personal opinions after my experience with the airbrushes.

New Photo Box

So I saw someone post about a cool collapsible light diffusion box on 1dealaday.com and I ordered it. I figured that I could quickly post a photo of some miniatures. I painted the flamers a while back but since they are a metallic look its been quite hard to get good lighting on them and actually get a decent picture.

A few pounds of metal

So over the past week or so I have been getting boxes in the mail from the trades that I mention previously. Two big trades and a few small things later and I spent $370 and have a ton of metal.

So with all those minis as you can see in the second picture I also ordered some Dragon Forge bases, which I need more of, and started to build models. I actually have been going all out on these each model goes through the the following steps.

Clip off the Tab
Clean mold Lines
Flatten Feet
Clean any other "junk"
Make sure there are no "sharp" edges
Drill Pin Holes and Bolter
Pin the Feet Backpack etc.
Clean the Base
Wash Everything in Soapy Water
Glue together

First Commision Terrain - Part 2

So last week I posted Part 1 of my commission job for my friend. Since that time I finished all 3 pieces of terrain, returned them, and picked up a second set of pieces that will be featured in part 3.

When we last looked I had primed all three ruins.


Now we start the painting.

The base is going to be a dark brown with some lighter highlights and a Grey wall with some details.

Basing
Scorched Brown
Badab Black
Graveyard Earth
Desert Yellow

Walls
Codex Grey
Black Ink
Badab Black
Fortress Grey
Camo Green

Details
Boltgun Metal
Blazing Orange
Scab Red
Snakebite Leather
Badab black
Thraka Green
Leviathan Purple

I used my airbrush to put on the base colors Scorched Brown for the ground and Codex Grey mixed with some Black Ink on the walls.


I picked out a few details with the airbrush and then drybrushed the ground with a nice thick layer of graveyard earth and then Desert Yellow. Followed by the Walls with Codex Grey and fortress Grey.

Then was the details I painted all the metal bits Boltgun Metal, dabbed some Blazing Orange and Scab Red. After a quick drybrush of Boltgun Metal, wash of Badab Black all those bits were taken care of. Using the airbrush made adding a few nice things like a mossy color, Camo Green thinned by Matt Medium, to some of the corners and pillars as well as using black ink thinned to show some discoloration from fire in places.



After all is said and done I am proud of everything but I feel as if once I learn to control the airbrush slightly better then I will acheve better results in the final stages of adding the "mossy" colors and "fire/explosion" damage effects. I am also considering looking into some of the powders but I may wait on that until I start tanks. Until then Part 3 will be coming soon with lots more pieces of terrain.

First Commision Terrain - Part 1

This is part 1 in what will hopefully be a on going and as in depth as I can handle making it on painting of Forge World terrain. I will be starting with one large piece of ruin and two smaller pieces as well which were part of the Cityfight line of terrain that FW was doing previously. There will be more pieces to follow as all of this commission job is in trade for the compressor that I ordered last week.

When I got the terrain it had already been trimmed and most of the flashing had been removed. So with that I had little to remove from the pieces but they were quite dusty and had never been thoroughly cleaned to remove the release agent. So that was the real step number one...

Items Required:
Oven Cleaner
Gloves
Brush
Soap
Sink
A good outdoor location



I rinsed the terrain quickly to remove the dust that had built up on them and then let them dry. With the detail this took quite some time this was really a hold up quite a few times. When dry I took everything outside and sprayed the Ruins with a good coat of the oven cleaner which then I had to leave for two hours for it to do its job. I use oven cleaner because it is an amazing greaser which will break down the release agent that FW uses on its molds.

After the oven cleaner has gotten a chance to work its magic on the release agent it was time to pop on those gloves and scrub the pieces with some soapy water and our brush. After a good rinse and a few hours drying it was time to shake up a nice can of Grey primer and give it a good thin even coat of primer.



Next will be the painting. So as soon as I get in the Compressor which should be arriving tomorrow so we shall start the good part then.

The Hunt

To be honest my spirits were down after my army got stolen as you can see in the archive of this blog I had spent some serious time and really worked on those models lucky for me the insurance company let me quote them for the models being painted by a painting service. So with the refund check in my possession and a new compressor for my airbrush on its way I have been searching for good deals on replacement Sisters of Battle. I had found an amazing deal on Dakka Dakka with someone locally but he was sorta non responsive and when I finally thought we had reached a deal and I was planning on driving an hour and a half to go pick up the models and hand him the cash he bailed and "sold it to a friend". If he really did that's fine but I was frustrated since it was almost exactly what I had stolen from me.

Now I am working on two different deals that compliment each other quite nicely and will help me get enough Sisters for 6 full 10 woman squads with special weapons then when I go to Games Day I want to get a ton of Forge World so to complete the army. The deals also include some other units that may not be amazingly useful or get used often like Arcoflagglents but they will round out the army nicely. I will update with what I end up later on:-P

Up the pressure.

While updates on this blog are quite infrequent and I often seem to give up on all the projects, I have not stopped painting or working on any of them. I have kept the camera right next to me as I slowly work on my miniatures and hop between projects, I will upload all of those pictures and add some posts to her to show what I have been working on in due time.
I have finally started working again with the airbrush and realized I really cant work with the compressor that I currently have it simply doesn't do the job. The pressure is too low for the paint I am trying to push through it, not to mention since it doesn't have a tank what pressure it does have is quite inconsistent. Due to this I am going to be doing some commission painting jobs, a friend of mine has a ton of Forge World terrain that he built but never actually painted. He suggested we work a deal out to get some of it painted and he can help with the purchase of a decent compressor. I figure if I'm going to get into this I may as well get a good one instead of a loud or just not good.