Thursday, December 8, 2011

Airbrush joining the team

Just bought an airbrush and compressor for undercoating 10mm figures. While the coloured spray undercoat in a can is great, sometimes it obscures the detail if it goes on too thick. It is also a bit limited in the colours. I can now get more variety in the browns of the horses and other uniform undercoats - green, blue, red. If I paint the dominant colour as an undercoat, the painting process is greatly speed up.

It was a cheap unbranded Chinese airbrush from ebay, and the compressor was almost new, off someone from a local forum. The airbrush is a double action, gravity fed one. 3 Different tips and needles - not the most expensive parts but enough to learn on. I can imagine I'll get a couple more brushes that I can swap, once I know what I am doing.

The compressor is reasonably quiet, my music can drown it out! And chugs along, easily keeping up with the spraying. it dances around a bit on the desk, I'll probably put it on the flor when I get a space set up for it. I think I'll need to make a booth to limit the overspray. And make a turntable out of scrap to make it easier to spray groups of figures.

I did some practice spraying on my Covenant of Antartica Dystopian War Fleet. A blue undercoat (not with the airbrush, but some left over primer) then airbrush white stripes on it. I picked out the weapons and pipes in silver, a bit of flouro green for the energy drive bits, then magic washed them for a finish. Not to bad for an evening's painting. A nice naval camouflage. I didn't want to spent too much time on this little diversion, I have hundreds of 10mms to get though yet.

The air brush will take some getting used to, but I can see its value already.






1 comment:

  1. Good purchase - these things are brilliant, and well worth the money.

    The only hassle I have with mine is the cleaning - took a while to get used to cleaning it properly. I find that window cleaner (the blue stuff) does the trick ... fill up the paint pot with window cleaner, put a sponge over the spray nozzle, and fire until bubbles blow back through the paint pot.

    Also, remove the needle every now and then, and rub off any paint residue that builds up on the needle.

    Other than that, its invaluable for priming .. and also for varnishing at the end of the process.

    Keep playing with the special effects you can do as well. Its worth getting a cheap model aircraft kit and playing with ideas on that as well. You can get some super effects with a little practice, and its great fun.

    Good purchase !

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