Just a quick update with some pics showing the models I have been working on recently.

First up is a Large Steampunk Arachnid. I bought a Robogear boxed set several years ago back when I was doing my Ork army. It is a fantastic source of bits, and one of the kits is a multi-limbed walker. It fit quite well on a 50mm base, and once I added the buzzsaw piece I realised I had a fine Large Steampunk Arachnid.

I primed it black, and then airbrushed Iyanden Darksun on the armour plates, followed up with VGC Sunburst Yellow. I highlighted by adding some white to the yellow, and shaded with some Darksun. Then I re-blacked the rest of the model and painted the metallic parts in the usual way. Weathering was done with a sponge and some Adeptus Battle Grey Foundation paint.

Using the same Robogear kit I decided to make a ludicrously large Supply Wagon, for the Strategy of the same name.

Ramos and Colette du Bois are proud to present their fellow Arcanists with their new Supply Wagon, christened Zippy. Ramos’ suggestion of Steamstrider Thunderborg was veto’d by a gaggle of Showgirls, who all giggled until Ramos gave up and let Colette have her way.

Zippy was recently recovered from a disused mine, and has yet to receive a clean-up and a fresh coat of paint, but in the meantime Ramos ordered that the official Arcanist sigil be painted on its hull. At least, that’s what he insists he said. It is not, according to Cassandra, what she heard…

Here is how I made it:

1. One Robogear Spider set and some Urban War Bio-toxin Plant parts.
2. Prime black and then add rust. I used Deluxe Real Rust, and some pigments.
3. Gloss varnish (to stop the rust coming off at step 6)
4. Apply lots of liquid mask over the rust and allow to dry.
5. Airbrush blue. I used the airbrush to shade the panel lines and to highlight the middle of each panel.
6. Using a variety of brushes, remove the liquid mask.
7. Cut a circle in some paper and stick it onto the model with masking tape.
8. Airbrush a Foundation paint as a base (some Ochre colour) and then airbrush Sunburst Yellow. Highlight top of circle by adding some white to the yellow, and then shade the lower part with some Ochre.
9. Remove the stencil and freehand the black.
10. Apply powders to weather the whole hull and paint the metal parts silver (wash and highlight the metal parts as usual)
11. Go over edges with a graphite pencil, which gives a nice dull metallic look akin to exposed but unrusted metal.

Lastly, I ordered a set of 10 Cyber Beetles (Necron Scarabs) from Puppets War to serve as Steampunk Arachnids. I got 14! The casts are fine on the top, but some of the legs were miscast or missing. Apart from that, a good deal and a great price, and I don’t really notice the odd missing leg here or there.

Here they are on 30mm bases. Working on the 50mm bases for now. I will be doing 6 x 30mm and 2 x 50mm, and that leaves me 2 for spare parts/ bitz.

Painting was simple enough. Airbrush VAC Black all over. Airbrush the tops VAC Steel at an angle. Airbrush VGC Ice Blue around the glowy bit. Then add some white and airbrush a dot onto the glowy bit itself. Took about 20mins to do all 12.

“Make sure you never run out of unpainted white metal!”

Having taken this advice to heart and being possessed of a collection that ensures I will never fall foul of its terms, I decided to risk ruining a single metal miniature by pointing my new airbrush at it. I know you can always strip metal minis, but I can’t be bothered with the hassle usually, so a bad paintjob tends to stick round here.

The miniature I chose was the Guild Guardian, mainly on the basis that it was big  It also has a very large sword which would be ideal for trying NMM (Non-Metallic Metal) effects on, again using the airbrush.

Since this was the first miniature I have ever painted with an airbrush, and only my second time using the airbrush, I took things slow. Vallejo drying retarder was added to all paints to avoid the paint drying on the needle tip, and I kept the paints well-thinned (with Vallejo Thinner) and the PSI low (around 10-15 PSI).

I gave the model an even coat of Iyanden Darksun. I then made a 50:50 mix of Calthan Brown and Iyanden Darksun and went over all the recessed areas, all the shadowed areas and all the joints with this mix, keeping the lines as thin as I could. Then I mixed some White in with Iyanden Darksun and used this to highlight the model. Here is how it looked after that:

In this picture you can also see I have done the sword, using the technique from this video (Youtube link). This was a simple case of masking off the whole of the model apart from the sword. Note that I didn’t do this as well as I could have, and I got some overspray on his right forearm. Then, using the airbrush, I painted the sword Astronomicon Grey. I then masked one half of the sword (on both sides) and sprayed White at one end and Vallejo Night Blue at the other. Take off the masking tape, apply it to the painted half of the sword, and repeat the process on the other half of the sword.

After that I used Gryphonne Sepia to line every rivet and joint, which really made the detail pop:

Then it was out with the airbrush and back to a normal paintbrush to finish off all the details. I used some weathering powders and some glazes to get some colour modulation on the yellow armour, and here is the finished and based mini:

Just a quick post to show the results of airbrushing this morning with Vallejo Scarlett Red. The shading and highlighting comes through very clearly. A few spots I missed I can touch up hand.

The kids gave me a hand, and they got to try airbrushing as well

Pre-what a huh now?  Shhhh.  I will explain all

I have had a spraygun for a couple of years now (you can find some previous posts here), and I have finally upgraded to a proper airbrush/ compressor set up.  Some details on the setup at the end of this post, if you’re interested, but I thought I would stick up a couple of photos of a model I have been working on recently.

The model on the left is the Brass Coffin, a resin model costing £9 from Ramshackle Games.  It is in the 28-32mm scale, and so fits perfectly with steampunk games like Malifaux (Malifaux doesn’t have any vehicle rules as such, but it can always just sit there as some cool terrain).

I won’t be painting mine as weathered as this, as I want to try a technique called pre-shading with my airbrush.  Basically, this involves using an airbrush to set down dark lines and dark areas on the vehicle that then show through a later base coat, provided the base coat is applied thinly enough.  You can see a very good demonstration of this technique here (Youtube link).

You can take the basic pre-shading technique a step further and add some pre-highlighting.  This involves using the airbrush to lay down white highlights which, again, will show through the later base colour layer.  Obviously, with black shading and white highlights the model needs to be primed in grey.

Brass Coffin

The first model I bought from Ramshackle Games was not impressive – behold the Killdozer.  I am not a novice with resin models, but I could not find any way to fit this model together in any way that would resemble the picture.  I contacted the manufacturer to see if I was missing any pieces, but I was not.  He explained that this model was one of the very first ones he made, and the quality had gone up a lot since then.  Not a great deal of comfort for me, but I ended up with some bitz for my Orks, so – well.

Is the Brass Coffin really an improvement?  Yes – massively so.  It is not perfect, and there are areas where the mold is clearly struggling to replicate detail (esp on recessed areas), but this is a sizeable model which comes as one massive chunk of resin and four separate wheels.  It needs some clean up, but while I could not recommend the Killdozer to anyone, I could recommend the Brass Coffin.  Not without reservation, but provided you don’t mind getting out the files and hobby knife this is a kit you will like.

Probably best to pin the rear wheels, btw.

Pre-Shading/ Highlighting

This was my first outing with the airbrush, and I think it went pretty well.  I added some Vallejo Retarder Medium to the paint to prevent the paint drying on the tip, and that seemed to work well, meaning that I was able to keep spraying over an extended time without needing to strip the airbrush down or run any cleaner through it.  Here’s the pics:

Airbrush Setup

For those who are interested, I picked up the AS186 Compressor from Ebay, which comes with two airbrushes (both double action, internal mix, and one is side-feed while the other is siphon feed).

Here is a pic of the airbrush in an airbrush cleaner/ holder I bought from Ebay as well, and then a pic of the compressor itself.

I am very pleased with the compressor.  It is very simple to operate (an on/off button and a regulator to select the air-pressure), small and quiet.  I have young kids and this can run at midnight in the house without bothering them.  It has an airtank, meaning that the motor only runs until the airtank is at full pressure (50psi) and then turns off.  You then have completely silent airbrushing with a steady, moisture-free air feed.  It has auto-on and auto-off, moisture trap, standard airhose fittings, safety valve, sump valve and a UK plug fitted.  For the price, it is a steal.  Given that it comes with two excellent airbrushes – best deal of the year, as far as I am concerned.

One thing I need to get is some good, bulk cleaning solution.  Cleaning could be a pain in the neck without it.  I did buy the airbrush cleaning pot/ holder you see in the pic above, as well as Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and some cleaning brushes.  I am really looking forward to really getting to grips with this kit over the next few weeks, but a good start so far, I think

Being a huge fan of Testor’s Dullcote (in both its original and reformulated versions), I took the current UK product drought hard. When my last can ran dry – I won’t lie; it wasn’t pretty. Going cold turkey like that left some scars. I had to get more, and fast.

To cut a long and, I now realise, boring, story short I bought some of the Dullcote in liquid form. Would it airbrush?

Yes

That’s pretty much the gist of this post. If you were hoping for more, sorry. I wondered if I would have to thin the Dullcote, so added some white spirit. This was a bad idea, as it turned out, and my test model got the dreaded ‘cloudy white’ finish. Turns out you can airbrush the stuff without thinning. It dries very quickly, and you can see the dulling effect almost immediately (I’m talking about 1 or 2 secs after spraying unless you soak the model, which you shouldn’t do).

And that’s it. Until someone starts selling spray cans again, use the liquid stuff and any airbrush you fancy.

The model you see here (something from Halo) was given two coats of a very gloss varnish (Plaka spray) and then a single coat of Testors using the airbrush. Click on it and take a look at how matt it is.

If the far away wing looks dirtier than the nearest wing, that is because I was trying out some oil washes on it. Looks pretty good, huh?

(The TX-42 squad was also finished off with airbrushed Testor’s)

It only took me about 6 months, but I got there in the end

Pics of the finished squad. Each has magnetised weapons and sequencial markings on the hull. There is also a pathfinder shas’ui – he has white shoulder armour and some sept markings on his helmet.

These units are best run with either fusion blasters or missile pods. With fusion blasters, they are even better than piranha at killing armour (up to including AV14) whereas with missile pods they can stay back, make full use of their disruption pods and do the job of a team of deathrains (while staying alive to make last minute Flat Out moves to contest objectives).

The other weapons (pulse rifle and rail rifle) are useful, but the rail rifles are single shot weapons that are only effective against MEQ, while the plasma rifles entice the tx-42s to get within a 12″ range. At that range you want to be killing whatever you shoot at, and that is unlikely to happen with only 3 TL plasma rifles. It is still an option, though.

The painting consisted of airbrushing the base colour, working up the white and other highlight colours with multiple coats, weathering with ink washes, and then using pigments and other weathering products I have mentioned in various other posts.

All comments more than welcome

(Original post here)

Got six Crisis Suits assembled, primed and basecoated with the airbrush (Vallejo Earth) tonight. I did three Pathfinders as well. And I cleaned the kitchen. Am some kind of modern superman.

Also started assembling another Skyray, just because I love those things. Gorgeous curvy lines, like Betty Boop, but with gun drones. I will make it swappable between a Skyray, a Hammerhead/ Ionhead and a Devilfish, with the aid of rare earth magnets. Why ‘rare earth’? Are they made from special mud, or something? Anyway, I loves ‘em. I magnetise practically everything (except these Crisis Suits, both for time and because the Fireknife is such a reliable configuration I will never regret having another six of them – got nineteen of them now ).

Okay, I confess – I don’t really have an airbrush. I have a Badger 150 single action, external mix, siphon fed spraygun, but what little I have managed to do with it has convinced me I need to invest in the real deal. Something silvery sleek and alluring like a 1950s spaceship crossed with a hypodermic needle, which means dual action, internal mix and gravity fed, hopefully with a quiet-ish compressor with air tank and moisture trap somewhere in the not too distant future.

In the meantime, my Badger 150 has been (fairly) reliably putting the base colour on lots of vehicles and Crisis Suits. I say ‘fairly’ because using an airbrush has a bit of a learning curve. It is a balancing act where you have to keep several balls in the air at once – air pressure, paint/ air mix and distance from surface are only your starters here. You also have to think about whether or not your airbrush is getting clogged with fast-drying acrylic paint, or maybe your paint is insufficiently thinned, or too thin to coat consistently. It’s spluttering now – should I shake the air can, or swap it out for a fresh one, or has the paint itself run out? Maybe the nozzle is gummed up?

I sometimes feel when I am airbrushing that I have maybe 30 seconds when all the balls are in the air at once, and everything is running smoothly, but gravity will reassert itself with all the inevitability of GW price-gouging complaints and some of those balls will come back down again. Fix the problem; test; start juggling again.

One thing that has helped enormously (beside the many and detailed tutorials on the net) is realising that although an airbrush can coat a model in one pass, this does not mean you should. Doing my TX-42s recently showed me the excellent results possible with multiple, light coats, allowing a few minutes drying time between each coat (or, in my case, a few minutes of Death Race on DVD). It takes longer, but it is still so much quicker than trying to do it with a paintbrush, and there is no paintbrush on Earth that could produce such a smooth finish.

I really, really want a Tiger Shark AX-1-0, now