Airbrushing a Mini

This is my first post on my new blog. It is really not meant for general consumption yet so if you happen to have stumbled here I apologize for what may seems like a partial blog post.

I have a few big projects that I am working on at the moment but the thing I wanted to write about today was using my airbrush to paint figures.





I have long used my airbrush to do priming and pre-shading. By pre-shading I mean spraying a dark color from below and light color from above- basically. Pre shading has really helped me quite a bit. It allows me to see where the shadows are and if I don't do the best job painting something I at least have paint in any patch I have missed with the brush. It's also a great way to set the tone for a unit or whatever. If you pre-shade the unit  with purple shadows that tends to come across in the finished project. Great.

What I have long quested for however was the ability to actually paint a figure with the airbrush. I mean like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqCZEzfdl4

I have known it is possible for a long time but have never become well enough acquainted with my beloved airbrush to actually get decent results.

A couple months ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a workshop put on by Mr. Justin of Secret Weapon Miniatures, on how to paint a figure with an airbrush. It was great. Mr Justin is a dedicated scholar and advocate of all things mini and a generally nice guy. We attempted to paint an Ogre Bull with our airbrushes and it was very frustrating. I did however take one big step toward believing my airbrush is capable very precise painting.

Your airbrush can paint a perfectly smooth pencil thin line.

Yep, even that poor neglected one collecting dust out in your garage. You just have to sit down with it and figure out how to use darn thing, and you have to BELIEVE!

After taking the workshop I stumbled on Studio Giraldez's incredible Facebook page. Mr. Giraldez is the head painter at Corvus Belli, maker of Infinity minis, and he has a really nice Step-By-Step on how to paint up the Infinity Operation: Icestorm Box set living on his Facebook page. I just finished up some Infinity minis. The old style Fusiliers, and had several more to paint so I thought I would give it a go.

After a couple of tries this is what I came up with:

The guy on the left's armor is airbrush only and the guy on the right's is airbrush with some edge highlighting, lining, and some glazing to darken the shadows a tad. Pretty good for about 30 minutes of painting.

As I get more familiar with how the blog works I will get more in-depth with my posts, with more photos, and hopefully have some good Step-By-Steps of my own.

Thanks for stopping by!~

Demi.