As I have blathered on about before, I collect, assemble, and paint plastic crack for a game I almost never play. I’ve found it’s really the act of creation and expression that is more enjoyable than pushing the plastic across the tabletop. For a while now I’ve been thinking about getting an airbrush to try new techniques and to facilitate ones I already use. For one, it would allow me to prime models cheaper on a per unit basis. But, this isn’t really a hobby for those seeking to be economical, it’s a damned money pit.

So, first question is what type of airbrush to get do I even know enough to get started? Ages ago, when I’d first started down this dark path, I’d flirted with airbrushing, but I had far less money to sink into it and the absolute piece of crap I tried to work with at the time made me shy away for fifteen years. In retrospect, I recognize several of the mistakes I made that torpedoed that first attempt – wrong type of paint; wrong type of thinner, wrong propellant, not investing in a compressor… but do I really know better now?

Yes, yes I do.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to do my research this time, and only made three mistakes. So, to get started I needed some hardware. I had been looking longingly at a top of the line Iwata I’d found, but did want to ruin an expensive piece of hardware if I screwed up significantly. Looking at my options, I got an entry level model from Master instead. While not as fine a machine, the internet had deemed it solid enough. And here I made my first mistake. Lets see if anyone can spot it.

That’s right, the compressor it came with was a tankless model. That meant it would run whenever I was spraying, starting and stopping more often, and causing more wear and tear. Whatever, too late now. It works, and that’s all I need at the moment. That, and something to work on… paint… thinner… cleaner… okay, I need a lot. In total I sank north of $500 in stuff for this project. Since the airbrush and compressor kit was only $70, that means other sundries accounted for the bulk of my setup costs. But that’s all sunk costs at this point. I have my setup, and I found an isolated Stormcast Liberator miniature laying around in a box of random bitz that had been fully assembled ages ago and never ever primed. It was the perfect candidate for a test piece because I could ruin it and not care. Okay I’d care a little because I take pride in my work, but it wasn’t something that was part of an existing project.

Step 1 – Prime the Model Learn to Spray

I added primer to the pot on the airbrush, pointed it at the target and pushed the trigger. Air began to flow with a hiss… but no pigment. What was going on?

Pointing it at a piece of paper, I began to futz about trying to figure out what had gone wrong. It turns out that despite all my research and all those internet videos I’d watched, I’d forgotten the very basic principles about how the trigger functioned. You see, pushing down on the trigger is required to open the valve holding back the air and letting it flow. That part was correct. What it doesn’t do is move the needle. The needle runs down the core of the airbrush and through the bottom of the paint reservoir. It regulates the flow of paint into the airstream. In order to let the paint out, I had to pull back on the trigger. These two actions control very precisely how much pigment goes flying out the nozzle. That, and the pressure setting on the compressor. The air pressure you run at changes the character of the spray and what the optimum consistency of paint you should use is. I mostly ran at 40psi because I didn’t want to start fiddling with too many variables just yet.

Once I worked out how the trigger functioned and did some test sprays on the paper, I could move on to

Step 2 – Prime the Model

There wasn’t a whole lot to say about the actual spraying process. I covered it in black primer all right. It probably wasn’t the most efficient airbrush priming ever done, but it was neater and more controlled than the spray can priming I’ve done in the past. Satisfied with the priming job, I set about the next step.

Step 3 – Clean the Airbrush

Like any other brush, when you are done with a color, you want to clean out the leftover paint and residues. The process, however is rather different. The three areas that get paint in them during normal operation are the paint reservoir, the needle, and the nozzle. You can deep clean the airbrush by disassembling it and scrubbing all these parts, but that isn’t needed every time if you are careful during normal cleanup. To get the job done, we need – water; something to dump the wastewater in; solvent commonly sold as airbrush cleaner; and paper towels. First we wash the pot, err, reservoir. We need to fill it with water, agitate the water, and dump it out a few times to get the leftover paint out of the pot. After the easily removed residues are dumped into the wastewater basin, I ran airbrush cleaner through the mechanism until it stopped carrying color with it. However, at this point I made my second mistake.

It cost me a shirt.

While running airbrush cleaner through the mechanism, I sprayed it into the wastewater basin. This kicked up the wastewater and splashed it everywhere. There was still plenty of primer in that water, and even prompt attempts at cleaning did not save my shirt from the splotchy stains. I tossed it in the wash and put on a shirt that I could accept damage to should new spillage take place. I could have kept wearing the stained one, but it was wet.

Lesson learned. Now I spray the cleaner into a paper towel, so I can prevent this from recurring, and observe the color for it to turn clear. If the solvent isn’t picking up any pigments from the mechanism, I figure the next paint won’t get tinted by anything left behind either. Periodic deep cleanings are recommended, just to keep the airbrush in top shape, but this process is good enough for a color change.

Step 4 – Basecoating

As I’d said, one of the reasons I got the airbrush was to try techniques I couldn’t do with a regular brush. It’s not that what I’m attempting is impossible with a regular brush, but it’s more annoying. I wanted to try out a method for getting a metallic primary color that didn’t involve mixing paint. The basic idea is to lay down a metallic basecoat, then a nonmetallic glaze over it. Getting an even coverage of a glaze is supposed to be easier with the airbrush, but first, basecoating. In my spending spree, I picked up some metallic airbrush paints from my new favorite paint company. And I picked out their ‘Aluminum’ shade, figuring that the bright silver would have the best chance of being visible though the later coat(s).

Laying down a coat of Aluminum over the black primer was a delight. The high contrast let me see exactly what I was doing, and it flowed smoothly all through the application. I was so happy.

Riding high on that success, I cleaned the airbrush again (remembering my earlier mistakes and not repeating them) and moved on to the glaze.

Step 5 – Glazing

The blue I had was just called “Blue” and had a very strong pigment. I was worried about it overwhelming the basecoat and eliminating the metallic effect. I had thought ahead on this and had acquired two products that could be put to use – Glazing Medium, and Airbrush Thinner. What do they do? Glazing medium is an additive for acrylic paints to increase their translucency without changing their viscosity. It’s slightly cloudy rather than transparent, and thicker than water. Airbrush Thinner is, well, thinner than water, and reduces the viscosity of paint. It is transparent. So I mixed one part paint, one part glazing medium, and two parts thinner in the pot and sprayed the model.

This was my third mistake.

You see, the reduced viscosity meant that the paint didn’t stay where it first struck. It behaved more like a wash, draining into the recesses, or simply being pushed around by the air from the brush. The splotchy uneven result was not what I wanted.

So, I cleaned the airbrush again and thought about how to fix this.

Step 6 – Rebasecoating.

The good thing about airbrush paints is that they all have the be low viscosity to even work in the airbrush. They are laid down in a fine mist and produce a thin layer on the surface. This means, even with the failure of my first attempt, the details on the model were not clogged with paint. I could start over without significant hassle or needing to strip the paint off. I didn’t want to go all the way back to primer black. I just needed to cover up the error. So I grabbed the darkest metallic I had at hand, a paint called “Dark Steel” from the same set as the aluminum. Having let the blue dry, I laid down a coat of Dark Steel to cover up my shame and cleaned the brush.

I was about to lay down a full coat of Aluminum again when an idea struck me.

Step 7 – Zenithal Highlighting

I’d set out on this airbrush journey to try new techniques, and one that is frequently used by the internet video makers is one called Zenithal Highlighting. Now, what on earth is Zenithal Highlighting? Well, it is actually a technique that goes back to the Renaissance with the early masters who brought portraiture out of the flat medieval style into something more realistic. In principle it is actually very simple – you apply lighter colors to the surfaces of the subject that would be visible from above, and darker colors where they would be shaded. It’s more difficult to execute in the two-dimensional space, but it adds a depth to the image that you only really notice when it’s missing.

In the three-dimensional space with an airbrush, it is dead simple. You take a lighter color, point the top of the model towards the airbrush, and spray from ‘above’, using the model’s own structure and detail as the mask to create the shadows. As I already had a dark metallic base, I applied a zenithal highlight of Aluminum to the model. In photography, since the light in the workspace is from above, it’s a bit difficult to see the effect.

Now, it was time to try the blue again.

Step 8 – I am Alpharius

Realizing that the problems from the previous attempt could be averted if I used a higher viscosity of paint, I opted to simply omit the thinner from the new formulation, going 1:1 paint to glazing medium. This time, the results were much closer to what I intended.

While I still need practice, I’m definitely getting the hang of the airbrush.