Developing Airbrushing Skill

So I've been learning a lot more about the airbrush. I'm getting pretty excited about it if I'm honest, as it is turning into a really promising area to massively expand my skill set and also is speeding up bulk painting immensely.

The latest batch of Nobz (see previous post for finished results) were part of a larger number of unpainted nobz I had, 35 in total. Many of them the Black Reach 3 part models - head, one arm, everything else - and this configuration does not lend itself to the separate parts method I detailed previously. So I tried something different: trying to airbrush different areas of the same piece. And with a little trial and error, I found a method that definitely worked, and has me really excited for future projects.

Basically the challenge in blocking in separate areas of base colour on a single piece is getting a crisp edge. My paint scheme helped me here in that a lot of areas are divided by a black border, so I went in using that as my margin of error and if I went over the lined I'd brush in the black later. The obvious example of this is the black belt between the brown of the trousers and the cream of the vest.

But with a little more adventure I found I could do more. With the airbrush hardly pressed I could get a really crisp edge, so I had a go and the green of the arms and the black of the boots. Angling the model away helps, and always keeping in mind what is behind what you are spraying. For the first time on my blog, I'll add a video of this for the boots.

Blocking in colour before inking, highlighting and detailing is the most tedious part of painting in my opinion, so cutting down the timeit takes is very helpful psychologically. But the finish that airbrushing gives is also really nice, its flat and thin, so it leaves even more detail of the miniature and also takes further paint really well.

 In the above photo, all the paint you can see has been airbrushed. The metallic needed another coat as you can see at this stage the green still showed through.

In this photo, I have brushed in the black belt and braces, and the yellow details on the arm, and then airbrushed the whole miniature with a brown ink, even over the green.

As I've said, its not just about the speed now, its about how nicely everything else goes on after, so in the future I think I'll use the airbrush even for small runs and single miniatures.