Adventures in Airbrushing

So, I’ve had a couple hours of hobby time today, and I remembered to turn my camera on and take some progress shots. With that being said, I thought I would use this to show anyone still on the fence just why airbushing can transform your hobby, and why it is nowhere near as difficult as you think.

This is a mantic hornet dropship, and aside from waiting for various things to dry it took about 2 hours start to finish.

I haven’t touched in the windows yet, but other than that its complete. I have another hornet, and I am going to show you how I did that.

Now, first off, this isn’t going to win painting awards, if you are like me and have  too little spare time to fit in everything you want to do in your hobby though, it gets stuff table ready quickly, and myself, I think they look great as well.

Lets start off with what I use:

You don’t need the most expensive airbrush, and the brand of paints don’t matter either mostly, although airbrush ready stuff such as vallejo game air do make it easier when you are starting out.

A word on airbrushes though, you can get good use out of the cheaper ones, the main difference between those and the big brand such as Harder and Steenbeck is ease of maintenance.

You can strip the H&S Infinity in the photo down to all its bare parts, nozzle, needle, cup, body and trigger mechanism without requiring any tools, in less than 5 minutes, and put it back together just as quickly. That makes it easier to clean, and less time cleaning is what you are paying for mostly.

The key thing about airbrushes, and the one everyone struggles with, is that it can seem a daunting thing to use. But the key really is to just blow some paint through it and give it a go. I doubt anyone reading this gives a second thought to making a mistake with a normal brush, so why does it matter with an airbrush? Its just another way of putting paint onto models.

I’ll go through the stages of the painting process in the next entry