To Infinity and Beyond

Well the core box is done, following the steps in Angel’s books I was surprised how much of it was done with the brush but the Taigha Creatures at the end are probably the most airbrushed of them all with only the mouth, teeth & eyes done with a brush (and some scales on the shoulders after the airbrushing).

So what did I learn about airbrushing:

• I prefer flow improver to thinners as thinners seems to dry quickly on the needle tip.
• if you mix paint in the cup use an old brush to mix it up, backwashing didnt seem to do the job especially if the paint was thick
• Always add more flow improver than you think
• Dont try and use an airbrush with 1 drop of paint and flow improver because you have a small area to do, this never seemed to end well for me
• Be patient, lots of lights layers allow to dry between them seems to work the best.

I’m going to park this project for now, I’ll come back to it at a later date as I have the expansions and collectors box to paint. For now I leave you with some of the items from the scenery pack on title with couple of the miniatures.

So the heroes from the core box are pretty much complete, I tried to match the colours on the base to one of the defiance titles.

Faces are still a problem and they look better from 3 foot than up close, however on to the combined army

Got some more done on these, this one was mainly done with the brush rather than the airbrush.

Lots of white and purple here.

Further progress in getting the core box painted.

Still not totally happy with my airbrush work on these, the spray is not tight enough for my liking and the highlights tend to over spray the darker colours. However still early days with the airbrush and I’m sure it will get better over time.

I am awaiting the arrival of some alpha series bases and some paint for some of the skin tones. Once the heroes are done then I’ll move on to the combined army (maybe I should have started with them?).

Further progress in getting the core box painted.

Still not totally happy with my airbrush work on these, the spray is not tight enough for my liking and the highlights tend to over spray the darker colours. However still early days with the airbrush and I’m sure it will get better over time.

This is my attempt at following Angel Giraldez book on paint infinity miniatures and using his NMM technique on the black parts of the armour.

The yellow armour is gradually lightened with white to get the highlights and then all the undersuit is painted black. This is then highlighted with grey and white using the airbrush and outlined with white.

I then put a blue glaze over the top of the black but I think I used to much blue as this ended up being very dark blue to I went back in with the white highlights

I’ve painted the undersuit and added some white highlights and cavalry brown to the grooves of the armour. I still think the airbrushed highlights need to be more focused but I will practice some more on that.

Just waiting for some paint to arrive to do the face.

The paint set came with an infinity miniature so I thought I would give that a go. I haven’t used the ice yellow for this but added white to the Scrofulous Brown to get the highlights.

New airbrush in hand I’ve given it another go, volume 2 of angel’s book has a slightly different paint recipe than the paint set in that the last paint ice yellow leaves it looking a different colour than the art work for yu jing.

I put some white outlining on the armour of try 5 and some Calvary brown on the groves to get the final look.

New airbrush in hand I’ve given it another go, volume 2 of angel’s book has a slightly different paint recipe than the paint set in that the last paint ice yellow leaves it looking a different colour than the art work for yu jing.

I put some white outlining on the armour of try 5 and some Calvary brown on the groves to get the final look.

I’ve given it another go, but I am not sure all is well with the airbrush as it doesn’t seem to want to do the small fine points. I tried the exercises in the article in this months wargames illustrated which has a nice piece on getting started with an airbrush, the exercises are draw noughts and crosses on some paper and draw a circle on some paper and colour it so it looks like a sphere.

It is around 10 years old so maybe its past its best, I have ordered a new Harder & Steenbeck one so I’m hoping that will give me better results (or I’ll find out its just me).

This is try no 2, same paints as before but less over spray, seem to be getting a bit of splatter from the airbrush so I might have over done it with the thinner.

Happier with this one.

I wanted something to practice on before starting with the miniatures from Defiance so I bought the STL’s for these from Titan forge miniatures on myminifactory and although they come pre-supported for some reason the right arm for 4 of them failed and ended up a bit of a splodge (see below for a comparison between the good one and a failed one).

I have both of Angel Giraldez’s books so I thought I would try a Yu Ling paint scheme on the first one.

Its starts with a Cavalry Brown and Orange Brown mix. The next one is Orange Brown, then Ice Yellow. Lastly I added a bit of white to the Ice Yellow.

I am not sure I am totally happy with this but I think a wash over the top my bring out the detail and a dark under suit will make the armour pop.