Adventures in Airbrushing: Part 1 - Wolves and Warriors

Art is hard.

Not to pretend that what I am producing can be considered art. It isn't. But many of the same techniques apply to miniature painting. And for a neophyte, this shared techniques are difficult to reproduce reliably.

Two weeks ago, all of the airbrush stuff I ordered off of Amazon started arriving. I went against the recommendation of the internet (and with the suggestion of the local airbrush expert) and purchased cheap equipment. Basically the following:

  • Master Airbrush beginner kit - has a compressor, Master G22 airbrush, and some paints. Screaming deal, but everything is cheap. 
  • Master Airbrush booth. 
  • Vallejo thinner, flow improver, and grey primer. 
  • Some extra stuff like hoses and quick releases.
  • Neo for Iwata beginner airbrush. 

Everything went together smoothly. The only concern is the compressor, which is louder than expected. There are times it sounds like a banshee dancing and wailing to a dubstep track. Probably not a good sign.

And finally, it was time to begin!

Wolves. Technically zombie wolves were the start of the great adventure. 24 of the wolves were primed and painted in about 3 hours, something that would have taken probably 8 hours over many days to do with only a brush. 

A few different patterns were attempted. A dark brown wolf that is fairly generic, and a light gray wolf with different top coat coloration. 

The airbrush made all of the painting quite easy, saving tons of time. That said, there were some disappointing parts of the result.

Some of the coloration looks like a dusting of a darker color. I have since read that the dusting effect occurs when you apply a color that is too different than the underlying color. I'm other words, if I had taken more time and smoothly transitioned from gray to black, the splatter would not be apparent.

With the wolves as done as I was willing to work on them, I hunted for more minis to practice on. My brother's Morats were available, so I grabbed them and started painting! 

A Sogarat HMG and an old Yaogat Sniper from Infinity. Poor guys... 

A Sogarat HMG and an old Yaogat Sniper from Infinity. Poor guys... 

After priming gray, I covered them in black and blended up to a light gray. Essentially, from the sides, a dark gray was applied. Then from a smaller angle above a medium gray was applied. Lastly, a light gray was applied from directly above. The technique is called zenithal lighting, and my first attempt at it yielded reasonable results.

The axe is an attempt at NMM. Unfortunately, getting too close to the axe a PSI much too high for the very thin white that was being used caused the area to be over-brightened. 

The Sogarat and Yaogat after cleanup. 

The Sogarat and Yaogat after cleanup. 

These two figures really enforced the value of an airbrush as an additional tool when painting. It would have taken multiple nights to get to the point the airbrush got these miniatures to in an hour. That is incredible. All that remains with them is a few details and some edge lining.

Feeling confident after the success of the Morats, it was time to try to use non-airbrush paints. Three assembled Caledonian miniatures were selected from the Infinity cabinet and I went to town.

The experimental figures were two Caledonian Volunteers from Infinity, one with an HMG and the other a Rifle.

The experimental figures were two Caledonian Volunteers from Infinity, one with an HMG and the other a Rifle.

It will be tough to judge these guys until they are completed and can be compared with ones painted earlier. I think I made a few mistakes though:

  • The dark base layer needed more coats than I applied. Two coats of the dark green were applied, but more were required to establish a solid foundation.  Perhaps this was because I over-thinned the paint. 
  • It may be best to leave the brightest highlight for brush work. I couldn't quite control everything that the top highlight was hitting, so they're very bright compared to the previous Volunteers. 
The original Caledonian Volunteer on the left and airbrushed Volunteer on the right. 

The original Caledonian Volunteer on the left and airbrushed Volunteer on the right. 

It has been quite the adventure so far. I have a number of Caledonian miniatures being assembled in the hopes of cranking them out with the airbrush. Mistakes will be made, lessons will be learned, and minis will be painted.

Airbrush School

Experts are great.

Even better than experts are experts who share their knowledge.

Gamer's Haven has one of those experts. The humble master of painting, Mike.

On Saturday, he offered a hands-on airbrushing course, and I was lucky enough to go. The only requirement was that you were to bring your own larger model to paint. Generally, this means a Warhammer 40,000 vehicle. 

The only large miniatures I have are some Infinity remotes, and the crazy Abominations of the Zombicide Kickstarter.

Friday night I hastily primed the Abominatroll and Wolfbomination. The Abominatroll is a crazy, humongous monster, complete with armpit hair. The Wolfbomination is a bit more tame, looking more like a large wolf. 


The Abominatroll from the Zombicide Black Plague Zombie Bosses Abomination Pack. Complete with longest title ever.

The Abominatroll from the Zombicide Black Plague Zombie Bosses Abomination Pack. Complete with longest title ever.

After teaching us the basics of airbrushing, Mike turned us loose with the 2 airbrushes that he brought. I started with the Abominatroll, and per Mike's recommendation, started highlighting him with straight white.

I found this to be difficult to control. It didn't produce the smooth transition I had hoped for, but it did produce a transition. Honestly, the model didn't look great. The white spattered in spots, making the giant Troll look like he had run through a grey polkadot factory. The highlighted areas didn't make much sense. Plenty of folks cane over to give the "eew, you paint d it like that?!" look while smiling awkwardly. By all accounts, it was a failure.

The Abominatroll after final touches were applied.

Onward to the next mini to mess up, the Wolfbomination! Starting with a dark brown, I base coated most of the Wolfbomination, creating some shading. I then switched out to a medium brown and highlighted the face and other raised areas. Unfortunately, the paint I used had a glossy finish to it, but I think those efforts will look great once hit with the matte varnish. The entire process took less than 10 minutes.

The Abominatroll with Grin and Scowl from the Zombicide: Black Plague kickstarter.

Leaving the Haven defeated, I faced the reality that it was not possible to ruin the Abominatroll further. Once I got home, I started slapping a purple wash all over him. And he started, miraculously, to look more interesting. The wash helped make the shading look more interesting, and picked out the details.  

The Wolfbomination from Zombicide: Black Plague - Wulfsburg. I plan on doing the next one in a grey-wolf theme instead of the brown.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that the airbrush layer was so thin that it didn't obscure detail at all. This made washing over the top of it a breeze! There were a few spots that needed some light drybrushing in order to pick out details, such as the underside of the arms. 

The Wolfbomination required less work. I did a light drybrush on his mane to make the details of the hair pop. Otherwise, all highlighting is from the airbrush, and the shading from an application of Quick Shade.

A size comparison between the Wolfbomination and Silas from the Zombicide: Black Plague core box.

So there they are, the poor two minis that were the first to be airbrushed. They shall forever wear their pathetic coloration as a warning for all who yearn to learn about airbrushing.

A Year of Painting

I almost didn't do this post.

To do it right potentially requires pulling out the camera and taking quality photos of newly painted figures. Honestly, I don't want to stop painting long enough to do that.

The story goes something like this. While we were in Scotland for my brother's wedding I found Sorastro's Painting Guides for Imperial Assault. I had been fooled into buying the Imperial Assault deal on Massdrop, and it had arrived shortly before we left. There was not much literature about IA, and searching for it instead produced a link to Sorastro's guides. 

It only took one watch to know that I wanted to try my hand at painting.

The first Stormtroopers were full of mistakes. You can read about those mistakes here.  

The first Imperial Assault Stormtroopers.  You can see the brown wash used instead of black on them.  Having the correct paint helps.

The droids that followed weren't much better, but they were easy to do. 

These minor improvements continued. Each miniature introduced a new technique to understand and master.

Then Vader was the next figure I wanted to do.  That said, I had zero confidence in my own ability to properly highlight a miniature.  An alternative was needed.  Queue Zombicide!

Zombicide comes with so many miniatures that it was the perfect tool to help get better. Painting half of the zombies and the survivors helped me understand contrast and color theory better. 

The Zombicide survivors are under attack...

Then, "real" miniature games started calling. Infinity was the next game painted, and that phase lasted for a good 8 months and will continue once I have wrapped up Zombicide Black Plague (and possibly RelicBlade as well). There are still hundreds of unpainted Infinity minis. That said, many of my favorite paint jobs have been on the Infinity miniatures.  

All of the Infinity miniatures completed in 2015.

Painting the Corvus Belli sculpts is quite different from painting the Imperial Assault or Zombicide minis. Infinity generally has detail to the extreme, including what could best be described as greebling. The poses aren't as dynamic as I would like, but they generally gave character and style. 

After dabbling in three different factions, the Steel Phalanx of the ALEPH was the force chosen to be focus on.

The first Infinity list, 150 points of Steel Phalanx.

The first Infinity list, 150 points of Steel Phalanx.

This was my first alternative color scheme, and it didn't really hit its stride until about 15 miniatures in. There are a few good miniatures in there and they have a similar theme, but the identity and cohesion I was hoping for never matured in a way that looked great on the table.

Infinity has officially occupied most of my painting time.  I started painting Caledonians in October and continued until June when I took a break for Zombicide: Black Plague. Over 8 months of painting miniatures for the same game.

And now for a sad statistic.  In that 8 months, I only completed 56 figures for my collection. That is nearly 255 days at a rate of a miniature every 4.5 days.

Ouch.

Zombicide: Black Plague has been fun even if the miniatures are a lower quality.  I learned how to airbrush while painting it, and it was like being back at the beginning all over again.

The airbrushed Abominatroll next to Scowl and Grin from the Zombicide Black Plague kickstarter.

The airbrushed Abominatroll next to Scowl and Grin from the Zombicide Black Plague kickstarter.

Man, I am bad at airbrushing right now.  But with practice, and I have a ton of miniatures to practice on, I think it can be an amazing tool in the arsenal.

So there it is.  My year of painting in review.  Honestly, it was all possible because of the magical Sorasto. Please check out his guides and consider sponsoring him on Patreon if you fall in love with the hobby as I have.

Finally, here is a small gallery of how my panting has improved over the year.  Thanks for reading and- to quote Sorastro- happy painting!

Something Like Painting - Zombicide Black Plague Progress

Wow, what a month it's been painting Black Plague.

Because I think stats are fun, here's what I've accomplished in a month:

  • 64 Zombies (fatties, walkers, and runners)
  • 2 Abominations
  • 1 Necromancer
  • 7 Survivors

74 total miniatures, not bad at all for a slow painter like me!

Here comes the neighborhood...

I must admit, I'm using a cheater version of Sorastro's zombie guide.  I'm not doing anything after applying the varnish, like giving the face a highlight or eye glow.  I do plan on at least adding eye glow at some point, but completing the set is currently more important to me than doing them really well.  Peeps be coming to play, yo!

The first six survivors, with poor lighting. Left to right: Redcap Rodney, Nelly, Ann, Lady Grimm, Cadence, and Baldric.

After knocking out Cadence and Lady Grimm, I decided that I would use the Black Plague survivors to practice cranking up the contrast when painting.  I like how the extra contrast is turning out, particularly on Baldric and Nelly.

I feel like I didn't quite achieve the same level of contrast with Redcap Rodney's skin.  I should have taken the highlights one tone higher, but really just wanted to be done with him.

Ann the nun close-up.

Ann is one of the first miniatures where I feel like the True Metallic Metal (TMM) turned out great.  I love her armor bits. That said, I wish I had cranked up the highlights on her deep blue nun-garb.  It would have made for a more dynamic figure.

Also, this is the first survivor miniature that wasn't very high quality.  Some of the Zombies had problems with literal gaps in their sides, but Ann's face was nearly impossible to find detail in. This made her face near-impossible to get right, and unfortunately I settled for "good enough."

The gold embellishments are not in her character art, but I think they give a great amount of contrast to the figure, and also help me feel better about the choice of a dark blue habit instead of black/grey.

The first Necromancer.

The Necromancer was a good figure to paint. He has a lot of details, and most have enough depth to make painting them easy.

I decided to be brave and practice shading with paint instead of washes on his cloak. I started with a dark gray and shaded down to a black. I then highlighted up to a medium gray in most areas. Unfortunately, I chose to do a fast job instead of a good job, and that leaves some chalky highlights and visible lines. Considering it is a tabletop piece that is okay. However, I am uncertain if I can do a much better job than this.

I love the blue jewel though. It is a great center piece for the figure.

I posted him to the Zombicide reddit hoping for direction on how to make him better.

Finished Silas prior to varnish.

Silas is the most recent completed miniature. He had a significant miscast similar to many of the zombies. Basically, he has a 1mm gap in his right leg. In hindsight, I should have filled the gap in with green stuff and sculpted it to blend smoothly. Then again, he's just tabletop quality.  The folks I play with likely won't care.

For his color palette on the green cloak, I tried using the Android Paint Palette app. It recommend that I use Reaper HD Stained Olive for shading, but when I tried it on the miniature, the green was a dark brown-green.  It looks okay, but if it wasn't an exact tonal match, then I think I would have preferred a cooler dark-green.

His face had similar problems to Ann's. There wasn't clear definition for everything, and that made it difficult to paint.  I tried shading under his huge cheekbones with Agrax Earthshade, and I think the effect works.

There it is! A painted, slightly bastardized Zombicide: Black Plague box. The first play will be in a couple weeks, giving me time to finish more of the Kickstarter zombies and a few additional survivors and necromancers for varied game play. 

 

Something Like Painting: The Infinity Challenge

Quite possibly the best feature of X-Wing: The Miniatures Game is that the models come painted. You can walk into a game store, drop $15 on a ship in a cool toy-like package, pop it open, and be using it in a game within 5 minutes. It's amazing.

Since my last blog, I've started playing two games that are not like that at all: Malifaux and Infinity. While both of the games immediately captured me with their rules and their fluff, I have found myself far more devoted to Infinity than Malifaux (even after spending $150 on two Malifaux crews). Unfortunately for Malifaux, I rarely have Tuesday nights free to play at my FLGS.

However, both of these games come with figures that are unassembled and unpainted. You cannot pop them out of the package and get to playing within minutes, or even days.

Malifaux can be particularly nasty to assemble. The models are done in a type of plastic (I won't pretend to know enough to say which type) and require tweezing, scraping, holding, and praying to get assembled. Some of the Malifaux models are unbelievably complex and tiny at the same time.  I'm looking at you, Mr Unassembled Electrical Creation.

Infinity is usually much easier to assemble, but all of the models are made out of a 2%-5% led compound. Not exactly the best for having around kiddos, especially when they're unpainted and unvarnished. Most models come in 3-5 pieces, and some have tiny antennae that will get lost, bent, or broken.

The Infinity miniatures have been a joy to paint. The metal sculpts have plenty of detail, and you can probably get away with a simple base coat plus washes to turn out great figures.  To keep my motivation up, I started a personal blog of my painting progress and goals.  There were some incredible deals over Black Friday, and suddenly I'm looking at only having about 20% of the models I own painted. This isn't good enough.  My personal challenge is to flop that to 80% of my Infinity painted. That is going to take a few months, but it is the end goal. The painting journal and goals helps to keep me on track.

Here are a few of my favorite Infinity figures:

This is Keith Young, the baby of the 3 Young brothers in my Caledonian Volunteers. He's carrying a Chain Rifle and is the cheapest of the Caledonian troops at 6 points. He also has 1 kill to his name so far, the game winning kill when my brother was playing the forces of PanOceania.  This was the second batch of tartans I had painted, and turned out okay.  I could clean the tartans up more, but I left them where they are in the interest of time.

Munro McGill is the first of the Highlander Grey Rifles that I painted. I did a standard Black Watch tartan on him, and tried NMM on his chest plate, which looks better in this picture than it actually does. His skin is okay, but as the picture shows, his chrome dome isn't as blended as it should be. I should probably also add a spot highlight on the top of his head for the reflection off of the skin.

Abigail Thompson is one of the 3 PanOceania Fusiliersfrom Operation: Icestorm that I painted. I tried applying a blush with a very thin wash, but it didn't turn out as well as I was hoping. Otherwise I'm quite pleased with how she turned out.

Eva Nogales is Abigail's counterpart on the Nomad side. A standard, Combi Rifle Alguacile. I love how her hair turned out, though it's actually bad. It looks incredibly fake and that's not such a bad thing.

Mateus Garcia is a Mobile Brigada from the Corregidor Nomad's ship. I really didn't give his tactical rock as much attention as it needed, but otherwise I'm pleased with how he turned out. There is some detailing on the gun that is obvious when you're holding him, but this picture doesn't capture as well.  I still need to add a few extra touches to him.

Derek Ortmann, a Knight Hospitaller of PanOceania, is my favorite miniature I have done to date. Not only do I love how dynamic he looks, but I'm really pleased with the paint job for getting him done in only 4 nights. The picture unfortunately adds a little highlighting that isn't there, but otherwise captures the paint job perfectly. The free-hand work on his paudrons and robe are my favorite part, and the rest of the figure is shaded well enough to help him pop.

Infinity is immensely fun to paint, and also incredibly fun on the table. I will hopefully start doing a weekly summary blog to go along with my personal painting journal.

Figures coming up are: Nisse (for Gamers Haven painting competition), Cameronian, William Wallace, Reverend Healer, Spektr, and an Akali Sikh.