So I bought an airbrush. I had been reading about the new Games Workshop Hand Flamer and decided I would pick up a cheap air brush down at my local Hobby Town. Man was I excited.
In the June White Dwarf it had a little article about using the new Hand Flamer to base and shade miniatures. It didn't look too hard. Boy was I wrong.
In theory you mix a 1:1 ration of paint and water. You then adjust your nozzle to shoot paint out at the desired ratio. When those two things are correctly done you should get good results.
In reality things happened a bit differently. My first challenge was getting the paint into the mixing pot. This was a mess. There is not really a spout on the GW paint pots so it got all around the lid. I resolved this issue by unscrewing the cap on the next go round.
The second issue was getting the water and paint measured correctly. Since I had poured paint into the pot the sides were a bit obstucted and I had to wing it on the amount of water to add. Again, this wasn't that big of a deal but every little issue compounds the overall problems.
One my first run I didn't mix up too much paint, just a bit. I then added my water and shook the pot once I hooked it up to the air gun. I sprayed a sheet of paper and the side of a box and was happy with the consistency coming out of the gun. Happy with the results I grabbed my Defiler and went to town on it.
I made it all the way around once laying down a nice light layer of Liche Purple and I ran out of paint. I took the Defiler back to my hobby room to dry and got ready for my next batch.
For my next batch I settled on some Bloodletters. I grabbed the white primer and started spraying. Here is where things went wrong for the night. For whatever reason the prime job came out furry. I have had this happen in the past but it has been a while. Best I can tell I was a bit too far away and didn't spray it on thick enough. Man was I pissed. It almost ruins a model when this happens.
Oh well I thought, they are daemons. So I carried on. I used a 1:1 mix of the Foundation Mechrite Red. What a mess. By the time I was done my entire left hand was red. My fingernails still look like I was in drag over the weekend.
When I was done with the Bloodletters they had a nice pink basecoat. Pink? Crap. Not to be deterred I sallied forth. I grabbed my Blood Red and Chaos Black paint and made a nice thin wash and started covering up my test model. He turned out brown. Great. A brown Bloodletter. What could possibly go wrong next?
Well, not much went wrong after that. I stayed up a bit late last night to do some more testing and I was happy with the results. I finished painting the brown Bloodletter and he actually turned out pretty good. The sword is the worst part because of the furry prime job. They will look fine at arms length but it is a bit disappointing. I am going to do some more tests on some junk models tonight with the primer and then finish up basecoating my next batch of guys with the airbruch - my Khorne Berzerkers.
From what I have read on the internet I am doing everything right. I think that I need to do smaller batches of paint and multiple thinner coats and everything should turn out nice.