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The Dread was primed black and mounted upside down on his base.


First basecoat of Vallejo Model Air German Grey using my airbrush.



Black was airbrushed from the bottom up to add some shadows to the model



Vallejo Model Air Medium Sea Grey was used to light up the upper parts of the model.
I sprayed right from the top of the model so only the parts exposed to "direct sunlight" were lightened up.



After masking I used Vallejo Model Air Golden Brown (airbrush) / Vallejo Game Colour Leather Brown (brush) for the basecoat of the yellow.



For the first highlight I took Vallejo Model Air Dark Yellow for both the airbrush and standard brush.
Since the colour is mixed for airbrush use it isn't highly opaque and perfectly suitable for nice blendings.
I only highlighted the upper and side parts so the shadow areas will stay brown.



The next highlight is Vallejo Model Air Golden Yellow.
The upper parts received a good amount of coating but I left some dark yellow on the side areas for a nice blending effect.



The final edge highlight was made with a 50/50 mix of white and golden yellow.
PlasCan was painted from bottom to top with Vallejo Model Air Gun Metal Metalizer, Gun and Silver for the final highlight.



The weathering begins! Using GW Dark Flesh and Vallejo German Grey / Medium Sea Grey I sponged the first rust effects on the model.
I kept an eye on the most exposed areas/edges to make it as realistic as possible.



Using thinned down Blazing Orange, Dark flesh and watered Vallejo rust pigments I added rust on rivets, deepenings and cables.
I also sponged dry pigments on the whole model to give it a rusty shading on some areas.



Using Vallejo Model Air light blue and pure white I gave the plasma can a subtle OSL effect.
I painted several lenses in shiny blue colours, imho this is a nice contrast to the worn and rusty battle look.



Finished dread.


Thats about it, a 100% painted up dreadnought in around 2,5 hours. I hope somebody will find this tutorial useful, thanks for taking a look!

For speed, it's great.

Otherwise, I'm not digging it. It just doesn't look done. A bunch of the details are outright untouched such as
- scroll on the left leg
- skull icon on the power plant
- the power plant exhaust ports
- the gun arm ammo feed


I like the blue gems, but some of the parts, due to the grey color and lack of detail work, look outright unpainted.

I agree. It looks really underdone. It looks like basically the only thing you painted were his arms (which is kind of true). I think if you had applied the yellow to his entire body it would look great, but right now, it just looks unfinished.

That being said, the yellow looks awesome.

I like it and heres my thoughts on the issues mentioned.

Its weathered. Im pretty sure the first thing to go would be some painted on scroll writing and with the heat and weathering on the power plant then the skull would be the same.

LightningClawsFTW wrote:For speed, it's great.

Otherwise, I'm not digging it. It just doesn't look done. A bunch of the details are outright untouched such as
- scroll on the left leg
- skull icon on the power plant
- the power plant exhaust ports
- the gun arm ammo feed


I like the blue gems, but some of the parts, due to the grey color and lack of detail work, look outright unpainted.

Dude your looking to much into it. It was a tutorial on an airbrushing technique, details like what you pointed out can be done after everything else.

PraetorDave wrote:I agree. It looks really underdone. It looks like basically the only thing you painted were his arms (which is kind of true). I think if you had applied the yellow to his entire body it would look great, but right now, it just looks unfinished.

That being said, the yellow looks awesome.

While i agree that it does look underdone due to details I think its painted up in the colours of the Red Scorpions because compare his scheme to the Red Scorps Dread on Forgeworld.




Virtually that same.




Anyway. Good tutorial mate. I very much like the OSL.

Snrub wrote:Dude your looking to much into it. It was a tutorial on an airbrushing technique, details like what you pointed out can be done after everything else.

derd0m wrote:Thats about it, a 100% painted up dreadnought in around 2,5 hours. I hope somebody will find this tutorial useful, thanks for taking a look!

Key words being '100%'. It looks far from 100%.

While I agree that I could have spend the time to paint up the tiny bits it would have been about 20 minutes more work to do so. So lets agree it's a 95% painted up dread?
I'm sorry that the grey doesnt look painted but it is A) shaded in 3 types of grey, B) edge highlighted all around and C) exactly the scheme of the Red Scorpions - so I cant really agree that the grey parts are unfinished.

Imho it's a great way to paint up your vehicles to a decent tabletop standard in a very fast and efficient way. Ofc you can still spend the additional time to paint up the detail parts to make it look 100% finished .

Thanks for the comments and critics!

I like the scheme.

I like the OSL and the weathering on the model (and the paint scheme of the RS), and the only thing I think it lacks is some detail on the back. I think this is more the models fault than the painter though, but perhaps you could have drilled the pipes and painted the skulls just to make it seem a little less flat? The paint job in itself is fantastic though.

Your starting to convince me I really want an airbrush!!!! Someone please tell me otherwise!!!

Seriously, screw off haters.... ...your unfinished xD
I think it looks amazing

For me it's table ready in a short time which is the main thing.

Top Work

I like it. Looks really good.

Great tutorial, thanks for sharing. What type of airbrush do you use? I've wanted to airbrush for a while but have been too unsure what kit to get.

Great results for such a short time!

if the idea was just to show airbrush techniques , that would be one thing , but you didn’t bill it that way , you billed it as start to finished done . its not .

it may be an issue of what the camera picks up , but i cant really see the gray shading . if the issue is a camera one , then you need to take that into account and not bill it as a completed model painting tutorial and just do it as a airbrush technique tutorial , especially since you left details un painted .

the color and weathering on the yellow portions just makes the bland unpainted looking sections of the gray look even worse . the degree of wheathering doesnt look even ; by comparisson it looks like you over wheathered the yellow , and under wheathered the gray , whiich makes the gray wheathering look more like over spray than actual wheathering .

looking at the forge world model , it looks unfinished too .

if you wanted to do a seriously kick butt tutorial , for the sake of doing a tutorial , there are a dozen other chapters you could have chosen to do that would have been better color choices . if it IS a camera issue , then dont do it as a start to finish tutorial untill you have a better camera . you might also look at the lighting , are you using a full spectrum bulb ?

and i have an airbrush , it is nice for some things , but i have come to the point of trying NOT to use it , because to get a REAL good effect , it takes longer to use the airbrush ( because of masking , the cleaning for color changes , and clean up ) than it does to just use a paint brush . to paint the dread as it was painted here , i would have had a lot less than 2.5 hours of time spent by using a brush .

i understand the allure of the airbrush , but unless you spend A LOT of time to master it , and spend a lot of time to do every project right , you get mediocre results at best .

and to the comment about it being "table ready" , that’s a very broad statement , that includes pretty much 95% of painted minis , even the really horrible ones , so that’s not really a good argument in favor of it .

I have to say I agree with many of the posts here, in that it looks unfinished - that's mainly due to the fact that it's the little details on a model that really make it look "done".

If the intent was to show what an airbrush can do in terms of speed etc, then yes - I have to also disagree with GrandInq here too, I've an airbrush and will always use it for vehicles - you can't get the same results with a brush on a large flat surface, and painting vehicles is MUCH faster. You do, however, need to look at what it's good at. For an average airbrusher, painting big stuff fast, base-painting armies (eg spraying all your ultramarines blue & shading) - that kind of stuff is more than possible, and will give you faster, better results than brush.

At that point the average/medium user should then break out the brushes and paint details etc. Even advanced users aren't going to solely rely on an airbrush to achieve a paint scheme even on a vehicle.

At the end of the day, an airbrush is a tool, and you're the only one that can make the call as to benefit/cost.

That said, I've had an airbrush for over 15 years and wouldn't ever go without one now. I don't use it all the time, though!

damn fine.

Slightly overweathered IMO, looks like he has been standing outside in the rain for years

Agreed with others that he looks unfinished. The power cables and various detail work would probably take it from "meh" to "wow" (even with the excessive weathering)

There isnt much I can say that anyone else already hasn't. But Sweet Mother of Chuck Norris I love that plasma cannon,

The OSL on the plasma cannon is the bee's knees.