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Like the title says, Is there any way to duplicate the effect of airbrushing with a paintbrush? Specifically gradients around the crosses like in the attached picture. Thanks

Wet blending will get you there. If you want an actual airbrush effect...Airbrush it. It's much quicker. That picture in general is closer to wetblending though, not airbrushing.

Oil wash can give a similar affect to the cross shadow.

Inks too really.

To be honest I don't think I would do that with an airbrush at all

Hmm. I guess I need to work on my technique than. I can't quite get it to look right. My transition is just too rough, and it keeps looking too heavy

stewy37 wrote:
Hmm. I guess I need to work on my technique than. I can't quite get it to look right. My transition is just too rough, and it keeps looking too heavy

You will need to use really thin paints, so that it is transparent and then keep building up layers from there. GW have a good example of the Grey hunter with wolf standard model



It has a similar effect (to what you are after) around the wolf on the standard. Paint your main background colour and completely finish it, highlights and all, then start on the "halo/aura" style effect after.

So paint the entire color and then use lighter and lighter colors to build up?

If you use a paint retarder like Slow-Dri, it can make wet-blending much easier to accomplish. I bought a bottle a while back and it's been a great value.

Just mix it onto a palette with the paint colors and you can fairly easily blend them together on the model. It should extend drying time to about 60 seconds instead of the ~10 seconds you would normally have. It also serves to thin out the paint to make application much easier.