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Recently for my birthday, I received an airbrush. Its nothing too fancy but I've never had any experience. My painting queue consists of mostly dark eldar troops so I will be painting very small details. So my question is, should I keep the airbrush? Or what what would be the pros/cons of using it? It seems to me like it would require a crap load of paint and would not work well for painting very small details. (I realise it would be helpful to know the brand/type but I cant seem to find the damn thing at this moment).

Airbrushes are not going to do any detail work for you.

That said, I do use one. They do two things nicely:

1) Allow you to mix colors and get a nice clean basecoat to start from. I used one to basecoat my Imperial Fist army. Think about hand brushing all that yellow. It'd be intolerable. So, a good basecoat of the exact right color.

2) Camo and weathering. Any of the "soft" camo schemes are great with airbrushes. Also, there are a lot of people who use airbrushes to spray on shadowing and weathering effects. There are examples around here of people who are very good at it, but even with novice skills you can get a good effect. For example, I have some Rhinos that I just dusted the lower bits with a muddy color, and it looks quite convincing.

Keep it. As Phyxis said, they can be used for a good basecoat. They can also be used for some good effects on tanks and terrain. Although they are bad for small detail work.


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I plan on getting one as soon as I can afford it(I have four more tanks to paint for my WHITE space marine army).

As long as you have the space to keep it and aren't in desperate need of pawn shop money, I'd say keep it, as long as it's a dual action brush.

It's not going to do everything for you, but it's another tool you can learn to use. And I'd imagine if you start painting things like Raiders (or that aircraft DE get if GW ever comes out with it) there will be some very interesting effects you can achieve with it.