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I have a heldrake. I am playing CSM - Emperor's Children.

I need to paint it pink, (yes, need) and have no access to an airbrush. I was looking to do some blending with darker and lighter paints to give it some depth and a decent pattern, but i've never attempted to paint something like this.

I've seen some really well painted helldrakes. I want mine to look fairly good.

Has anyone got any advice on where to start with this one? Cheers.

You can get a single action airbrush for $10, and a generic can of canned air for around $8 and spray any color you want.

Painting vehicle without streaks the right way with a brush just sucks and is time consuming just to lay down a single color. I recall myself brush painting an imperial fist dreadnaught even after tan it took nearly 12 coats to get the yellow color I wanted.

After that I forked over the money and got a $90 kit from harbor freight. Not bad for a compressor, and double action airbrush. Both have been running strong and seen a lot of use in the last year.

The upside of the $10 platic single action airbrush is with single action you just can't mess it up. Get the VMA color of you choice load it up, and shoot it. With some blue painters masking tape or silly putty you can even do fades, and such with it on vehicles.

Do not buy a single action airbrush. You have 0 control. It's a glorified spray can or paint-thrower.

If a double-action seems too expensive look to find someone who might do your basecoat with their airbrush offer them the money instead of ruining your Heldrake.

Pshaa... who needs an airbrush. The trick always is getting a good flat base coat. The foundation paints were perfect for this, but they are gone (unless you still have some). But using thinned foundation paints has always had remarkable results. That is how I painted mine and orange is almost as difficult to paint as pink.

But if the base color is the key, then just prime it white and hit it with a soft red or darker pink spray paint. Let dry then work in your highlights/shadows on each of the individual cells. The pick out the ribs with some other color. The drake is actually not that hard to do because the flat areas really aren't that big, so its pretty easy to get each individual cell shaded. Its just time consuming that's all.

Prime grey. Basecoat with a couple of thin pinkish-purple coats. BE EVEN. You need a good large brush, and work each layer across the layer beneath. Allow each layer to dry before starting the next.

Then highlight up towards the target pink tone.