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Yes, I am aware that the tanks i'm posting are not hand painted. But as your looking for a compare / contrast between airbrushed and non-airbrushed to see if you can tell the difference, I thought i'd post the opposing side here. While you can do solid colors just fine without the airbrush, doing any kind of shading is a nightmare. Keep in mind I painted all 4 of these tanks in 1 (long) night.

My hand painted LR...took me around 2 days....just used a quarter inch flat brush and a detail brush.

Back when my paint-fu was weak (not that it's gotten too much better):



Do dreds count?

And some Guard:

@ Catpeeler: Where can I find more on that DK conversion you have there, that thing is amazing.

I'll try and get some more / detailed shots of both DK's in a new thread in the next day or two. The rest of the army can be seen in the link in my sig.

No airbrush. I don't think it would have survived it, lol.

@dkellyj: what army is that purple color scheme for? soul drinkers?

Give yourself more credit kelly. I have seen your IG stuff in person, played against it even, and it looks like a well put together army, which is an accomplishment for any guard player imo.

Wow, I love the free hand on the tank!

This is an old one but its still nice:


I have now switched to an airbrush but I have no pics of more recent vehicles this was somewhere around the 50th tank I painted (I'm a bit of a tread head) and I still have tonnes to learn.

I'm currently hand painting some tanks.
What techniques besides weathering should I use?
Drybrushing, washing, highlighting? I dunno what to do :/

Really love to use airbrush for camo and therefore less "hand-painted" tanks for me.
One I did the "old way ":

Praetor Armoured Assault Launcher ( Forgeworld )



Without the missiles:



Land Raider Redeemer



But I prefer simple schemes to paint.
Like these IH Predators:

varl wrote:@dkellyj: what army is that purple color scheme for? soul drinkers?

The color scheme is for the Hawk Lords. Since the Codex describes them as a Chapter of unknown founding I find them able to fit into the lore itself while still switching up ICs (Vulkan, Lysander, etc) to keep the Army from getting stale and boring to play.

Overwatch: Thanks for the comments on my IG. I've been putting alot more care and time in my painting lately and have been learning from recent hobby winners trying to up my paint-fu.

All of my tanks previous to the newest IG stuff and my Kill Bursta are done by hand. I can't say I enjoy painting vehicles by hand and now that I own and am proficient with a airbrush I won't go back to doing it that way.















I actually painted my battlewagon with dip after I did the basecoats.



Monolith counts, right?



Fun fact: I took that picture on Jan 11th, 2011. I still haven't glued the crystal on top in place.


OK, looking back: I kind of did enjoy painting the Defiler by hand. But it was an easy job with no big, boring, flat areas.



And it was creeeeeeepy! Pefect for halloween.