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So I bought Infinity's Operation Icestorm a while ago and also got an airbrush recently. They're very pretty models, and Angel Giraldez is pretty much an inspiration for me. I also have several Sedition Wars models from a long time ago that I haven't touched. It all fit together and I decided to try and airbrush the Sedition Wars models as practice for eventually applying to the much prettier Infinity models.

I'm also notorious for not painting my models, so may as well start a New Year's Resolution to maintain this blag.

As of O:I, I have Aleph, Haqqislam, PanO, and Nomads. Sedition wars has four "Samaritan" models equipped with rifles, grenade launchers, laser guns, and chainguns. Seems like a great way to practice the studio paint schemes on Nomads and PanO which I like the paint scheme for and I don't expect to be collecting too much of. My Haqqislamites and Aleph are my "main" armies and will have more unique paint schemes.

* The Samaritan Chaingunners will be red like studio Nomads.
* The Samaritan Laser Gunners will be blue like studio PanO.
* The Samaritan Grenadiers will be black like I expect to do for Haqqislam. I'm going to try and emulate the Command and Conquer Brotherhood of Nod scheme of Black+Red here. A bit cheesy on the supergoth 2edge4me side, but it'll at least be a classic scheme. The Hassassins will be Black and Red. The lower-level troops like Ghulam will have my best attempt at desert camo added in. The QK differ tremendously, so anything goes while maintaining cohesion.
* The Samaritan Riflemen will be white and blue like I expect to do for Aleph. I'll attempt this later as I get more confident with blending colors considering Aleph has a lot of flat LHost "skin" surfaces that require good shading. The Vedic/Vanilla Aleph units will be white/grey and blue similar to the TRON and Starcraft Ghost schemes seen around. The Steel Phalanx will have many attempts at NMM Bronze as well in order to reference the Greek heroes. I can also practice this NMM Bronze on the Sedition Wars Samaritans' shoulderpads.

Best thing about these Sedition Wars figures is that I don't really care too much about them. They're nice figures, still. I'm going to make an honest effort.
I'll probably also paint some Malifaux on the side, but those models vary so drastically from one another that they'll require planning.
That's pretty much all I excuse myself for doing instead of actually painting... I call it "planning" instead of procrastinating.

Regardless, I tried my first attempts at ever touching an airbrush.

Practice paper:


Red Vanguard with a barely visible Red/Orange highlight. This model was originally pretty much a failure in concept and a a satisfied justification for me not starting immediately on my Infinity models. The highlight from the airbrush was far too light and thin to be noticeable. I was afraid of it becoming too orange and in the end just ended up pure red. It also doesn't help that my red color is VM Color whereas my orange color is VM Air. Proportions were wonky and I probably just failed in the dilutions.


Eventually, I recoated it with Red Black, highlighted Red, and highlighted a peachy color. I probably held the model too far from the airbrush and ended up with a powdery finish that looks like a fine drybrush job. Not a fan, but I'm curious to see how it'll end up looking after inking/washing/highlighting with a paintbrush.


Not to be demoralized by the previous meh-job, I tried the blue PanO scheme with this time incrementally adding in more white. Again, I held the airbrush too far from the model and it ended up chalky. However, it looks much better. Not sure if it's just the colors used. Again, I'll have to see how it looks after inking/washing/highlighting and make airbrush technique adjustments after it's all done.


Note that these are all just attempts at basecoats using an airbrush for the first time after watching a bunch of YouTube videos. I've watched BuyPainted, AwesomePaintjob, Jay Adan, and especially (my favorite) SchnauzerFaceMinis.
I'm very happy with the initial basecoat of color that airbrushes are capable of doing; it's very smooth and much faster than doing it by brush by hand. I just really really need to work on highlighting light better. The pictures are also meh. The mold lines are just notorious on Sedition Wars PVC models and I'm confident it won't be a problem on metal Infinity and plastic/metal Malifaux models. I probably also need to work on getting the right thinning of paints better, but they seemed fine when I sprayed it on paper. Everything flowed smoothly the way I wanted. It's just hard to judge the color of paint when sprayed onto a model because of the color difference between wet paint and dry paint. I'll get better at judging eventually.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I'd love to hear it.

I realized the previous models were really bad. I pretty much redid them and other models. I tried a light initial coat and a dark initial coat.

Darker base coat on the reds ended up with a nicer contrast. I'm confident enough now that they'll look nicer when inked/washed and highlighted. The final light coat, I ended up making a poor decision of using ivory straight instead of going for a mix. It ended up being a very chalky finish.




I tried doing the same with blue going for a more blended lighter highlight coat eventually leading from blue-green to ghost-white. Mistakes made were that the ribbed armor on the back ended up a bit too dark due to the really awkward angle.




Still much more satisfied. Maybe I'll try painting metal models now rather than blaming the Sedition Wars PVC material for my mistakes. This is one of those really weird scenarios where the model looks much worse, I think, in real life.

Very respectable for first attempts. The lighter undercoat definitely seems to be the way to go for your reds.

As a prospective airbrush initiate myself, I'm very interested to see how those models turn out.

Question: What kind of paint are you using in your airbrush?

Paints I'm using are Vallejo Model Color, Vallejo Air, and Reaper Master Series. I use Reaper Drying Retardant to stop the annoying accumulation of paint on the airbrush needle. I thin the paints with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner.

I tend to put 1 drop retardant, 2 drops thinner, and 7-10 drops paint. Swoosh around with a gakky brush until the "milk-like" consistency is obtained. So I've learned, when people say "milk-like" consistency, it's essentially the property of milk to cling to the side of a cup for a moment before forming an extended meniscus.

Blues seem to mix and cover much much better than reds. I'm starting to think spraying red onto a dark brown is a mistake.

I got tired of my cowardice and just decided to hop right onto the Nomads miniatures. I got enough practice. Time for the real thing.

Went for three shades between two colors. Models ended up really glossy. That's fine, it'll get muted when I use matte varnish. They look bad in pictures, though.


Did a final highlight of what would end up being the "basecoat"



And a final comparison between the Nomads and the Sedition Wars practiceguys. Using multiple coats ended up looking much nicer and I'm rather happy with the airbrusing.


I believe I'm done with most of the airbrush work for the time being. Now onto the detail work.

Groovy start, looking forward to the progress pics