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Hi all,

Can anyone recommend an airbrush paint that is close/identical to leadbelcher?

I know GW do a spray but I'd prefer to use an airbrush. If I can steer clear of GW airbrush paint too, that would be preferred at their pots aren't the best!

Cheers

GW airbrush paints are pretty good, though, and since they're thinned for airbrush use they're dead easy to pour into dropper bottles. You can get a load of those for dirt cheap off ebay.
So going the GW Air route isn't really a problem; just order some dropper bottles and some small perfume funnels(for mess-free pouring) off ebay and you're sorted.

Just beware that if you try pouring non-airbrush paints, they will likely have enough surface tension to clog the small funnels, so what I did was cut off the lower bit of the funnel so it fit outside the bottle opening, rather than inside it.

Vallejo Model Air Gunmetal

Cheers guys, I might even have some vallejo gunmetal laying around from a metallics pack I bought.

If not, I'll see how I get on.

Thanks for the comments!

Vallejo's metal colour range(different from model air) would probably be the way to go but I have no clue what would be a good match to leadbelcher, as gunmetal is way to dark.

Vallejo model Air Gunmetal is almost an identical match for Leadbelcher, it's just slightly darker but it's near impossible to notice side by side, especially once washed.

The new Vallejo Metallic Air Steel or Magnesium are pretty close, and much nicer paints than the old Gunmetal. Among other things, they don't seem to clog up airbrushes at all -- the pigment is much finer. Plus, I think, per mL, it's actually cheaper (they come in bigger bottles).

Also, you could just get Leadbelcher in Citadel Air and pour it into a dropper bottle One advantage of that is that leadbelcher is really an awesome paintbrush paint, and if you do that, you have the same color coming out of the airbrush as the paintbrush.

Alternatively to all this, you could always just thin down the standard Leadbelcher and use that through your airbrush. Using either water or a little acrylic thinner, it sprays fine.

 Talys wrote:
The new Vallejo Metallic Air Steel or Magnesium are pretty close, and much nicer paints than the old Gunmetal. Among other things, they don't seem to clog up airbrushes at all -- the pigment is much finer. Plus, I think, per mL, it's actually cheaper (they come in bigger bottles).

Do you mean Vallejo Metal Color?

They do spray quite nicely, though I've been finding they aren't very tough. Very easy to scratch off. I'm not sure I'd use them for anything more than display pieces.

I've been liking alclad's range for metallics, they seem to give the best finish and are reasonably tough. I heard a bunch of scary things about them being hard to work with which put me off for a while, but now I've used them I realise most the comments were in regard to getting highly polished finishes, which is a difficult look to achieve with any paint.

I'm not sure what in Alclad's range would match leadbelcher, maybe magnesium.

One thing to keep in mind with metallics, even if you spray the exact same colour as you hairy brush painted they may not look the same. Metallics are very sensitive to surface finish, which when spraying is affected by your primer, how much you thin it, how far you spray, what the temperature is. Basically any change can result in a different surface finish, either more or less grainy which will result in less or more shiny respectively. When you hairy brush paint a metallic the surface finish is usually pretty consistent.

@Skink - The "Metal Color Airbrush Colors" that come in the fat nubbed dropper pots is what I mean. They come out really fine.

I haven't had any problems with them being un-durable, at least not any more than any other airbrush paint. On the subject of painting them over with a paintbrush, you find that with pretty much everything, but still, with the new Vallejo's, there's like, nothing even remotely close for a lot of the colors. The other thing totally bizarre about them is that half the colors are totally indistinguishable from each other, and the silvers break down into really, really bright, and really, really dark, with nothing in between. It would have been awesome if one of the 15 or so silvers fell somewhere between super bright silver and oily gun metal

Yeah those are the ones I mean. The reason I've noticed they're not tough is I've mostly use them on models where I'm masking over it, I've found they pull up very easily with masking, especially the shinier colours.

Metal Color do come out quite well as you say.... not as well as Alclad though. Testors model master metalizers are also nice but need varnishing to stop them wearing (they don't come off in chunks like Metal Color, rather they gradually wear away). Alclad I find very tough, but I still varnish it just as a matter of course because I'm usually using it on models that are going to get oil weathering and/or decals.

Alclad has quite a large range of colours as well.

When it comes to airbrushed metals some of your variation can come from what you paint under them. 2 or 3 colours that might look very similar over a grey primer can look completely different when done over a black primer. That's assuming you're painting them with thin layers.

For example, if I build up a thick coat of Aluminium or Chrome on a satin grey base, they'll look almost identical. But spray it over a black and the Chrome will be much deeper and can be left quite dark if you only do a couple of really thin layers.

Here's a bunch of metalizers painted over varying basecoats (courtesy of this thread: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/tools_techniques_and_reference_materials/f/18/t/140805.aspx)

http://s47.photobucket.com/user/Neptune48/media/alclad/DSCN0019C.jpg.html

http://s47.photobucket.com/user/Neptune48/media/alclad/Pol_Alum_01b.jpg.html