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Hi,

Does anyone who airbrushes their minis skip the recess wash stages ?

I love the thin even coat when airbrushed however when it comes to recess washes it stains the thin even coat from the airbrush and ruins it. When using a brush with the same colour paint to fix the areas where the stains appear it doesn't leave a complete smooth finish as an airbrush would. This is the case for me when even thinning the paint down a lot.

For that reason I am thinking of just ignoring applying the recess wash stage and I was thinking of just drawing the attention away of "no wash applied" with some edge highlighting on the model. Does anyone else do this and will it still look really nice in other peoples opinions? I also do zenith highlighting as well as do a "shadow" airbrushing(forever the term haha) from directly blow the model to simulate the shadows.

For people who don't skip the recess washing after airbrushing may I ask what solutions do you have for this as well ? I tried pin washes with oil and that didn't turn out too well(FYI gloss varnishes are applied to oil but not for enamels because they are already run into the recesses nicely without varnish). Enamel pin washes are much better for me however it is really difficult to wipe the enamel off with a thin brush or dry/wet Q tip (with thinner) because the surface area is just too big, which results in me wiping away the enamel in the recesses. (I am especially having trouble with the Primaris intercessors on this).

Sorry for the long winded explanation and thank you very much for your feedback.

When airbrushing I don't bathe models in shade.
Black primer, white zenital highlight, thin primary colour to retain the zenital highlight gradient. Then refine as desired. That is my approach.

 Stephanius wrote:
When airbrushing I don't bathe models in shade.
Black primer, white zenital highlight, thin primary colour to retain the zenital highlight gradient. Then refine as desired. That is my approach.

Nice! do you apply recess washes too ?

What is the issue you're having with oils? If I understand your comment correctly you used a gloss before the oils? I would recommend against this. I would use a satin personally, or even go straight over the acrylic paint, provided it is completely cured.

I do recess shade after airbrushing as you don't get the panel lines appropriately shaded on such small pieces. With scale armour and the like, preshading is used to achieve the same effect and unless you're a deft hand at airbrushing, you won't be able to preshade. It may be worth looking into though, if you really don't want to post shade.

Regarding your issue with oils, I think it may be worth trying out again, those and enamels really are the fastest and cleanest way to avoid staining your blends with an airbrush, and the clean up process is easy to get the hand of. A cotton bud, folded piece of kitchen roll and a clean brush are all easy methods of cleaning. If you mop up part of your panel lined area, just go back in and reapply your pin wash. Yeah, a bit time consuming, but the results are worth it.

Personally, I would tell you not to skip the pin wash step. As an aside, you don't need gloss varnish to oil wash, it can help, but you can get away with none or satin varnish, the idea you need a varnish to apply oil washes is a myth, you just need to be careful with your volumes of thinner and how rough you are in clean up.

MoneyWaster00 wrote:
Enamel pin washes are much better for me however it is really difficult to wipe the enamel off with a thin brush or dry/wet Q tip (with thinner) because the surface area is just too big, which results in me wiping away the enamel in the recesses. (I am especially having trouble with the Primaris intercessors on this).

How long are you letting the enamel dry? I usually wait 20-ish minutes and haven't really found that to be a problem. If it does happen, you can easily apply a little bit more in the area with small brush.

You could also try using small disposable makeup sponges. I think they work a lot better than cotton swabs and they don't leave fuzzies on the model either.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
What is the issue you're having with oils? If I understand your comment correctly you used a gloss before the oils? I would recommend against this. I would use a satin personally, or even go straight over the acrylic paint, provided it is completely cured.

the oils don't seem to flow into the recesses as well as enamels do so I basically scrapped using oils. Also the Mig enamels come pre-mixed which I find far easier to manage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I do recess shade after airbrushing as you don't get the panel lines appropriately shaded on such small pieces. With scale armour and the like, preshading is used to achieve the same effect and unless you're a deft hand at airbrushing, you won't be able to preshade. It may be worth looking into though, if you really don't want to post shade.

Regarding your issue with oils, I think it may be worth trying out again, those and enamels really are the fastest and cleanest way to avoid staining your blends with an airbrush, and the clean up process is easy to get the hand of. A cotton bud, folded piece of kitchen roll and a clean brush are all easy methods of cleaning. If you mop up part of your panel lined area, just go back in and reapply your pin wash. Yeah, a bit time consuming, but the results are worth it.

Personally, I would tell you not to skip the pin wash step. As an aside, you don't need gloss varnish to oil wash, it can help, but you can get away with none or satin varnish, the idea you need a varnish to apply oil washes is a myth, you just need to be careful with your volumes of thinner and how rough you are in clean up.

Enamels have been working great for me my main problem is when I remove the panel lined area and re-apply the enamel for some reason it doesn't flow as quickly/easier into the recesses as before(during my first time applying). It just sits in the point where i place the enamel for some reason. May I ask if you know the reason for this?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

MoneyWaster00 wrote:
Enamel pin washes are much better for me however it is really difficult to wipe the enamel off with a thin brush or dry/wet Q tip (with thinner) because the surface area is just too big, which results in me wiping away the enamel in the recesses. (I am especially having trouble with the Primaris intercessors on this).

How long are you letting the enamel dry? I usually wait 20-ish minutes and haven't really found that to be a problem. If it does happen, you can easily apply a little bit more in the area with small brush.

You could also try using small disposable makeup sponges. I think they work a lot better than cotton swabs and they don't leave fuzzies on the model either.

I leave them outside to dry for about 1 hour on average to make extra sure its dry. 2nd time applying the enamels I have trouble with the enamels flowing into the recesses for some reason. The wash just stays in place where I place my brush and it isn't flowing into the recesses after re-applying the enamels.

The sponge idea sounds good. I will try to see if i can find some.

I always do some sort of post-shading after airbrushing, otherwise the model will look too flat for my likings.

What that shading is really depends on the model.

- I only really use enamel pin washes on models that have fine panel lines that I want to bring out. I think enamel pin washes are a bit overrated, the first time you use them it's fun to watch them run through the crevices, but in practice I rarely use them and favour oils these days. But here's a situation I might use them (1/32 scale Spitfire):



- When I have a large area where I want to darken the recess, but then blend it out over the rest of the panel, I favour oil shading because they are much more blendable. For that sort of job, I don't try and mix them super thin (don't mix them to wash-like consistency) but still thinner than what I'd use for normal painting. I paint them directly into the crevices, then come back with a clean brush moistened with thinner to blend out the transition. I don't wait too long as sometimes the hard edge gets difficult to blend out. I'm struggling to find an example in my gallery, it tends to be larger tank like models I use this on, here's a smaller example (though admittedly these days I probably wouldn't bother with an oil on this model)...

Airbrushed:


Gloss varnished:


Shaded:


Finished:



- These days though on a model that size, I've gotten lazier and instead would favour a good old fashion acrylic wash. My trick here is to work in VERY small portions, apply the wash and IMMEDIATELY swap to a clean brush and blend out the transition line. You only have a few seconds to do it, so you would only do one recess at a time, don't try and do too much in one go or the acrylic will dry too much and become difficult to blend. I generally just a water moistened brush (not dripping wet, just damp) but keep a bottle of alcohol nearby in case I screw up and let the acrylic dry too much (the alcohol being a bit stronger I just clean up my mistake and try again). I favour this method these days because it's faster, less smelly, and while it is a bit grainier for small models I can barely tell the difference (for models with larger panels, the oils are definitely better though). But yeah, acrylics are how I did all this guy, and AI scale Thunderbolt (the colour change and graininess in the 2nd image is partly due to my poor camera skills, they weren't taken under the same lighting).

Airbushed:


Acrylic Shaded:


- Occasionally I've used enamels. Not a "pin wash", but just a regular pot of enamel thinned out a bit (not so thin as to be wash consistency), paint directly into the crevices then use a clean brush dampened with thinner to blend it out. It works well, but not really any better than oils and since I don't like enamel fumes I haven't used it often. Here's an example though...

MoneyWaster00 wrote:

 Stephanius wrote:
When airbrushing I don't bathe models in shade.
Black primer, white zenital highlight, thin primary colour to retain the zenital highlight gradient. Then refine as desired. That is my approach.

Nice! do you apply recess washes too ?

Yes, I do. Mostly I use oli washes mixed from burnt umber or neutral blank oil paint and turpentine replacement.
Mostly I do pin washes like AllSeeingSkink posted above, or I'll just slather the oil wash on and take most of it off right away with a rag/tissue from anywhere that's not recesses.
Since the oil paint dries very slow compared to acrylic shade and since it can be removed using thinner within a few hours, it's much less risky to work with that.