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Hello painters of dakka,

This question is directed at all of you fine fellows with any amount of experience painting models. I'm going to be attending my first big tournament within the next 3~ weeks! my army is finally off the sprue, cleaned of all its flash, and ready to be put together. It's a 1,500 point tourny to which I will be bringing my ravenwing bikers. I have yet to paint these bad boys and there is a 3 color minimum!

What I want is to have all of these models up to the minimum requirements ASAP and am in need of some guidance. I have access to airbrushes via a few of my friends and was thinking of priming and basing them in black. What I am hoping to do is reach the minimum 3 colors with nothing but airbrushing, I don't really know of any methods to quickly get some detail on the model... Maybe painters tape some areas and spray different colors?

But this is why I am writing a post! For -your- creative suggestions on what I might do to get this finished in the allotted time. My previous posts here have all given me great insite into ways to improve this part of the hobby, I wrote about cleaning flash at one point and was pleasantly suprised how many people chimed in to make suggestions!

Thank you for making it through my wall of text and I look forward to anything and everything that will be said.


-From

Wow. You may not want to start with airbrushing right away.

If you're going for reaaaally quick, you could prime black, drybrush grey, paint details boltgun (leadbelcher) and white.

It won't be pretty but that's black, grey and boltgun (leadbelcher).

If the majority of the figures will be black then i would just spray prime back. I know auto zone and other car places have really cheap black/gray primer that is flat. I forget the brand but it works really well.

also there is Quick color at the home depot for like a dollar.

other then that use foundation/base paints as your secondary and tertiary colors to have to paint less layers, and build in stages so you can pump out alot of models.

Hive Fleet Kielbasa was painted almost entirely with sprays and QuickShade.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Hive_Fleet_Kielbasa

The method:

1. Construct, wash and prime with grey spray.
2. Spray the belly area the palest colour. (During spraying I masked as necessary using Blu-tac or handheld kitchen foil.)
3. Spray the sides with the middle colour, aiming a bit from above.
4. Spray the top with the darkest colour.
5. Pink claws and teeth by brush.
6. Green and yellow eyes on the largest creatures.
7. QuickShade light varnish, repeat if necessary.
8. Spray with matte varnish.

The bases were sprayed the dark colour, the model glued, on, then covered with sand, and finally a few bits of Highland Tuft glued on.

I did the entire army in about six hard working days: over 100 figures ranging from Termagants up to Trygons, not including construction of the models.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Hive Fleet Kielbasa was painted almost entirely with sprays and QuickShade.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Hive_Fleet_Kielbasa

The method:

1. Construct, wash and prime with grey spray.
2. Spray the belly area the palest colour. (During spraying I masked as necessary using Blu-tac or handheld kitchen foil.)
3. Spray the sides with the middle colour, aiming a bit from above.
4. Spray the top with the darkest colour.
5. Pink claws and teeth by brush.
6. Green and yellow eyes on the largest creatures.
7. QuickShade light varnish, repeat if necessary.
8. Spray with matte varnish.

The bases were sprayed the dark colour, the model glued, on, then covered with sand, and finally a few bits of Highland Tuft glued on.

I did the entire army in about six hard working days: over 100 figures ranging from Termagants up to Trygons, not including construction of the models.

Thank you very much for your method sir! Your models look fantastic for 6 days of hard work, I doubt mine will look half a good haha! I will likely try this out.

@ pretre: I didn't even think of dry brushing until you mentioned it. I'll be doing this with a mix of dark and light brown to give the wheels and undercarriage of the bikes a dirt covered look.

@Desubot: Foundation and base paints sound like the way to go for dry brushing. First time I've heard some one suggest auto zone for paints.. But hey, biker army, it fits the theme d-(^_~)z

There is nothing holy about only using white, grey, or black primer. For Dark Angels, you could use a rustoleum/Krylon Camo Dark Green. I think that as a primer coat, drybrushed with some lighter greens and details in red and boltgun metal and then wash the entire figure in a paynes grey/nuln oil, might be pretty fast.

For the dirt and dust, use weathering powders along with a medium sized make up brush.

Well dry brushing and layering is 2 different things and makes no difference with the new "base" range and what not.

since your doing a marine army and from the looks of it bikes (and for simplicity sake say a primarily black army) i would first
- sub assemble
- prime black
- base coat (if black is your base then you can skip most of the work and just do secondary colors on say pardons the base (dirt) metallics and darkest color of your lenses)
- assemble

at this point you are at least 3 colors and playable at tourns.

but to continue you would then wash, highlight/drybrush depending on how you want to do it (spess mahrins look better with extreme edge highlights imo) and then seal and protect. all at your leisure so you can do it over time.

trade colors around however you feel fit.

Prime them black and add the details on that

paint the weapons/ect on as well, but leave most of the model primed.

Also try searching for the "dip painting" scheme, it is a fast way to paint a whole army easily/

This was my speed painting project. I managed 1500 points(see my gallery) in a month of evenings and weekends and consider the army finished.

Matt black primer, dry brush rakarth flesh(painted claws and teeth), off yellow(averland?) eyes painted, PVA and fine sand base painted a grey(mechanicum?), then wash the whole thing from top to bottom in nuln oil. A light coating of gloss varnish spray to finish.