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Recently, yesterday in fact (who would have guessed,) I acquired an air brush which I would like to try out.

Now I figure using some Vallejo Model Air paints would be a good start.

I would like to buy a few, 20 say, to try out my hand with base coating and building up a few highlights with light passes.

Could anyone advise on decent colours to try for the following...

Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Vampire counts
Skaven

Thanks in advance

if you have gw paint use it, i do, just thin it

Do you thin it with water?

theres a 16 paint basic colours set of VMA that includes some browns, red, greens blues, yellow, black white...
just add some metallics And you could probably use it to paint all of those armies listed.

Vallejo Airbrush Thinner does a really nice job of thinning citadels (or any of the thicker VMA lines) to spray nicely in the airbrush.

Our advice for a beginner with airbrushes is to keep to an absolute minimum "things that can go wrong".

Most people fail to get on with air-brushing as they never surmount the initial learning-curve - a curve that is made steeper by trying to mix/thin your own paints.

You will have enough things on your mind without needing to worry about whether or not you thinned the paint 'properly'...once you have the hang of basic air-brushing then move on to thinning your own paints if you want to...after 30+ years of airbrushing i still don't bother (other than adding 1 drop of tamiya thinners to every 4 drops of VMA if i find the paint drying on the needle too quickly).

It's more 'fine art' oriented, but some art stores offer a basic airbrush class for a reasonable price. I think I got a class for my girlfriend and myself for about $50/person a few years back through a local art store (Plaza) that had a good instructor.

If you're planning to use an airbrush purely for bulk coverage you might not need it, but for anything else, it'll demonstrate and let you mess around with a lot of basic techniques.The main thing I remember is learning to control your start/stops to do even lines, and learning how to control the basics of the airbrush. It also includes cleaning, air generation, etc. fundamentals.

There are actually several threads already on thinning paints (actually, one near the top).

However, as a person who has thinned a lot of paint in my time - I fully suggest going with an actual airbrush paint for base coating.

Its worth the less hassle in the long run.

now, there are also TONS of threads on which airbrush paint (do a search...really...tons).

My personal favorites are vallejo model air, and minitaire.

best of luck!

Hi thanks for all the replies guys.

I've done the research for which paint and all advice seems to point towards Vallejo Model air.

As for using and thinning - I'll be watching some videos.

If anyone has done any painting of any of the above what I could really use is some advice on specifically which of the 144 model air paints would be most useful to get the colours correct as I cant quite afford to buy the whole set?


Thanks

siu00gas wrote:
Hi thanks for all the replies guys.

I've done the research for which paint and all advice seems to point towards Vallejo Model air.

As for using and thinning - I'll be watching some videos.

If anyone has done any painting of any of the above what I could really use is some advice on specifically which of the 144 model air paints would be most useful to get the colours correct as I cant quite afford to buy the whole set?


Thanks

If you have the colors want to use, use those instead of buying new paints. If you are currently using Citadel paints, the Model Air will not be an exact match. Thinning paint is not difficult at all and you should learn to do it if you want to airbrush. Even the "airbrush ready" paints will need to be thinned, especially for low pressure detail work.

The Vallejo thinners should be a good start but I also picked up a bunch of Liquitex acrylic mediums, their airbrush medium is great for both airbrushing and thinning for hand painting. If you have a Hobby Lobby in your town you can use 40% coupons to expand your acrylic medium selection on the cheap. Definitely look on Youtube for airbrush tutorials so you know how to adjust your pressure, keep your brush clean and all that good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jBfIGUjsx0&list=PLE43E6FAA1542DC3D&index=12

As a side note the Vallejo Surface Primer works great straight into an airbrush, priming models should give you some real practice without the terror of messing something up horribly

Woops hope I'm not committing necromancy here but...color choice wise getting primary colors and some of their air metallics should be a good place to start