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I'm picking up an airbrush in the hopes that it will help me speed up the painting process of my legions of grey models. Honestly I feel painting by hand is way to tedious and time consuming for each and every model (I'm lazy, what can I say ). Anyone else base coat their main colors on their models and if so, does this drastically decrease the time spent finishing your models?

I prime and basecoat all of my models using my airbrush.

As for it saving time, it really depends on the model, if it is particularly detailed, it doesn't. If it is quite plain like a regular marine, it can absolutely save a chunk of time.

For the vast majority of models it doesn't speed me up. There are some it does though.

Orks, tyranids, zombies, skeletons, saurus, skinks, guardsmen... it doesn't speed up those at all. In fact I'd say most infantry it doesn't speed up.

Space marines, eldar, tanks, monsters. It speeds up all of those.

Basically stuff where the base color is dominant and vibrant (space marines, eldar) or stuff where you have large areas to fill in with colour (tanks, monsters), that's where I see speed up. Other stuff, it doesn't speed me up and in some cases slows me down.

I'll echo the rest of the glorious australian posting crew; airbrushes can speed you up, but any gains will be lost in maintenance.

When I am painting with a brush, I open the paint, put a drop on my palette, paint whatever I am doing, rinse the brush.

When I am painting with the gun, I put it back together, make sure it is clean (usually not), get the compressor and extractor going, put a drop in the cup (thin it if I need to), blast whatever I am painting, rinse out the cup with water, rinse it with thinners, wipe it out, disassemble it, clean the needle, pack up the compressor and extractor.

I've got stuff on my desk now that needs a lick of gloss varnish, and honestly the effort to go through it all is just so unappealing.

I have and use the airbrush for large, thin, tidy basecoats - nothing beats it. Additionally, you can do some nice shading effects with a brush (nmm, drop shadows, zenithal) that is very difficult/time consuming with a brush (wet blending, etc).

Get one, but don't assume it is going to make your life a lot easier.

In particular I plan on painting my Grey Knights gold with it, and hand painting the little details and such.

Which brings me to my next question, how do metalics look airbrushed? Do I need to dilute my paint (using citadel paint btw) anymore than 50/50? Whats the right combo of paint to water for an airbrush?

Metallics look quite good airbrushed, but I wouldn't use GW ones to do it - though it depends on the paint itself. GW golds separate a ton and I really wouldn't want to put it into a brush, some of the silvers are OK though.

A single model air paint for your base would be the way to go, but that is just my preference.

As far as airbrushing GW, there are a couple of the gold shades in the new 'air' line of airbrush ready paints. Unfortunately not Retributor Armor, which is I think their best gold shade :( I have not personally tried any of the metallics from this range yet, but the basic colors worked alright.

I love my airbrush, and it makes everything soooo much faster. Even for my orks I airbrush the primer, and then the flesh and the bases, that's like an hour or more saved right there.

However, I strongly recommend against using GW metallics for airbrushing. Metallics have little flakes of mica in them, and the GW flakes are comparatively big, pick up a bottle if minitaire/game air, or whatever and save yourself the hassle.

In fact, just don't waste your time with GW at all, and go straight to air paints with dropper bottles.

Oh god yes I forgot about the bottle tragedy - I moved all my GW paints to droppers so didn't even consider it. You do not want to use those stupid pots for airbrushing, it will break you.

Never takes long in any paint thread for the Dropper Bottle Nazis to show up and insist smugly their way is the only way....

It isn't the only way, it is merely the right way.

10/10 for invoking Godwin's Law in 10 posts though, proud of you.

 totalfailure wrote:
Never takes long in any paint thread for the Dropper Bottle Nazis to show up and insist smugly their way is the only way....

I'm presuming from your passive aggressive attitude that you've never spent an evening wasting paint trying to airbrush with pop lid paints.