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winterdyne wrote:

 JamesY wrote:

Also, where have you got this idea that talent is absent from airbrushing? Scroll back and take a look at winterdyne's leviathan dreadnought. If people think that they will automatically produce work like that merely by using an airbrush, they are in for an expensive reality check.

Actually the airbrush work there is about as simple technically as you can get; one of those times where just taking your time with the tool, doing very simple work gives you an effect that is prohibitively difficult to achieve with other means. That's why I used it as an example of an airbrush method. I wouldn't say I was an expert airbrush user; I'm certainly still learning tricks and good situations to use the tool.

Angel Giraldez' work (infinity studio painter) is pretty inspirational for more complex work.

But I think this sums it up; this is a real world hobby we engage in. There is no 'cheating' any more than you can cheat at breathing. You end up with something painted to a standard and style you like, or you don't. I find the talk of such and such a method being a cheat or shortcut dismaying.

Hmm. Pm sent.

I like airbrushing when it's done properly and well. However the majority of people using Airbrushes nowadays do it because they don't like blending and do a half-ass job of it, which really shows.

In general, if I criticize someone for using an airbrush, it's their airbrushing techniques that grinds my gears more than the fact they used an airbrush. It's like Drybrushing in the early days of 40k; everyone too lazy to properly highlight just drybrushed the hell out of their models and was done with it, which looked really bad compared to decently highlighted models.

But they're their models. Why should they use a painting technique that pleases you rather than suits them?

It's one thing when they admit they were too lazy to do so and just needed to meet a deadline for a game.

It's another when they use an airbrush and pass it off as Pro Painted (usually trying to gouge you for more money on the resale) and get indignant when you legitimately criticize it.

kb_lock wrote:
Anyone thinking "Airbrushing is easy mode" has clearly never done it.

This is prep for one model, multi part construction for easier blends and minimal masking takes so much time, it would be faster with a brush in a lot of ways.

Like anything, it is how you do it and what you want to achieve, which is why this would be better off in the religion and politics section instead of the serious business that is painting and modeling

i do most of that with brush work too.

"masking" doesnt take much time lol

Depends on what you are masking. If you are doing a hurricane and need to get the camouflage exactly right, it can take a while.

Making tyranids is easy

Honestly 9/10 troll posting, i can't help but respond

Where is the "I'm using hairbrush, because I am poor" answer?

I'm fairly certain that most of this thread is "im poor and get upset when people pay for commission work" or "im poor and that somehow makes me elite".

kb_lock wrote:
I'm fairly certain that most of this thread is "im poor and get upset when people pay for commission work" or "im poor and that somehow makes me elite".

Well If I had one it will save me tons of time coating.

 JamesY wrote:
Depends on what you are masking. If you are doing a hurricane and need to get the camouflage exactly right, it can take a while.

I'm painting 2 Hurricanes as we speak, a 1/72 and a 1/48. I'm not looking forward to masking the canopies That's one area where I'd rather just paint them by a brush, but if I paint the canopy by brush and the rest of the plane by airbrush it'll look weird. I don't expect the camo pattern on the Hurricane to take me too long, I'll take a guess and say it'll probably take me close to an hour to mask each plane's camo pattern, maybe a bit longer if you include the underside. Some people will print off the patterns to scale but I prefer just looking at images laying the pattern by hand directly on the model which I then use to cut the masks.

Masking can be quite time consuming, on an aircraft there's usually several hours involved of just masking.

It took some thinking about how to mask the FW190 because it's 3 colour camo pattern which is hard edged in some places and soft edged in others. It was quite the process, took me 2 nights to airbrush the camo scheme without any weathering/shading/etc (decided to post-weather it because the masking was so fiddly I didn't want to have to deal with it, lol). Basically have to paint first colour, mask the entire aircraft to do the hard edged bits for the first colour, remove the mask to do the soft edged bits of the first colour, remask the entire aircraft to do the hard edged bits of the 2nd colour, remove the mask to do the soft edged bits of the 2nd colour.

A deceptively difficult thing can be D-Day stripes. Just straight lines, yeah? No. They're straight lines on a fuselage which is a cylinder of decreasing radius, so to create straight lines the masks need to be curved. Masking a concave curve isn't too hard, but masking a convex curve the tape wants to wrinkle and if there are wrinkles, the paint will get under the mask. And if your curve is off by a little bit then it'll look stupid. That's why many kits include decals for the stripes, I just don't like the look of the decals

At times it also greatly extends the painting process, many paints you can't mask for a day or two after spraying so even if the masking itself doesn't take much time, it extends the project. Most hairy brush techniques you can just keep working until you get bored.

So yeah, it depends. Sometimes masking = holding a sheet of paper over the panel you don't want sprayed (like the panel shading on a Panzer IV schurzen) other times it requires a bit of planning to get it right and lots of careful trimming, stretching, bending.

Usually if you rush your mask you pay for it later when you get paint under it (or if you are intentionally trying to get paint under the mask for a soft edged scheme, being inconsistent about it). You often see models where they've rushed the mask and it's shown through on the final product.

 DalinCriid wrote:
Where is the "I'm using hairbrush, because I am poor" answer?

I've had a few recommended Airbrushes that were pretty cheap. If I wanted to go legit with my hairbrushes I could very well end up spending more than getting an Airbrush and compressor (mainly because I go through a lot of brushes, even good ones).

My view is this (for any medium):

If it looks good, then it doesn't matter what made it.

If the technique reminds me of the technique instead of the overall beauty of the model (heavy airbrushing, rough dry brushing, etc.) then it's bad.

IMO the very best model is "how did they do that?" where I can't tell what medium was being used.

For me, the problem with airbrushed miniatures is that they too often look like cake frosting.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 DalinCriid wrote:
Where is the "I'm using hairbrush, because I am poor" answer?

I've had a few recommended Airbrushes that were pretty cheap. If I wanted to go legit with my hairbrushes I could very well end up spending more than getting an Airbrush and compressor (mainly because I go through a lot of brushes, even good ones).

You might want to address your technique and invest in something like Masters Brush Soap, then. That shouldn't be happening.

@moopy your philosophy is a good one, as long as you aren't vocalizing it when you think other people have done a 'bad' job.

@ skink post some pics when you are done. I have done a couple on commission for (and this is the honest truth) a blind guy I used to be acquainted with. His partner was very heavily disabled and needed a lot of equipment, so he collected 144 scale because of the lack of space. First one i delivered, he whipped out an eyeglass and closely inspected the whole thing. He obviously had some vision, and I was glad I'd ignored my friends and families advise to paint it pink. I was also glad I'd spent 2hrs just filling and sanding the joints.

Personally I think it has become 'cool' for keyboard hipsters to say they don't like airbrushing and/or OSL. I remember when airbrushed models first began to appear in large numbers on this site, and they were generally met with an overwhelmingly positive response. As with all things, when there is an apparent consensus, certain people feel the need to take an opposing view, and it has got to the point where any post with a large amount of airbrushing usually has lots of negative replies. One I found particularly distasteful was the bashing of Kenny Boucher at Next Level Painting http://www.nextlevelpainting.blogspot.co.uk/ who received a lot of, in my opinion, unfair comments on his work. Granted, it is heavily airbrushed, but check out the gallery - this guy has skill. As Winterdyne rightly said, if you think airbrushing is cheating or easy mode and a replacement for skill, check out Angel Giraldez.

In addition, I think it is interesting to discuss why airbrushing now has greater prevalence. When I first got into the hobby about 25 years ago, people tended to have one army for 40k, and one army for Fantasy. These armies were lavishly painted and converted, and choosing a chapter or race to play was a big decision, as people didn't switch from one to another. It was just as important as choosing a football team. Many people named each individual model and wrote them on the base. If your codex was weak, you rode the bad times in the hope that the next army book would make them a little more competitive Now, the trend appears to be to switch from one army to another depending on the newest OP codex. People don't feel embarrassed to say "These Space Marines painted as Ultramarines with Ultramarine symbols are now actually White Scars because their codex is better". Changing armies means there is a greater need for quickly but basically painted models at an army level, often straight out of the box and unconverted. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up to you but the increased use of airbrushing is a reflection of the attitude of the people who play these games.

So much smug, lol.

I saw comments about how easy airbrushing is, or how this reminds them of the time when everyone drybrushed stuff for speed, and etc etc etc...

You know what? Most of the models you see from people in this hobby are on the table to be played. I don't see people bringing models into the game store real often just to show off their Golden Daemon paintjobs (it happens, but not often). That means that people like me will use some of these methods to get an army on the table to play the game at a reasonable level of detail. I completely air and dry-brushed 30 bane knights for warmachine (well, mostly... I did their heads/hands with a brush) and on the table from a couple feet away they looked good. Are they gonna win awards? Heck no, but they looked good on the table and WAY better than metal/primed models look.

To blame the airbrush is a bit silly. Just like regular brushing, you have a spectrum of users from the crappiest beginners to the highest levels of art, and at the highest levels I think we can all agree that you use all the tools you have to get the best effects across the board.

It is just funny to me that there are so many judgmental people when it comes to topics like this. Who cares what tools were used? Not everyone will be great at painting, and often just having a crappy tabletop standard is better than bare models (though not always, I have seen some models that made me think the person should just skip that whole "art" piece!).

GOOD airbrush work is as hard to pull off as good traditional brush work. You can get "acceptable" work done faster with an airbrush, but to get the same levels of quality out of an airbrush takes skill and talent. There are a lot of people here with opinions on things they obviously have not experienced.

 JamesY wrote:
@ skink post some pics when you are done. I have done a couple on commission for (and this is the honest truth) a blind guy I used to be acquainted with. His partner was very heavily disabled and needed a lot of equipment, so he collected 144 scale because of the lack of space. First one i delivered, he whipped out an eyeglass and closely inspected the whole thing. He obviously had some vision, and I was glad I'd ignored my friends and families advise to paint it pink. I was also glad I'd spent 2hrs just filling and sanding the joints.

Nice! !/144 is tiny, I have tons of (really poorly painted) 1/144 WW2 fighters from when I was a kid, they're what started me in the hobby when I was 6 or 7 years old.

I'm still a while off finishing the Hurricanes, doing the 1/72 in Battle of Britain camo and the 1/48 I'm planning on doing tropical, though I'm still tossing up because it's a MkI and I want to put a MkII desert camo scheme and I'm not sure the rivet counter in me will let me do it

Almost finished with the cockpits, which means I haven't even started assembling the actual airframe yet I spent an hour and a half last night just doing this, whoever thought doing decals is fast never tried this....



Then I need to figure out how to do the seatbelts, a few touch ups on cockpit paint and they'll be ready to assemble.

 JamesY wrote:
Depends on what you are masking. If you are doing a hurricane and need to get the camouflage exactly right, it can take a while.

a task that looks, imo, unrealistic and gakky when using a brush. camo patters with airbrushes look like real life because they use this style application in real life. i guess they also use the weird dipping thing but ye.... google dipping hunting gear in camo. its crazy...

I've seen some pretty good looking hand painted camo schemes. Like, good enough that you can't tell the difference between a hand painted one and an airbrush painted one. Most people I've seen do good hand painted camo use enamels, thin them down plenty and do several coats. But I was looking at a thread on Britmodeller where the colours looked pretty damned smooth and it was just done with Tamiya acrylics painted by hand.

I've even seen some mottled schemes that didn't look bad from 12+" away. If you look under a magnifying glass you can see they were hairy brush painted, but then if you look at a lot of mottled airbrushed schemes if the painter didn't get the consistency and air pressure right sometimes you'll see a bit of out-of-scale hazing as well, so the airbrush definitely isn't fool proof.

There's a video on youtube somewhere that shows a mottled scheme done by hairy brush. Coated the surface with humbrol thinner, applied enamels, feathered them in a bit, then went back over with a heavily thinned version of the base colour, repeated a few times to get a pretty good effect.

EDIT: Some examples (not necessarily the most brilliantly painted models, but ones where it's hard to tell that they were painted with a hairy brush)...

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234934183-tamiya-148-f4u-corsair-in-fleet-air-arm-colours/

http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=2234

http://gregers.fr.yuku.com/topic/14791/Airfix-172-Spitfire-IX-2009-kit#.VolRtfl96Ul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n339wMbtABU

There is no poll option for "They're neat in good hands but I bought a really cheap one to just get base coats on a lot of marines and skeletons done in a hurry."

well thats depend on the quality, as every painted minis are. for example if it like this
of course i hate it.
but if it like this

i love it.
basically, what i'm trying to say is, airbrush is just a tool to be a better painter, if that person use it as another tool to pour his imagination and soul to a minis, of course everybody will acknowledge him. but if he use it just for to be "painted" to be played on the table, most people will hate it

sigasana44 wrote:
but if he use it just for to be "painted" to be played on the table, most people will hate it

Really, that's what people have devolved to? Hating someone elses models simply because they were painted to be played with? That's a bit sad.

If someone showed up with an army painted as well as that Trygon then they'd automatically be doing better than 90% of gamers I've played with.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
. When I first got into the hobby about 25 years ago, people tended to have one army for 40k, and one army for Fantasy. These armies were lavishly painted and converted, and choosing a chapter or race to play was a big decision, as people didn't switch from one to another.

While I agree with the latter part of that, my experience from back then was that while people tended to only have one army, those armies tended to be incompletely assembled, or at best partly painted. Outside of tournaments, the vast majority of my games (in various different locations) in 2nd ed 40K were against partly-painted or unpainted armies, and that held true all the way through to 5th edition, when dipping started to be a thing and Devlan Mud hit the market.

I see a lot more effort being put into finishing armies off these days than I ever did back then.

 insaniak wrote:

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
. When I first got into the hobby about 25 years ago, people tended to have one army for 40k, and one army for Fantasy. These armies were lavishly painted and converted, and choosing a chapter or race to play was a big decision, as people didn't switch from one to another.

While I agree with the latter part of that, my experience from back then was that while people tended to only have one army, those armies tended to be incompletely assembled, or at best partly painted. Outside of tournaments, the vast majority of my games (in various different locations) in 2nd ed 40K were against partly-painted or unpainted armies, and that held true all the way through to 5th edition, when dipping started to be a thing and Devlan Mud hit the market.

I see a lot more effort being put into finishing armies off these days than I ever did back then.

Ha, I agree with Insaniak, 2nd ed 40k you were lucky if all the arms were glued on.

I guess it depends on your location. 2nd edition here I mostly played painted vs painted because that was the policy of the local store. Also armies were significantly smaller (most games I played back then consisted of a couple of squads and maybe a vehicle).

In stores, presentation was often paramount, but in back rooms, garages and pubs around here, according to most of my friends in their 40s and 50s, you'd be lucky if you found someone who understood the merit of even painting metallics rather than leaving the blade bare metal.

And again I'll say that the very act of posting armies online requires a level of interest and competence with technology that means we very rarely see the very baseline of modern painting.

I'm a lurker on dakka, not a poster, but I had to spill some virtual ink in response to this thread. I will share, said by someone that has been involved in art, scale modeling for most of my life and wargaming for multiple decades. I wanted to say something on the subject as someone who *actually uses* airbrushes extensively in my art/modeling, throughout the entire process, not only to 'blast' paint onto a model.

First an observation re: the poll: The poll is incredibly skewed to favor the clear bias of the OP (that became apparent throughout the discussion); hence I didn't vote. There is no where NEAR the spectrum of options there should be. 4/5 of the options clearly represent the type of myopic vision that has been pervasive in this little world of wargaming for decades. Even the "I think they are good" was followed up by "nothing I would pay for."

Second, I echo the sentiments of those who have been around long enough to have seen the response to other "technological innovations" that have been thrust upon the wargaming community as a whole. Whether it's drybrushing, washes, using inks, etc. etc. etc. it doesn't matter- it's always been the same. I never cease to be amazed by these reactions. But I think it's reflective again of the myopic view of many in this community, and their individual judgement of what it means to be a painter, hobbyist, modeler, wargamer, and what is 'right' about how you do it.

So, when I hear people say things like 'its cheating, you can do things faster/better than I can... it doesn't represent skills with a brush... What I believe is actually being said is. 'hey, I paint this way, and get these effects and with my limited set of tools, it takes some skill. Since you are not doing it my way, but using some short cut, you are effecively 'cheating' to get the same outcome.'"

However, art/hobby/modeling, etc. is not akin to playing chess, where there are a limited set of objectives and rules that you play by, and if you don't you are 'cheating'. I'm not sure if this is more pronounced in the wargaming world because most of the time, there's this pervasive overarching meta of 'playing a game' with everything, thus you have to play by some sort of rules (<<< this is just conjecture folks... don't get your proverbial shorts in a knot...). But you just don't see this in other modeling/art worlds.

In fact, in the modeling world, the idea is to get the best outcomes with the least amount of energy. You are hailed as brilliant for doing this if you can. In the wargaming community? Heckled as a heretic and unclean/unwashed, because you are doing something different that some sort of predefined 'rules' that apparently everyone has agreed to, but in reality no one has nor could ever define. Just amazing to sit and think about, actually.

Third, for everyone who has thought at all that airbrushing is cheating... Prove it. Show me how it's cheating... can you?

I have a challenge for you: let's meet up. I'll give you all the equipment I use, and I'd like you to show me how you 'cheat.'

I've done this when I demo airbrushing. I love the look on people's faces when I hand them the brush, then they commence to look like a toddler trying to ride a 2 wheeler for the first time. It makes me chuckle EVERY. TIME. when some pedantic prig of a painter says something like this, then tries to airbrush. They can't do it, they get rudimentary outcomes at best or they screw up the project. They can't control the paint, can't control the brush, can't control the air. Can't paint over time without spatter, drying, clogging, etc. etc. etc. Their models look like crap. They do usually 1 of two things: they retreat and become more entrenched in their myopic view about painting or the hobby, or humble themselves, realize that a larger world exists than themselves, and either have more of a respect for someone who can use an airbrush artistically or realize that they have a lot to learn.

Because it takes literally hours just to get competent, and 100s of hours to really get proficient with this tool. It's incredibly frustrating at times. And the process can repeat itself with any change in the formula- new paints, different air, different work environment (humidity, lighting, airflow), shooting for different outcomes, slighting changes in the build up of a project.

What I've noticed is that many of us who like to airbrush do it because we like the tool, and we are willing to put up with all this to gain some level of proficiency, and then we enjoy it. It's not because its necessarily easier. And I'm talking about using an airbrush for more than a glorified spray gun, to basecoat.

Lastly, airbrushing has helped me improved my brush painting significantly. I know how to control the qualities of paint, not only from an artistic standpoint, but how it acts in general. But the most important thing I've learned is that everything I can do with a brush I could do with an AB, and vice versa. It's more about being pragmatic when choosing which to use. Now, this said, to answer the questions post above: there are people who use an airbrush and IMO don't really 'finish' the project to the common standard that mainy figure painters would commonly expect. I've used AB/brush work for years on figures, and am totally stoked that Giraldez is promoting this idea, but you can't just blast the figure with a bunch of pain, and call it done. This is the main critique that people have. It's not the use of the AB; if anything its 'laziness' in finishing a project.

Clearly, the photo posted by winterdyne demonstrates what I am speaking about, in comparison to the other photos posted. Most of the other pictures show projects that IMO aren't finished because they are not adequately detailed. I say this as an individual who has painted many commission pieces over the years.

And this is where I now say there are things you can do with a brush that are just much simpler, accurate, faster, easier than with an AB. So, does that mean because I didn't mask it off a section and painted it with my AB, or because I can feather out highlights and shadows much more quickly and accurately with brushes than an AB, that I'm cheating?

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
In stores, presentation was often paramount, but in back rooms, garages and pubs around here, according to most of my friends in their 40s and 50s, you'd be lucky if you found someone who understood the merit of even painting metallics rather than leaving the blade bare metal.

And again I'll say that the very act of posting armies online requires a level of interest and competence with technology that means we very rarely see the very baseline of modern painting.

Again it just depends where you live. A large portion of the gaming community in the last 90's revolved around the local store and so most people I know had forces that were painted. We would play larger games at home with unpainted models, but lacked terrain and whatnot so most my games back in those days were at the store that required painted models.

These days the local store doesn't have the same policy. I don't game there any more, but when I've passed through I see hordes of unpainted plastic more often than not.