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I have recently purchased an airbrush system and love it. I have one problem, when painting Blood Angels they always turn out orange in the end. My steps are:

1. Primer - Black
2. Base Coat - Fire Red (Vallejo Model Air)
3. 1st Zenithal Highlight - Italian Red (Vallejo Model Air)
4. Final Zenithal Highlight - Scarlet Red (Vallejo Model Air)


The zenithal highlights have an amazing effect but it all looks orange, What am I doing wrong? Thanks

In essence, you're not putting enough paint on I suspect.

If you're new to airbrushing, you'll probably not be quite aware of exactly how much thinner the paint coats are.

I've found that with reds especially, they can look either too pink or too orange initially as the pigment just isn't saturated enough.

Try a second coat of your base coat, see how that helps?

Part of your problem is also the black primer. With the ultra-thin paint coats that an airbrush can lay down, your colors are more translucent than opaque. You might try a red ink wash at the very end of the process to make your highlights blend better or start with a shade below fire red and only go up to Italian red when highlighting.

Pictures would really help to see what is going on (one at each stage would be grand).

Try switching to a grey primer. Vallejo makes a really nice primer in a larger bottle that you can probably find at your local Hobby Town USA.

Red and blue over black seem to change their colors to orange and purple respectively. I've noticed this when painting my Warriors of Chaos army.

 Whumbachumba wrote:
Try switching to a grey primer. Vallejo makes a really nice primer in a larger bottle that you can probably find at your local Hobby Town USA.

Red and blue over black seem to change their colors to orange and purple respectively. I've noticed this when painting my Warriors of Chaos army.

Good advice this....

One note: on the grey primer, the product you want is the larger bottle "SURFACE PRIMER" not the small bottle of model air called "grey primer".

The first is actual primer, and is amazing. The second is a airbrush paint, which happens to be made the same color as the grey primer on ww2 tanks.

best of luck!

To confuse matters, they actually do the surface primer in the same size bottle as the paint as well, Dave.

I had considered suggesting a grey or white primer too, but wouldn't that have a detrimental effect on the shading?

Grey primer
Use fire red not scarlet
Edge highlight with white
Go over with scarlet red

If you want to keep your method the same, and add one simple step that will make the red pop, airbrush some p3 Red Ink, straight from the bottle on top of what you have already done, this will really take the orange out and make the red pop.

Here is an example;



This Karchev was actually painted in Vermillion (an orange red) and then inked with p3 Red Ink.

Another;



All of the reds on this model were done the same way, this is the great thing about inks is the effect they can have on colors underneath. Give it a try and I think you will not be disappointed.

A.

I appreciate all the responses! Ill give it a go and update with some pics!