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I've had an airbrush for about a year, I still struggle with getting consistent results with it, and just use it for base coating, but I'd like an excuse to practice more. My main army is Death guard, and with all their fiddly bits everywhere it doesn't feel very conducive to airbrushing. I know a skilled person could but I need simpler than that.
So what army would have a wide range of units that are airbrush friendly for me to practice with? At first glance it looks like necron, dark eldar, or tyranid maybe?

Start by trying a zenithal highlight of your base coat. You can do that on anything. After you've done the base coat, spray the highlight colour from a high angle aiming downwards at the top of the model. All the surfaces facing upwards should get highlighted.

What aspect of airbrushing are you trying to learn?

Basecoating is a big part of what you do with it.

so are you looking to learn things like highlighting preshading blends OSL and stuff like that right?

I figure basic marines would be it. lots of round and sharp edges to practice.

 Desubot wrote:
What aspect of airbrushing are you trying to learn?

Basecoating is a big part of what you do with it.

so are you looking to learn things like highlighting preshading blends OSL and stuff like that right?

I figure basic marines would be it. lots of round and sharp edges to practice.

Yeah, highlighting and blending generally. I've watched videos of people painting entire vehicles with nothing but an airbrush, shading and highlighting by spraying lighter/darker shades of their base color. It looks so good how the colors fade into one another and the shadows look natural.

Instead of trying to paint an army, might I suggest choosing a set of miniatures with a similar color palette? Preferably a simple one? Maybe some infantry from Blood Angels, World Eaters, Tyranids, Tau, Eldar?

I bought an airbrush to paint miniatures, but I did not get good with it until I started painting other things. Flow, PSI, choice of paints, use of varnishes, knowledge of other techniques like washes / drybrushing / extreme highlights, and a lot of other factors come into it.

It took me about a year to get to the point where I was any good. I watched a lot of tutorials and experimented with different techniques until I got to the point where my work was passable.

Yeah i mean if you are practicing then you could always pick up a cheapo rhino or dreadnought to practice on a few times.

Knights are great for your first airbrush large surfaces make it easy to see what your doing.

Another great army to do it on are slaves to darkness on the chaos warriors, the large plate sections make it good to do finer sprays, same with almost any space marine army.

Another great model to practice airbrushing are Magnus and the LoC but it really comes down to what you are trying to get down as a technique


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Also the contemptor isna great piece to paint. Because airbrush lawys down so thin you can paint the same one over and over with out loss of detail.

Sigmarines are also great, if you could get the starter ones for cheap. Lack of tiny details and large enough surfaces.

I would NOT do tyranids. Their is just so much little detail and you will have to feather the carapce, get the vents/washes, etc...

Honestly I went back and stripped my entire army of Ultrasmurfs from 15 years ago and started the airbrush and zenithal on those and they look much better. Marines are easy to paint (and airbrush) you can do almost the whole model with the airbrush. Then brush pick the details and done.

Eldar, vanilla marines, tyranids are the main ones that come to mind, or vehicle based imperial guard. In fantasy the lizardmen are good.

Vehicles are great for airbrush practice, since you can build up your blends over a larger surface area. And painting a large flat piece is such a pain with a hair brush that you'll really enjoy doing it the airbrush way.

As far as armies go, I think Necrons are pretty good for practice, especially to learn about pre-shading. A black undercoat, followed by lighter and lighter silvers from the top will create a pretty decent effect. Metallics go very well over black, and some metallic air colors (I'm thinking Vellejo here) are great. And if you feed adventurous, you can try some green glowing effects.
Another approach to painting them that works well with an airbrush is to use clear coats. You can create nice silver highlights with the airbrush, then clear coat the whole thing with very thin coats. It's good to learn how to lay down a thin, consistent coat (when basecoating you just need a solid coat, so you don't need to learn thickness consistency).

If you're literally looking for good practice, then go to an art store/amazon and buy a pack of reference shapes (the kind students use for drawing still lifes). It should come with a cube, cylinder, rectangle, and a cone at least. Use these to practice creating a light source and shading accordingly.

They can be primed over repeatedly, and getting the concept of blending and shading with an imaginary light source is MUCH easier with these familiar shapes, all you have to do is miniaturize them as you progress. You also have the benefit of there being a million+ photos of these same reference shapes on the internet/instagram/wherever, so you can check your work.



WAY cheaper than buying models to practice with and I bet messing up a cube is a lot less heartbreaking than a tank.

Again, strictly for practicing though, not as glorious as painting a model.

 Zach wrote:
If you're literally looking for good practice, then go to an art store/amazon and buy a pack of reference shapes (the kind students use for drawing still lifes). It should come with a cube, cylinder, rectangle, and a cone at least. Use these to practice creating a light source and shading accordingly.

They can be primed over repeatedly, and getting the concept of blending and shading with an imaginary light source is MUCH easier with these familiar shapes, all you have to do is miniaturize them as you progress. You also have the benefit of there being a million+ photos of these same reference shapes on the internet/instagram/wherever, so you can check your work.



WAY cheaper than buying models to practice with and I bet messing up a cube is a lot less heartbreaking than a tank.

Again, strictly for practicing though, not as glorious as painting a model.

This is a brilliant idea.