Airbrushing Marines

[ellis_esquire]

Hey all,

Having a hard time working out how to approach the Space Marine shape with an airbrush.

Process wise im looking at part zenithal and then coming back with lower shades (ie where do shadows look best) in specific areas. can anyone give any tips or divert me to a good resource specifuically on marines?

Im thinking:

AB Prime --> AB Base --> AB Highlight --> AB shades --> AB Gloss --> Brush Highlights & washes and decals --> Brush details.

Any help/signposting appreciated!

E_E

 

[Bloodhowl]

Process wise im looking at part zenithal and then coming back with lower shades (ie where do shadows look best) in specific areas. can anyone give any tips or divert me to a good resource specifuically on marines?

If you have access to it, I think the miniature mentor speed painting video with Thomas David covers an airbrush for zenithal lighting.

I know Meph has used an airbrush on his large scale Marine and is currently doing a Cassar Mega-Mini SM Terminator, but I don't know if he uses an airbrush for anything other than basecoating on his 28mm figures.

 

[airhead]

Overall shading and highlighting is very do-able with the airbrush.
Individual component work (packs, weapons, etc) is still best done with a brush.

 

[ellis_esquire]

I guess I am jsut wondering if people are more specific with their airbrushes in shading areas as oppose to 'over the top' Zenithal technique?

 

[airhead]

depends on the mini and the scale. The flesh areas on Reaper's 54mm Sophies are very do-able with an AB.

For the average SM, I'd try shoulder pads, breast plate, helmet, and leg armor plates. Then go back and do all the details by hand.

The biggest thing for me is that I learned to paint from the light to the dark, building up layers of paint as I go. Very hard to do on the average space marine as you are painting into finer and finer corners where overspray and splatter become an issue. This is why most people use washes for shading/shadowing.

 

[Einion]

You're obviously quite familiar with the normal zenithal-type spraying in terms of the mechanics of the technique, but spraying the shadows after the highlights isn't always done. If I'm working from a midtone in both directions I normally do the shadowing first, then the highlighting*.

But because of the way that SMs are sculpted I think it might generally work out best to go lighter only - so you'd basecoat very dark, then hit it with maybe a light shadow colour, then the midtone, first highlight and then maybe a lighter highlight but sprayed very carefully from directly above only (might work better to do this purely by brush though, so need to experiment).

I think the best thing for you to do would be to try both approaches, see what each looks like with the paints you're using (different paints might be enough to be make it work well for one person but not so well for someone else, even though they're both doing the same scheme) as well as how much hand-brushing you need to do afterwards.

The main practical issue about spraying individual shadows is whether you'd need to mask - almost certainly yes, at least some of the time - and if so how you'd approach this and whether it's worth the hassle. It is doable I'm sure, but the payoff may simply not be worth the effort involved or time involved. It usually isn't when airbrushing small-scale in 3D.

*Often with a little corrective spraying of the midtone, before I go in with the highlight colours

Einion

 

[Da Hamma]

Try using tape to mask areas already highlighted when shading, this may be of use on areas such as underneath the rims of the shoulder pads