Airbrushing a Iron Hands Legion, Tips?

[xxunphasedxx]

Hey guys, I have been around the forums for a while, silently envying everybody's beautiful legion forces. I started painting my Iron hands about a year ago but gave up once I saw Mathew Kanes Iron Hands tutorial on how to do them. Without a airbrush, I was unable to replicate it and have been waiting until I could get all the gear together. Within the next week or so I will be receiving a air compressor for my airbrush and I will practice on some poor old 40k snap fit marines before painting my beloved legion. I plan to post my progress and ask questions as I am sure I will have plenty. I may, depending on how satisfied I am, start a WIP thread once the painting train gets moving.

 

So my initial questions are:

 

1: How much thinner should I use? As I am new to airbrushing in general, I don't really have a good gauge on how much to use. I am going to use Tamiya paint and Tamiya thinner if that helps?

 

2: I have never been really good at highlighting, I plan on trying to follow Mathew Kanes formula as close as possible which has Zenith highlighting but I assume that I will need to edge highlight the black after which terrifies me but I hope I will get enough practice on the snap fits before I try a actual MKIII marine. Any tips on black highlighting? I assume light or dark grey would be the right colour? Or would I be able to pull off using silver weathering effect to bring out edges? Again I am new to this stuff, so sorry if these are painfully stupid questions but I don't want to have such a expensive army look like my first paint job, you know?

 

3. Any advice for painting the eyes/lenses for a MKIII marine? The first time I painted these guys (I will be stripping them by the way) I had a really difficult time getting their lenses under the brow of the MKIII helmet, this may be a personal problem but I don't see a harm in asking. I am thinking of taping the helmet grill and forehead (everything but lenses) and giving it a spray of blue and then going in with layering from a lighter blue closer to the center of the helmet from the airbrush after but I don't now practical this is.

 

4.General tips? Anything helps as I have never been confident in my abilities as a painter and although I am excited to start, I am also kind of dreading actually starting and finding out I suck with a airbrush too. I may modify the process once I get started in favor of something more simple (thinking just silver with a couple sprays of purple and green with a layer of Tamiya Clear smoke may do the trick) but I really like the look of the forgewold Iron Hands and I want to at least try before going with the simpler approach.

 

Thank you in advance to anyone who contributes.

[shaun03]

Airbrushing takes some getting use too. There good guidance on thinning, but no set way to go about it.

 

I don't know anything about the painting style you using for reference.

 

Some tips that may help you with iron hands, not sure on metal colors you using.

 

Base coat black, if your wanting to go with worn rusty look brown tones are better.

 

Next layer Mid range metal color.

( optional wash with thin black or Browns depending on what you're trying for.)

Next spray from top down, lighter metal maybe 1 shade at most. You goal here is lightly dust the model on top down angle not coat it 100%.

Next spray from bottom up darker metal color 1 shade, again more of quick dusting that 100% covered.

Depending on factors you maybe chose to a thin down wash to tie it all in.

The airbrush should enable you to see smooth color changes between the 3 metal colors,

that with brush work add highlights as you see fit. If you don't want to go with straight black, try s clear coat color, I think smoke would fit will here, I don't use tamiya paints so don't know much about there colors. But with clear coat over the metal it will Tint it and still leave some of shine, so the lighter metal color will show in giving you highlight, and dark metal will get darker making s shade, and mid tone will be balance between the 2.

 

It's easier said that done.