HiO’19 – ISS, ISS Baby to go, to go~

Greetings! New stuff! Yay!

I started an Infinity project, with which I am finally going to see some airbrush action and get acquainted with another tool of the trade. Infinity models are actually a good place to practice, daunting as the models may be they are actually pretty decently suited for such a painting method. Well kind of….

Thus far I have painted three Celestial Guards from the Imperial Service Sectorial army and am somewhat pleased with the results.

My basic idea was to prime the model’s black (also with airbrush) and then basically do highlights on armor plating in greys and then whites (later also reds) and then dig in with a regular paint brush to finish the model off.

Airbrushing isn’t that easy! It is like any other aspect of the hobby and requires dedication and practice to learn. At the moment my airbrushed parts have hardly, if any, contrast at all. Mostly due to me not knowing what the heck I am doing… 😀

Things I have learned so far:

1) Paints need to be at a pretty precise consistency. Either I managed to get the paints too thick and I would have pretty stars appear on my ‘test-glove’ or I would make fun splatter designs with too thin of paint. Getting this down will require a lot of trial and error on my part.

2) Pressure is tricky! I had mine way too high and it messed up quite a lot. I need to turn it down quite a bit. My better results came when I had around 20ish PSI. May go a bit lower and see how that works.

3) Brush movement is kind of important. Often (due to above reasons) I would often get splatter on a model because I used the brush aiming at the model and not the side. Taking side-squirts (as I like to call them) really helped me to get a feel for certain amounts of pressure and paint flow. Still have a lot to learn.

4) Air movement dosaging really needs a lot practice for precise painting. At the moment all I can do is mess things up. I have a long road ahead of me…

With that said I plan to work on more ISS models with the airbrush. Not necessarily because I deem airbrushing to be the way but mostly so I can learn how to use the tool more. I think at the moment, besides priming, varnishing and occasional base coating I won’t be using the airbrush too much. Maybe this opinion will change over time?

Since I finished a few more models my Heat is On achievements are progressing. One of the model’s counts to the ‘Paint a mini using a new technique’, another goes to the second half of ‘paint two models from different brands’ and the third is going to my 5 mini countdown (currently at 4). With that I am leading with achievements and Jim is currently still ahead on miniature count.

Hopefully he will get some stuff done now, after his big day is over. ❤

Peace out and see you later~