Some Airbrush Work

Many of you know that I have been striving to get control on my collection the last couple years. Part of those strives is consolidating or eliminating parts of my collection. With the implementation of the allies rules in 6th edition I began working on my Emperors Children. With the release of Forgeworld's Horus Heresy book, I decided to consolidate the usable pieces of my Black Templar into a loyal version. That would make one big army I could use. The Chaos parts as a Chaos Space Marine army, the loyalist parts as a Codex Space Marines army, and combined I will use them in Horus Heresy games I play.

One army, one color scheme and I settled on a pre-heresy purple and gold look. Specifically a more muted almost platinum looking gold. In addition I am using my airbrush to do as much of the base color as possible. What follows is the result of my 3rd attempt. Unfortunately I am unable to truely judge if I like them until the other colors are on the model.

The steps after the jump...


I started with cleaned and assembled models. They were primed black with a directional white spray.

From that point I started multiple sprays with my airbrush. Keep in mind all the colors listed are thinned extensively, almost to the consistency of skim milk. I started by spraying the entire model with a 1 to 3 mix of VMC 70950 Black and VGC 72142 Heavy Violet. For some reason this came out kinda light, and I might actually skip this step in the future.

The second step was a directional spray of just VGC 72142 Heavy Violet. For those that do not know VGCs "heavy" colors are there foundation style paints. Heavy pigment concentration for good coverage. I like them very much. This spray was from a fairly low angle. Here I want to cover most of the model only leaving some deep recesses uncovered. This is two coats.

From there I gave a the models another directional spray this time from a higher angle using VMC 802 Sunset Red. In addition I made sure to focus some shots on spots I really wanted to highlight.

 After that I sprayed VMC 958 Pink on the highest areas. Once again I focus some heavier shots on the areas I really want to show highlight.

The final step is a all over spray with a wash made using Les Bursley's magic wash recipe. I could have bought some from Secret Weapon, but I knew I would need a lot and I wanted to control the thinness therefor I made my own.

As I said earlier, I am pretty happy with what I have right now. I won't be able to make the final decision until I get more detail painted and see what the color looks like next to the rest of the colors I am using. In addition, there are many areas highlighted with the purple color I want that will be a completely different color when I am done. I will try to keep you all updated as I go.