After a couple weeks off due to real life work pressures, in which I didn't get any hobby stuff done, I really jumped back into it yesterday with both feet straight into the deep end! The brighter amoung you might have already made the mental link between this blog title and what I am going to talk about. :)
While I may not have done any physical hobby stuff, I did pick up the Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume One, on recommendation from a couple of different blogs.
I have painted a couple of tanks, and have never been happy with them. I found the wide open spaces on tanks difficult to manage and found it difficult to transfer any knowledge from painting human size mini's to the larger tanks. This was the reason I picked up this book, and after reading through it I found it amazing, some really great painting tips, all well described in a fully colour top quality book. I would give it two very definate thumbs up.
So naturally, when I got back to painting I wanted to give a few of the tips I'd gleaned from this book a go. I do not have a nice forgeworld tank, but what I did have is what I think is the awesome ork truck. I gave it a standard black undercoat.
Not content to try out some new techniques, I thought it was time to break out the airbrush and give it its madien voyage. From the IA-MM book, I first airbrushed the whole truck with GW Tin Blitz followed by a blast from a hairdryer to dry it quicker.
For my first airbrush ever I think it worked out fairly ok! The next step was an a boltgun metal application step. Not having any GW Boltgun metal, I used Vallejo Gunmetal metal, and I think I got my mixtures slightly wrong. The gunmetal was a little too thinned and ended up running slightly. This in itself was not too bad as it only let some tin blitz come through and made it look a little more ramshackled which for orks is not a bad thing. Once again a quick blast from the hairdryer.
The next step was the major technique I wanted to try from IA-MM. I wanted to give a weathered and chipped red paint look to certain area's of the truck. This was done over several easy steps.
1. Give the model a coat of purity seal. (I didn't have that, so just used matt varnish) This was to seal the baseline colours.
2. Once the varnish was dry (Once again I used hairdryer to speed up the process) spray the model with common hair spray. I used a Tesco Value brand which I bought for €0.95. Once again dried the model with the hairdryer)
3. When dried I airbrushed the area's I wanted with GW Mechrite Red and then hairdryed.
4. The final step involves rubbing and rolling a large brush with some warm water over the area's you want to look distressed. This will cause the hairspray layer to dissolve and make the red paint lift, creating natural looking wear and tear. The more pressure and rubbing you do, the greater the amount of paint removed.
For a first attempt at this method. I think this turned out great. I now realise I should have tried to mask some of the area's I didn't want to have red, to save me some repainting work.
The next step I have planned is to clean up mis-sprayed red, and then have a go with another new technique, weathering powders. This is a real learning model for me, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
