Lesson learned: Airbrushing is still difficult!
I got the airbrush out again tonight in the hope that I might be able to produce slightly better results than in my first attempts, which were… let’s go with ‘poor’.
My vague plan was to take an old elf and turn him brown, then ivory, then maybe slightly white. In this regard I was somewhat successful, in that he did in fact turn all three colours. Unfortunately my post doesn’t end here however.
My previous airbrushing attempts were my very first, and so obviously a degree of failure was expected. I found that my primer (AK Interactive) stuck better to the paint cup than my models, my trigger control was woefully bad, and that an incorrectly-adjusted compressor mixed with both over-and-under-thinned paint can lead to a poor spraying experience. Since then I have learned about the difference between ‘resting’ and ‘operating’ pressure (nobody seems to talk about this in the “how to start airbrushing” videos!) and changed from the tarry hell that was AK’s primer (I’m sure it’s fine, and it’s just me!) to the Molotow one4all paints much vaunted by NotJustMecha’s Marco Frisoni. A recipe for success, surely?
Well, initial signs were better. Pressure was set at a more reasonable level, paint didn’t appear to need thinning, and when I pulled the trigger back paint came out in a continuous burst, and not fits and starts. I found that sometimes I could even get it to spray in roughly the direction that I wanted! Still might have to buy a laser pointer though…
Unfortunately towards the end of my session I found that my primer layers seemed to be cracking or peeling:
In particular check the cloak just above the sword, and basically all of the back. Not sure what the cause of this is yet, but I would assume it’s trying to spray over paint that hasn’t fully cured? Or perhaps simply spraying too heavily, but I thought I had done quite well on that front. Any insight here would be greatly appreciated! And yes, I know the lighting is still awful – I forgot to take photos until I had nearly finished packing away!
So while I have managed to partially achieve what I set out to do I now need to go back to undo and redo half my work. Not ideal! I think that tomorrow Aenur here will be meeting with a sanding stick before getting blasted again. 6 days until this fella needs to be finished!
