Sunday, April 25, 2010

Pre-Shading BA Tanks Before Air Brushing








I have a whole slew of tanks being prepped for my new and improved torrent of fire BA army. If you look back at my earlier posts you can see pictures of my old dry brushed beaten up ba tanks. After having so much fun with the airbrush on the Death Company rhino I decided to add two Baal Predators (both magnetized) and a Land Raider God Hammer. The GH is not the most effective tank for my force, but I wanted to paint one so that was that. Behold the power of instant gratification!

I tried two different airbrush techniques on these guys, though they started off the same way. After my earlier attempt using varying base coats I decided to give pre-shading a shot. I base coated all of the tanks black, and then use fortress grey to dust them. At this initial step I had the itch to do a space wolves army. I could see adding some warm brown/yellow panels and battle damage to the tanks after the pre-shading step and being really pleased. However since these were BA, red had to follow.

For the Rhinos
1) Blood Red/ Dark Flesh air brushed on tank
2) Blood red air brushed
3) Blood red/orange air brushed on edges
4) All rivets have baal wash around them followed by orange rivet

For the Land Raider
1) Air brush pure blood red
2) Air brush orange/blood red mix along edges
4) All rivets have baal wash around them followed by orange rivet

It turns out the Land raider recipe was both the easiest and the best looking. That seems to be the pattern for my painting these days. Less work=Nicer produce

In addition to the two preds and the LR, I picked up a vindicator to add to the mix. This should give my regular gaming buddies a pretty hard force to fight. Three Baal preds out flanking, with a convoy of death company in a rhino and assault marines in a LR, supported by a vindicator and drop pod dreds.

Oh on my zeal to get painting I accidentally threw away one of the track segments for the LR, so there is a missing segment on the front!

9 comments:

  1. Looks great ..... I have an airbrush I haven't been able to use yet. Your work makes my finger itch to try ....

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  2. Hmm, painting tanks has always been something that's turned me off from finishing my Blood Angel army. This pre-shading / airbrushing intrigues me. Perhaps it's worth buying an airbrush after all. Great post!

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  3. very interesting,I have an unopened citadel spray gun...I actually painted my IG tanks by hand but it takes FOR-EVER...airbrushed are a little intimidating but this technique makes me wanna try! thanks!

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  4. Make a Redeemer or Crusader and the Frag Launchers will give you plenty of spare links to use in place of your missing one.

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  5. Siph_Horridus: Great idea! I had not thought about using a crusader box to solve the missing link problem. That will work perfectly, in addition to giving me another complete land raider to paint!

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  6. Solid work as always. Man I envy your productivity.

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  7. Looking great so far. I too have been employing the use of an airbrush to paint my tanks. It is an incredible time saver.

    -Jim

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  8. Dude, that is some sexy painting! How exactly are you 'dusting' these models? I've seen you use the term quite frequently but I'm not quite getting it.

    Might you have a tutorial around here?

    Keep up the good work!

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