How much paint does one spend on an airbrushed army?

[Karnstein]

Okay, the title may sound a bit weird, but here's my problem: I've got a big primed Legion of Everblight army from Privateer Press army sitting on my work desk. I want to speed up the painting process with the trusty dual-action airbrush gun I own, but I have no idea how much paint this project will consume.

This wouldn't be a big problem, if I had sticked with "right of the shelf" colors. Which I didn't...I made my own colors, grabbing a bunch of Vallejo Model Air and P3 colors (which I pre-thinned before I added them to the Model Airs) and mixing them until I was satisfied with the results. To make things worse I stopped recording the ratios somewhere along the process, which makes it pretty hard to reproduce the colors if I run out of paint before I finish the whole army.

This is the paint schedule for my LoE army:

- 80 Infantry-sized models on small (30mm) bases.
- 12 models on medium bases (40mm), ranging from big infantry models to light warbeasts
- 18 models on large bases, 11 of them being big warbeasts (comparable to a 40k dread in size) and the rest being cavalry models
- 1 massive model on a 120mm base (http://www.brueckenkopf-online.com/.../PiP-Legion-of-Everblight-ThroneAssembly7.jpg)

As you can see that's a quite a challenge, even with an airbrush. (I'm aiming for tabletop-quality by the way)

Right now the models are simply primed with a coat of Vallejo Surface Primer Gray and a light layer of Surface Primer White dusted on from a very steep angle for some pre-shading effects. I plan to use the zenithal highlight technique for my primary color (which is blue). A basecoat of blue followed by 3 highlights. Here's a picture with the colors airbrushed on an old key-card (basecoat on the left, final highlight on the right):

View attachment 14902


Here's some data on the volume of paint I mixed up and the angles I want to spray it on:

• 50ml bottle filled to the rim with my base-coat color. This one will go all over the model, so it should have the highest consumption of all paints. 50ml = roughly equivalent to 3 Vallejo/p3 bottles.
• 32ml bottle with my first highlight. This one will be applied via airbrush with a 60° angle and should have the second highest consumptio. 32ml = roughly equivalent to 2 Vallejo/P3 bottles.
• 32ml bottle with my second highlight. This one will be sprayed on with a 75° angle.
• 17ml bottle with the third and final highlight, which will be dusted on sparingly with a 90° angle (so just right on top of the models).

Sadly I lack the experience with big projects when it comes to airbrushing, so I don't feel confident enough to evaluate my stock just by myself.

My pretty uneducated guess looks like this: Both the second and third highlight should be more than enough for a project of this size. But I'm not sure about the first 2 colors (base coat+60° highlight), esp. the base-coat color.

So my questions to the community (esp. people who have experiences with airbrushing armies of similar size):

1. Do I stock enough paint for a project of this size?

2. If not, where am I lacking and how much would you increase the stock to feel comfortable enough?


Cheers, Karnstein

 

[MAXXxxx]

hi,

the question is how proficent are you with your AB? because the 50ml bottle can be enough if you don't waste any through overspray / cleaning the AB / spraying too thick.
If you can control the AB right, than it should be about enough (I'd still try to add another cca 20ml of the basecoat just to be safe). If you can't controll it too much, then I'd say double up on the paint.
Example from last night:
- I tried to undercoat parts for a 1/6 anime kit. I used up as much paint for 1 leg, as for the other leg + body + hair combined. Simply I didn't have the right controll of the AB (did't pay enough attention to the job at the beginning).

Knowing myself (sometimes I rush things, sometimes I don't pay enough attention):
base:70-80ml ; 1st HL: about 50ml ; 3rd HL: about right


as a note: there is almost no difference between the 2nd and the final highlight on the pic, so I'd simply leave the 2nd out.it's extra work without much gain.

 

[Einion]

What a great question! And kudos for all the detail you went into :good:

In terms of how far the paint will go I think unfortunately this is an it depends kind of situation as MaXXxxx's reply indicates.

For me, when I come down to the end stages and I'm running out of a colour I can sometimes thin it a bit more to stretch it out, make it go a little further, but if you're going for consistency across a large number of models this might not work as well.

So I think you could do with expanding a bit on the mixes, just to be on the safe side; it's better to do it now when you have enough volume to somewhat swamp any slight colour differences, rather than try to mix additional paint later on when you'd have to be more careful to get the colour just right.

Besides, you aren't really wedded to the colours now if you think about it - how important is it if you bulk the paint out and any of the colours shift slightly?

Einion

 

[airhead]

50 ml = a bit more than 1.6 oz.

That is not much if it is thinned already. If that is p3/Vellajo paint before thinning, you are fine.
You should get between 3 (90 ml) to 6 oz (175 ml) of reduced paint (airbrush ready) out of that.

If that is thinned paint, you want to shoot the whole army at one sitting. No waste by cleaning the gun in multiple sessions. Give everything a light coat, see how much you've used/have left and judge your second coat from that - (i.e. got enough for another light coat? third?)

I'd get a large piece of foamcore board or cardboard and set everything up as much around the perimiter as I could. Spray one side, turn the board, repeat. Then turn the minis and go back to step 1. (that big an army may take two or more foam core boards.

***
Now, most people won't go into shading and shadowing 28-35 mm minis with multiple colors from an airbrush. Terribly small areas to shade.
***
I just had a thought... small turn table - like an inch or two (25-50 mm) across. Put one mini on it. Shoot darkest color from a low position (if 12 o'clock was stright above the mini and 6 o'clock was directly below the mini). Shoot the darkest color from about 5 o'clock while rotating the mini on the turn table. Change minis. Repeat.

Change to color #2. Shoot all minis from 4 o'clock.
Change to color #3. Shoot from 2 o'clock.
Change to color #4. Shoot from 1 o'clock.

Now go get your brushes and finish up.

 

[Karnstein]

@all who answered so far: Thx for the replies...

Just to comment on some things said:

hi,

the question is how proficent are you with your AB? because the 50ml bottle can be enough if you don't waste any through overspray / cleaning the AB / spraying too thick.

Knowing myself (sometimes I rush things, sometimes I don't pay enough attention):
base:70-80ml ; 1st HL: about 50ml ; 3rd HL: about right

as a note: there is almost no difference between the 2nd and the final highlight on the pic, so I'd simply leave the 2nd out.it's extra work without much gain.

I think I'm doing fine. I typicalöy spray with a pretty low PSI settings (<20psi) and from a close distance, so over-spray shouldn't be that big of a problem. I rather have a ton of basecoated models sitting on table, than 1-2 fully painted ones and a big bunch of primed ones. So yeah, I will try to base-coat all models before I move to the next stage and preferably as many models in a single session as possible.

But your numbers looks sound to me, same goes for dropping the highlights down from three to two.

What a great question! And kudos for all the detail you went into :good:

So I think you could do with expanding a bit on the mixes, just to be on the safe side; it's better to do it now when you have enough volume to somewhat swamp any slight colour differences, rather than try to mix additional paint later on when you'd have to be more careful to get the colour just right.

Besides, you aren't really wedded to the colours now if you think about it - how important is it if you bulk the paint out and any of the colours shift slightly?

Einion

No, I'm not wedded to the colors. I don't have any problems with swapping the basecoat into a bigger (say 80-100ml) bottle and then just pour some more VMA blues until it is filled to the rim. If that shifts the color slightly who cares? I only sprayed it on test models and spare keycards so far anyway.

50 ml = a bit more than 1.6 oz.

That is not much if it is thinned already. If that is p3/Vellajo paint before thinning, you are fine.
You should get between 3 (90 ml) to 6 oz (175 ml) of reduced paint (airbrush ready) out of that.

If that is thinned paint, you want to shoot the whole army at one sitting. No waste by cleaning the gun in multiple sessions. Give everything a light coat, see how much you've used/have left and judge your second coat from that - (i.e. got enough for another light coat? third?)

They are already thinned. I used some small plastic cups with a ml scale printed on (like the ones doctors/hospitals use), poured some P3 frostbite into them and added liquitex AB medium until I was satisfied with the consistency. Then I added the VMA colors, mixed them with a toothpick and then poured them into empty dropper bottles.

I'd get a large piece of foamcore board or cardboard and set everything up as much around the perimiter as I could. Spray one side, turn the board, repeat. Then turn the minis and go back to step 1. (that big an army may take two or more foam core boards.

Hm, won't that increase overspray? I have a DIY spray booth made from a very big cardboard box that originally stored a whole bunch of wine bottles. Depending on the models size I stick them on model holders with blu tack or simply hold at the base and slowly rotate them in my left hand. I got a box full of empty p3 bottles, a bunch of film containers, bottle cork from wine bottles and a whole curtain pole cut down into ~3" pieces that I can use as paint holders. That way I have more control and can work with lower pressure and from a pretty close distance, thus keeping the overspray that goes on the booth instead of the model to a minimum.

I just had a thought... small turn table - like an inch or two (25-50 mm) across. Put one mini on it. Shoot darkest color from a low position (if 12 o'clock was stright above the mini and 6 o'clock was directly below the mini). Shoot the darkest color from about 5 o'clock while rotating the mini on the turn table. Change minis. Repeat.

Change to color #2. Shoot all minis from 4 o'clock.
Change to color #3. Shoot from 2 o'clock.
Change to color #4. Shoot from 1 o'clock.

Now go get your brushes and finish up.

That looks a bit like the usual zenithal highlight approach reversed. Instead of basecoating the whole model (top+bottom), just spray the colors on the "shadow" areas leaving the upper areas bare?

Could be worth a try, at least it should cut down on the amount of paint spend on the base coat...