Hobby 102: Airbrushing with Speedpaints

Speedpaints. They're great for "slapchop" and other contrast painting techniques, but did you know they can be incredibly good for airbrushing too? Let me explain.

Roger Dean - Tales From Topographic Oceans

Derek Riggs - The Number of the Beast

Inks and airbrushes go together like strawberries and cream; fish and chips; steak and kidney - time-honoured combinations that stand as examples of "things that really go together." I think I might be hungry. The reason is simple: professional artists have long used acrylic inks through airbrushes to create legendary illustrations, particularly when it comes to album art. Artists like Roger Dean use expansive colour washes created through the airbrush to paint their backgrounds, for example.

While Speedpaints aren't quite inks, they do behave the same way when sprayed through an airbrush, atomising extremely finely to allow the artist to create super smooth gradients. It's worth noting that Speedpaints applied this way no longer retain the special surfactant properties that make them a one-coat paint. If you want that, you'll have to use an ordinary brush with bristles. I often use them like this to create smooth volumetric shading on the underside of pieces - the important thing to remember is that you can only shade this way, you most likely aren't going to be building up your highlights using Speedpaints through the airbrush (apart from the obvious creation of shadows to define them).

One big advantage of shading this way is that it allows us to create smooth gradients by building up subsequent layers of transparent colour, focusing on the "angle of incidence" between the model surface and the airbrush. A lot of the time, our models are rendered as though the light is coming from directly above, in which case we'd focus our spray in such a way that most of the colour is sprayed from directly beneath, which may be tricky with a base in the way, but you can get close enough for it not to matter.

When airbrushing with Speedpaints it's a good idea to put down a layer, then blow clean air through the brush onto the model to dry the paint before progressing. Make sure that when you blow the clean air you do it from far enough away that the air striking the model doesn't disturb the paint surface as it dries, or you could make a big mess of your surface, just take it steady. Paint, a little air, more paint, a little air, more paint, etc. This way your airbrush painting will be even quicker, and compared to patiently waiting for each layer to dry when applied with a brush, it'll feel like you're going at warp speed.



The shadows on this Trench Crusade Heavy Mechanised Infantry soldier were created with a generous spray of Speedpaint Turnbull Turquoise from below, providing not only value but also colour contrast with the cold turquoise against the warmer yellow-green of the highlights.



The darkest shadows on this Riftspawn's skin were painted with Cloudburst Blue (one of my absolute favourite Speedpaints), while the shading on the green skirt was done with Camo Cloak sprayed very carefully around the creases and around the waist. Using an airbrush like this certainly takes some getting used to, but once you become accustomed to it, it's as easy as pie, and extremely quick.

For this Custodes tank and dreadnought, I airbrushed the shadows with some Speedpaint Sand Golem for the gold and Cloudburst Blue for the metallic steel. I'm sure you agree that it makes a huge difference to the overall feel of the model, adding a ton of depth.

Since Speedpaints are transparent and flow very easily, they're ideal for this kind of shading work. I'm a big fan of using Speedpaints for this - the main consideration is that you have to have a light touch and build up the colour very slowly. One important thing to note when using Speedpaints in this way is that they'll tend to dry out as they come through the nozzle and will clog up the needle tip very quickly, so you'll need to be ready to scrub the crud away.

The Metallics Speedpaints also airbrush super nicely, comparing very favourably to Vallejo Metal Colour's alcohol-based airbrush paints (although I think the Army Painter Metallic Speedpaints specifically have some kind of alcoholic solvent in them to help them flow more easily, so it makes sense that they have similar properties to another alcohol-based paint, just be careful to wear some kind of respiratory protection when airbrushing these so you don't get dizzy!)

There are plenty of different ways to unlock the versatility of Speedpaints, but airbrushing is definitely my favourite!

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don't forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website, and subscriber-only content covering competitive Warhammer 40K!