Knight Paladin WIP - Adventures with the Airbrush

The various armor panels of the Knight paladin went into the paint booth last week.  After too much deliberation (I can seldom make up my mind on the best scheme...), I opted for a split white/green paint scheme.  This will be a scheme that departs from the palettes of my existing Imperial armies and should help the Paladin stand out in my collection. This is also a new challenge as I have not painted white in any amount, esp. not on armor and the split scheme allowed me to toy with masking and airbrushing. So first the white...

 

Please pardon the crazy image look.  I have been doing ALOT of black base coating so the spray booth is black and the white LEDs cast an odd color in these shots. I used my new Iwata Eclipse airbrush with Vallejo game air colors.  I started with a coat of 72.734 Bonewhite laid right over the black base coat, leaving the back of the panels black and avoiding the trim within reason.  I will brush paint the trim back to black later to prep for brass or gold.  I am using a strip of stiff cardboard with double-sided tape to hold the various small pieces in place for spraying - a great pro tip! I used to hold the pieces which led to all sorts of shenanigans, even with latex gloves on.

Next, a layer of 72.701 Dead White went on, sprayed from the center out, avoiding the edges next to trim to leave some shadow. I plan to use washes or glazes to tint the armor later to blend all the colors and add depth, some age, and details to the panels.  This will happen after the trim is base coated to tie everything together.

 

Above, the greens have been added.  I first flat coated the white and let it dry.  Then I masked off the areas that would remain white and laid down a coat of 72.728 Dark Green followed by highlights of

72.729 Sick Green. As with the Dead White above, I sprayed from the center out avoiding the edges against the trim. One this dried, I removed the tape.  

I was immediately reminded of how important careful taping is.  Some green bled under the white in spots and will have to be cleaned up by brush.  Not what I had hoped for, but hopefully recoverable.  Overall, I was very pleased with how this came out. here's a shot of the painted pieces in their current on the gaming table.

I used the airbrush to carefully base the armor shields on the weapons at the same time I was basing the larger pieces.  Also, some base coat metals have been dry brushed on the main skeleton using Vallejo model color 70.865 oily steel over 70.863 gun metal. This is just a start and more metals will be added to build up some contrast and interest around the large sections of metal skeleton.

That's the progress so far.  Stay tuned for follow up articles as more progress is made.  Comments are welcome, particularly if there are questions or suggestions for more or less detail in these posts.

Cheers, and Happy Gaming!