Alpha Legion Recon Squad Pt 3

So, as you can probably tell already I am a glacially slow at painting but I'm thinking that is getting better!   One of the hardest things to figure out right now is just how to paint using an airbrush.  It may seem weird but I've only ever painted with a brush and not really in sub assemblies.  Learning how to paint with an airbrush (and on Forgeworld models) tends to change things a bit so maybe I'll highlight my process here so any newbs to airbrushing can see what I do and I can learn from them.  That's the beauty of the wargaming community right?  We all learn from each other?

In these two pictures you can see that I decided to paint the backpacks and arms seperately, a move I have since decided to scrap unless absolutely necessary.  I found it was really difficult to actually control where the pieces were and trying to paint all of them at the same time was difficult.  

The backpacks were especially hard because I didn't use strong enough glue to hold them in place which meant the pressurized air pushed them in a circle as I painted them.  On the models I'm putting together now I have decided to put the backpacks on the model after the initial black undercoat.  This way if I can get to an area with the silver or blue it is already shaded and doesn't take a ton of extra time.

So far with the Forgeworld weapons I've decided that the best option is to keep them on the sprue and just make sure I have cleaned up all the flash and mold lines.  Since they only connect with a small part in the back I figure there will be very little touch up after the undercoat and most of the work on these will be done with a brush anyway.

The next two weeks might be a little heavy on non-airbrush and non-forgeworld stuff as I am starting a great new job in California, two states away, and my wife is 38 weeks pregnant and staying here in Utah to give birth.  This means some craziness in many directions but since I'll be living with the in-laws in California I'll have a little more time in the evenings to do blogging on some other topics and meet my new gaming group/club that I've already scoped out in the Bay Area.  I'm looking forward to the move and getting around a good Warhammer Community and hopefully some soon to be good friends.

Forge World Models Prep

So the wife and I made an impromptu Independence Day vacation to Vegas to see my sister and her family.  That meant that I didn't want to stay up quite so late using the airbrush and instead wanted to prepare some of the resin crack I have for future airbrushing.  I haven't yet figured out how to paint the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists so most of these models will be painted up as Alpha Legion.

Here you see that one of the units cleaned up was an assault squad.  I honestly have no idea if they are any good in 30k, especially since they are not very good in 40k, but they look awesome!  So, lets paint them up and see what happens.

The nice thing about cleaning models is I can do it in front of the television while sitting with my wife instead of squirreled away in the man cave.  I know my wife appreciates that and I can multi-task and have fun!

If you haven't ever painted up Forge World models you have to wash them thoroughly with de-greasing hand soap to make sure that there aren't residues left on the models from the molding process.   You can see in the picture below that I like to let the models sit with lots of soap and then rinse them multiple times.  I'm new to the Forge World bandwagon so I don't know if I'm doing it right but I think it's working so far.

Hopefully I'll get these models assembled soon and start throwing some beautiful paint at them!  I hope they look as good in real life as they do in my head.