It’s been over 6 months since I last tried to paint the buildings I purchased from plastcraft games and it seems that every tutorial out there for painting terrain uses an airbrush. I don’t really have the luxury of spending 200€ for an airbrush and compressor and even if I had I would just buy more terrain or miniatures to add to my collection . I tried just basecoating a building with my Vallejo paints but it consumed a lot of paint and the result was very cartoonish, nothing compared to the airbrushed buildings I see everywhere. They are not even professionally painted, just a couple of sprays with 2-3 colors and it looks so realistic. Are there any tutorials/advice/techniques that you can help me? Thanks in advance.
Here's one with using spray paint and house paint And here's one from Warsenal using normal paints and pigments https://warsen.al/blogs/product-upd...ilding-with-secret-weapon-weathering-pigments
Just realized that you were talking about painting Plastcraft stuff. I'm not really sure they'd be safe to use spray-paint on, try it out on a trash piece beforehand if you're looking at using the method in the video.
Well i have already primed them white so the only thing i can do now is paint them. Maybe i should use acrylic paints for painters which have a denser consistency so that it gives the buildings some volume... i really dont know. Maybe a couple of washes could add some character to the buildings. Just now i realized i have never uploaded any pictures of anything i have done so far, so people can judge according to what they see. If you want i can upload my first try on the 2 storey building and tell you how i actually wanted it to look like :)
I followed those tutorials for DeadZone terrains, maybe they could be helpful : Deadzone Terrain - Speed Painting Guide Deadzone Terrain - Even Speedier Painting Guide Deadzone Terrain Weathering Speed-painting Fortifications for Deadzone If you want to have a look at the result it's here
Since, as you say, the tutorials use 2-3 colors, maybe it would be a good idea to invest into some spray cans? White or yellow for lights, black for the basecoat, and a color of your choosing for most of it. Me, I use basic acrylic paints, a basic grey plus some picks with a big brush (2-3 cm diameter) with black does wonders.
Use pigments, they can get as good results as an airbrush and can paint easelly big surfaces with cotton. Spoiler: Raicho painted with pigments
Plastcraft terrain is perfectly rattle-can safe to paint. It's foamed PVC, not eps (eps is eaten by the solvents in most spray paints).
graffity spary cans can be a usefull method, mainly becasue they act as a primer able to cover many sort of surfaces. I useally use BD-Street spray can to paint MDF. A good technique is to paint a base coat with a beige or broken white and then use pure white for the top parts this gives some volume to the scenery. same 2 tones effects can be applied to many colours. If you are a bit more intrepid you can think about masking them to have stripes or some pattern on your scenery. I also like to use the net in which fruit or garlic comes with to have some hexagonal patterns remember that u can turn empty spray cans intro more scenery
Those sponges that have the green felt rug thing on one side are really good for texturing flat surfaces, just dab them all over with a highlight colour a few shades lighter than your base coat.
It all depends on what terrain are you aiming for but pigments can give you nice and quick results if you don't mind a set of worn out terrain. When I was painting this tower I bought a can of green spray but the colour was too bright for my taste. I just rubbed a bit of a brown pigment with my finger. It nicely dulled the green and did a good job at adding texture to a flat wall.
@Usashi I like your neon city very much and it was actually one of the reasons that I came up with the idea of my “neon” style city. Maybe one of these days I will upload my failed project so you can comment on.
Thanks mate I really appreciate your comment. As already suggested by @xagroth and @lord_dri spray cans do wonders. The only problem I see, as I used few at the beginning, is that they are hard to control (I tried to use 3 shades of grey for my buildings) and in the long run, airbrush might be a cheaper solution. You might try as well combining techniques and add printed textures to painted buildings. Here's a good example made by luferox on the old forum: http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/43907-teferox-bay-corregidor-trading-outpost/?page=1
I also strongly recommend using spray cans :) I don't have airbrush and work with spray cans and brushes. Simple painting with one main color, some additional colors with brush, some drybrushing, washing, some chips and damage with foam and they don't look bad - simple and rather quick ;) Not as great as Usashis stuff, but he's plays in a different terrain league ;) You can see more here. PozdRawiam / Greetings
Has anyone gotten graffiti nozzles for their spray cans? Amazon has a set of like 10 (male to female) for under $20 that all do different spray patterns. Several are fine control. There's also several street art spray can lines that have hundreds of colors and run about $10 a can. Also I'm wondering if this post should be a sticky? I'm sure the majority of people who play infinity don't have airbrushes and this could be something to lower the entry bar of terrain painting. @psychoticstorm
I've used them - but not because I got them off amazon. I had a graf supplies store a couple of blocks away from me (a few buildings in the area have sanctioned graf art on them). I learned about the different nozzles years ago, about the time I figured the standard ones that came with rattlecans were pretty crap. :D
Yes, worth getting a few of them and playing around with them, to see what you can get out of them. Not saying you can't get good results with "stock" but there's a reason graf artists get better results than "taggers" do, and it's down to their choice of tools.
I'm pretty sure this guy painted all his terrain with a rattle-can. I can't seem to find the plog on the old forums, but he made all his terrain from junk lying around. From what I can see, he primed, then went over it with a rust colour and then lightly sprayed it with a seafoam green and a light blue. That's just a guess though.
