Airbrush project

[HunterB]

What would people say is a good army to learn airbrushing with?

only caveats are it has to have a start collecting box, not a massive model count  and is not Stormcast or nighthaunt

thanks!

[Darkfine]

Sylvanith, squigs, tzeentch or ironjawz. 

[Minis by Night]

The first thing you'll learn with an airbrush is priming, which you can do with any army. Next will be the base coat, so choose any army that has a large amount of a single color.

• Khorne is all red, so that's a good choice.
• Tzeentch's blue and pink horrors, and screamers and flamers are also good
• Bonesplitters or Daughters of Khaine can be good if you want to to a lot of skin (neither has an SC box though). So is Slaanesh.
• Slaves to Darkness can be rather monochrome too (black, or which ever gods you prefer).
• The skaven SC is all plague priests(green) and wood. Not as convenient with clanrats though
• Kharadron (metal), Skellies (brown + drybrush of bone), Flesh-eater (greenish flesh), Seraphon, Sylvaneth (brown + drybrush), Ironjaw

Once you've got the hang of a decent basecoat, you can start getting more fancy with bigger models.

[RuneBrush]

I think you can apply airbrushing to a huge number of armies!  Ultimately it all depends on what you're looking to achieve - if you're purely using it as a tool for base coating then, pretty much anything will work.  If you're looking to achieve subtle gradients and blends then my suggestion would be to start big as it's more forgiving.

I'd probably go for Beastclaw Raiders.  The beasts in there all want different coloured underbellies to fur, and the riders you'll be looking for more accurate zenithal highlights on the muscles.  Onwards I'd probably pick up some Fyreslayers.  They're predominantly flesh coloured, and the airbrush would allow you to do some quick and effective glowing effects.

Unless you have to, I'd also avoid priming with an airbrush initially.  It doesn't have as good an adherence as a spray can and is a complete pain to clean out - I've had to help more new airbrushers clean out their airbrush after putting primer through than anything else.  Once you've mastered dissembling the brush and cleaning out, you'll be able to put anything through it though.

[MitGas]

Airbrushing helps a lot with painting lots of mostly "nude" characters too - skin tones can be painted pretty damn well with an AB. Think FEC, Fireslayers, Kairic Acolytes....

The best AB primer I've tried was Stynylrez but even that one isn't as durable as spraycan primer (yes, even if you wash your models!) - it's pretty damn good though. If you handle your minis a lot I still feel there's no alternative to spraycans, at least for a "zenithal priming swoop" - what I mean by that is spray your minis from above or a slight angle so that the parts that could be touched have the utmost durability - you could prime inner details or the details from below with just the AB primer to ensure you don't lose any detail.