Imperial Guard Chimera[1]

I finally got my airbrush working properly again after upgrading the Iwata Eclipse, better hose, and a new adaptor fitting. I've also properly sealed the line now so its not bleeding from the compressor anymore. I've also tried the Vallejo paints with a medium retarder to see if it stops the blockages that have plagued my spray setup. So far its been working a lot better!

I got this Chimera for my Grey Knights army, but figured if I painted it up generically I can still use it with my Imperial Guard. I enjoyed the Chimera so much though, that I would like to do a proper pimped out Inquisition Chimera now. I may go back and do that.

I started by undercoating the Chimera with Skull White, then spraying out the panel lines with Chaos Black. The tan coat was then lightly sprayed over the whole model, and you can still see the black shading underneath on the panels. The olive green camouflage stripes was carefully sprayed on next, and was surprisingly easy to do with the dual-action on the brush - much finer control over how much paint is sprayed out now. I then sprayed on Chaos Black in an opposing stripe to the olive green. I realised I had too much olive green on the model, and then went back and painted back on some more tan to balance the camouflage out a bit better.

One slight problem I noticed when I started painting the fine detail on, was that because the spray coat is so much finer than a brush coat, it would wear off easily from being handled. I sprayed the Chimera with a couple of coats of matte varnish to protect the paintwork. Then I was able to work on the fine detail such as the guns, windows, searchlight, etc.

I'm currently finishing the weathering on the model. I've started adding in scrapes, paint wear, exposed metal, and some rusting. I had added quite a bit of dirt, but spraying the varnish on it, seems to have made it disappear. So I'll have to experiment a bit more to get that to stay on.