Painting Course with MKA Studios

I'm currently attending a 2 day airbrushing course with MKA Studios at Element Games in Stockport.

Having painted for about 4 years now, I really wanted to try something new and up my standard of painting and I needed to do something that would allow me to up my output in the precious time that I have to give to my hobby.

Element Games is a wonderful place. It's a massive gaming centre supported by the best model shop I have come across to date. It's got an even better choice than Dark Sphere in London, but if anyone thought Dark Sphere was a geeks paradise, they really need to see this place! It is a veritable cavern of goodies and they sell everything...particularly useful when you are experimenting with colours and techniques with an airbrush.

The course itself is run over 2 days by Matt Kane (worked for Forge World as their painter for the HH releases) and Andy Wardle who has won a few painting awards.

Day 1 is all about understanding how to set up the airbrush, learn how to use it, blending, pre-shading, post shading and transfer application. The results of day 1 are below. As you can see, I basically have a fully painted, shaded rhino with transfers applied.

It's important to get to this stage by the end of the day as Microsol is used in the transfers and you need a good 8 hours for it to dry before you can do anything else to the model.

Day 2 is all about weathering and I can't wait!

I opted to paint a Blood Angels colour scheme, I also used the new transfer sheet from GW, which is phenomenal. I will be picking this up for my Dark Angels too.

I'm really enjoying the course. Matt and Andy are lovely guys; very down to earth, modest but passionate about painting. They both have different styles so I'm leveraging off both of them.

In addition there are 12 people on the course this weekend. I'm surrounded by people who all love painting and who all appear to paint first and game second...very much like me. As a result, there is a real sense of comeraderie (how do you spell that) and everyone is happy to share tips and lend each other paints/tools. A great bunch of people.

My day 1 progress is below. Day 2 to follow later today. Let's be clear, this is not a perfect attempt.

I'm really pleased with the shading on the side, but I could get more definition on the top. However part of the "lack" of shading is that I made a bit of a cock up having sprayed the wrong red on the vehicle at the start. This is because Vallejo Air range and Vallejo Model range both do a Scarlett red, which are completely different. 

Needless to say, the correct Scarlett red was layered over the previous red, rather than straight into a pre-shaded model, meaning that the grand orbits are less pronounced.