New blog, new kit, old armour

So, as well as being new to blogging, I'm also new to airbrushing... well, technically I'm not that new to airbrushing, as I've had an airbrush and compressor for about five years, and painted a handful of miniatures with it, but it's safe to say that I am inexperienced. I use an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS, which is probably a bit like giving a Porsche to a new driver.

I very recently realised that my old setup, which was a cheap and cheerful featureless Clarke Wiz Mini Air compressor, just wasn't good enough, and I found myself getting frustrated when airbrushing. Ultimately, I probably only needed a moisture trap to attach to it (I know, I should've had one from the beginning), but I recently stumbled across a review of the Sparmax Arism compressor (purchased from Element Wargames for £135), and it seemed like it would be better than the Clarke one. In fairness though, I will fit the moisture trap to the Clarke compressor and see how it performs - it may still be useful. The Sparmax arrived this morning, and this evening I was eager to give it a test:

I've had this Taurox part built (minus the tracks) and undercoated for ages. I actually really like the model (it's reminiscent of modern military mine resistant vehicles), but unfortunately I built it prior to all the wheeled conversion kits coming out, plus I decided to follow the instructions and stupidly put the autocannons on the sides. I have a small force of Tempestus Scions, so I plan to use this one as a test (then probably sell for far less than it is worth on eBay), then possibly purchase and convert more of them in the future to act as their ground-based transport.

All in all, I was pleased on two fronts: the new compressor really did provide a more manageable and pleasing airbrushing session, and I'm pretty happy with the camouflage pattern that I sprayed on. I did pre-shade the lower half of it in black, but I guess I haven't quite figured out how to make that work properly yet.

Top-tip: whenever I paint something, and I think I might forget which paints I used, I take a photograph of the miniature with the pots of paint. It certainly takes the guess work out of returning to an old project, or adding new units to an existing force.