Iwata Revolution Mini HP-M2 airbrush review

I have been considering buying a single-action airbrush for quite some time now and after seeing on YouTube two great reviews of the Iwata Revolution Mini HP-M2 I've come to the conclusion that this is the airbrush I was looking for.

The Revolution MINI Series is a line of three small-footprint airbrushes all of which are single action, gravity feed and with internal mixing of paint and air. The differences between the three models lay in the size of the needle and the capacity of the paint cup:

Model	Needle	Capacity
HP-M	0.30	1 ml
HP-M1	0.30	1.5 ml
HP-M2	0.40	7 ml

The HP-M2 is the heavy-duty model of the new Revolution MINI Series with is 0.40 needle and a colour cup that can hold more than half the colour you found in a Games Workshop paint bottle. It's ideal for priming and base-coating many models or vehicles in a row or to drench them in varnish :)

Inside the little plastic box, along with the airbrush, you find the standard Iwata-branded little wrench and, hidden beneath the protective foam, the 2-page user manual written in English and Japanese

The airbrush is really small, about half the size of one of it's big brothers, the Iwata Hi-Line HP-BH, but it's still comfortable to hold in your hand

The amount of paint sprayed by a single action airbrush is fixed and it not depend on how you control the trigger like in double action airbrushes so you could get an even base-coat more easily and in less time that you would with a double action brush.


In the case of the Revolution Mini airbrushes, you could actually modify this fixed amount of paint using the paint flow regulator located at the end of the airbrush body. And this is a very helpful feature as you can adjust it depending of the viscosity of what you are shooting.

The paint flow regulator

After inspecting the airbrush for signs of damaged or defective parts it was time to connect it to my compressor. I use a quick-connect connector on all my airbrushes and compressors so the first step was to attach one to the HP-M2: as you can see in the picture below I put a layer of Teflon tape on the airbrush connector before hooking up the quick-connect adaptor to insulate the join and prevent any air leak. I do this on all the air connections and I've never had a air leak since. Just do tighten it up to much or you would block the air flow!

When all was ready I proceeded to splay a couple of cup-full of cleaning liquid to get rid of the anti-corrosion fluid laying around inside the brush and the paint cup and I then sprayed some Vallejo Surface Primer on a piece of plastic at around 25 PSI (the pressure suggested by Vallejo for that primer) and I have to tell you that it was a really simple and fast job to get a smooth solid coat of primer over the white plastic

I was very satisfied by the HP-M2 and I'm gonna use it as my primer / base-coat / varnish airbrush from now on!

Painting white... the 'Eavy Metal way

Work (slowly) continue on the Aegis Defence Line. Having chosen the Ultramarines paint scheme means pretty much three things: blue, white and gold!

With blue pretty much out of the way, it was time to deal with white. Oh joy! If there is one thing I've learnt reading painting advices on forums and on YouTube is that white and yellow are two of the most difficult colours to paint. I guess that I'm lucky to have only one of them to deal with...

After searching only for a "good recipe" for white I remembered that in the 'Eavy Metal Masterclass book one painter of the 'Eavy Metal team show how to paint an Ultramarines HQ. Hes recipe is quite simple:

1. a Codex Grey base coat
2. a layer of Fortress Grey
3. may thin layers of Skull White

All paints are from the old Citadel paint range, before this new base/layers/whatever nonsense.

Encouraged by the apparent simplicity of the task i gathered my paint pots and brushes and I painted one of the small section of the Defence Line

Covering the blue with many thinned coats of Codex Grey was a bit tedious and long to achieve

I must say that by working only on a single section I had to wait for one coat to dry before applying another one so by working on more sections at a time I should have no wasted idle time

The Fortress Grey was a bit easier thanks to the Codex Grey background

Looking at the picture I think that I should have thinned the Fortress Grey more :(

When the Fortress Grey layer was dry, I applied many and many coats of Skull White: doing it on two different place of the miniature helped immensely as I was literally seeing the white taking form

All and all I think that the white turned out OK, but I must thin the paints more than the 1:2 paint/thinner ratio I've used. A good lesson learnt for when I paint the remaining Defence Line sections!

World Eaters Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought from Forge World

World Eater Legion Contemptor Dreadnaught

Good news for Khorne disciples out there!

Today Forge World has released a new Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought sporting the markings of the XII Legion

The kit is available for preorder at 32£ plus the weapons options and it will be shipped starting from the 26th of November

It's really a great looking model, so great that it's now on top of my "what should I get next for my World Eaters collection" list. I just need to choose the right weapons for him :)

Along with the World Eaters one, Forge World released a Death Guard Contemptor and three command upgrade kits for the Mark II, III and IV pre-heresy Legions

You could find more details on the Forge World website

Aegis Defence Line : Step II - Airbrush work

Rain! Rain! Rain all day! A perfect time to work on some models!

Yesterday I realized that the gun in the Imperial Bastion kit (I bough one along with the Defence Line) is the Icarus lascannon so I decided to build that gun too. I don't think that I would play it but it's cool to have the model ready if I change my mind in the future.

When all the pieces were ready and mounted on some corks caps or paint bottles it was time to finaly apply paints. I didn't glue the guns togheter to be able to paint them more easly

The first step was to undercoat all the pieces with Vallejo Acrylic - Polyurethane Black Primer (also called "surface primer") with my airbrush

When the primer was dry a applied Vallejo Model Air Light Grey from above leaving black in the deep recesses. This color cover black very well in one coat so I would be able to put down the next color (a blue) very easily with only one or two coats.

As a side note, VMA Light Grey is an almost perfect color match for the grey primer in Surface Primer line of Vallejo

I wanted to give a bit of color in the shadow areas of the walls and the guns so I applied a bit of Vallejo Model Air Dark Sea Blue. Precision is not key here as you could see in the following picture :)

When this layer was dry I applied the main color on all the pieces: Vallejo Model Air French Blue

I then highlighted the walls and the guns starting with a 1:1 mix of French Blue and Vallejo Model Air Light Sea Blue followed by Light Sea Blue by itself on the most exposed areas

To tie all the colors togethers I misted a very diluted (around 1:20 color to thinner) coat of French Blue all over the painted areas

And this is the final result:

When the last coat of paint was dry I applied a layer of Vallejo Satin Varnish to protect the airbrush work. It was the first time I used the airbrush to apply a varnish coat and I must say that it worked very well.

All in all it was a very productive day and I'm quite satisfied with how the Aegis is coming along!

Next: details!

Aegis Defence Line : Step I

Today I’ve finally completed to build the Aegis Defence Line I plan to run in my Dark Eldar list. As you may known it’s not a complicated kit to assemble (the only thing that need assembly is the gun actually) but I wanted to put all the sections on a base and to customize them a little by adding a couple of Space Marines bits here and there.

Tomorrow I’ll hopefully start to paint them: I’m going for the Ultramarines paint scheme.

Here are some close up of the single sections.