Glowing Effects with an Airbrush
December 27, 2014 by Mxrcr23r
Hello WGCers! This is Caleb here with a quick and dirty tutorial for airbrushing glowing light effects.
For this job I'm making blue glowing lights on a GW Tau Skyray. My pallet of colors are:
- Minitaire Lagoon Blue
- Minitaire Sky Blue
- Valejo MC Sky Blue
- Minitaire Skull White
I thin each paint as I want a nice smooth, fine spray. Because the paint is thinned I need to be careful not to create "spiders". To avoid this I use a circular motion and try to avoid holding the brush in one place for any amount of time.
After the Skyray has been completely painted and highlighted I will start my glowing effects.
Step 1
First I take Lagoon blue and spray the base coat for the glowing effect. I will over spray the lights to create the casting of light .
Step 2
Next I will take the Minitaire Sky Blue and add a touch of Lagoon to it. I spray this in a smaller area around and on the light. Leaving a little of the previous lagoon blue to show along the edges.
Step 3
Next I will use pure Vallejo Sky Blue. This time concentrate on spraying just on the light. I will use a couple coats and try to build up the opacity toward the center of the light. The higher the opacity the more intense the light will glow.
Step 4
For the final step I will take pure Skull white and set the brightest spot for the glow effect. Again, by controlling the opacity I can control the intensity of the light. I try to offset this spot to create a point of light.
And that's it. Glowing effects with an airbrush. I hope this has helped you and if you have an questions, don't hesitate to post them below or join the WGC Artists facebook group and ask there!
I'll also be teaching classes over at
Las Vegas Open in February so hopefully I'll see you there!
