Activity

…you mean…hand paint with a brush or…do you mean something else?

*calls for an airbrush expert to help*

alright well first off yes you can make a gunplay look good hand brushing, gonna assume that’s what you meant, but it’s not easy. as for airbrushing since you have one it’s not all that hard to operate.

there are a few things you’re gonna need. First a compressor, I’ll assume you already have that, now you can get better results adding things like moisture traps and such but the compressor by itself should be enough to get decent results. Next you’ll want something that you can use to keep your airbrush upright when you’re not using it but it still has paint in it, in other words an airbrush stand, however a makeshift one is fine you just need something to keep the paint in the reservoir and your brush from falling.

On to the paint. You’ll want to thin the paint to a milky consistency….atleast that’s what any online guide will tell you but what does that really mean? well really what you want is to have the paint thin enough that it’ll easily flow from you’re airbrush without clogging or causing what they call spiderwebbing, that’s basically when the paint dries in the air and makes like a spiderweb of paint from your brush and makes a nice mess of your kit, but not so much that after it’s on the kit it runs all over the place. generally that’ll be 1 part paint to 2 parts thinner, adjusted for your climate. Also metallic paints have bits of aluminum in them and Mica/pearl paints have bits of mica in them, that makes them a bit thicker so you’ll have to thin a bit more and for me sometimes it still clogs.

In case of clogs what you can sometimes do is press your finger against the tip, careful not to damage the needle, and spray. That’ll cause the paint to backflow and clear the clog, and if that doesn’t work then you may have to empty the paint and run some thinner through the brush to clean it out and try again.

and now brush cleaning. When you’re done what you do is put some thinner into the brush, and do that backflow thing I mentioned, then spray it out, do that a few times and you should be good, and once in a while disassemble the brush and clean out any paint gunk that has built up in the brush.

Also there’s this stuff called tool cleaner, or airbrush cleaner. this stuff is really really strong but will do a nice job cleaning out your airbrush if you can get your hands on it. “How strong?” you may ask, well it’ll eat through a disposable cup, the plastic of your model, and the varnish on wooden furniture. Needless to say, be careful with this stuff and rinse your brush a few times with water or thinner after using it on your airbrush so you don’t end up spraying this stuff on your kit.

feel free to ask anything else you want to know about airbrushing and if I can help I’ll try to do so, or someone else will likely get to it.