Airbrush Pre-Shading Basics: Battlezones Dreadball Dugouts
December 29, 2014 by warzan
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Extremely useful !
Excellent, my wife sorted me with all the airbrush kit for christmas and my first attempt today was going to be some DZ terrain, this video is exactly the primer I needed. Very instructive and good looking result. More please. 🙂
I confess I personally disagree on the fact that u have to stick to one brand. On the contrary, the more you become an expert painter the more you will use the best paints from different brands and ranges. Not only that, you’ll take advantage of different techniques involving crayons, pigments, enamel, oil, pencils, markers and so on. You will mix oil and alcohol in order to achieve interesting patterns, pencils for high lining and scratching metal and so on… but even if u are a beginner i would say that as long as it is acrylic you can freely… Read more »
Yeah I think (can’t quite remember though) the point was that thinners and cleaners tend to work best with their corresponding brands. As they are designed to work with the formulas etc. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest to someone entering into airbrushing for the first time, to not introduce too many variables into their projects. Because from my own experience it’s not so easy to diagnose what is actually wrong if your getting air and no paint etc. These episodes are all about Keep It Simple Stupid, and try and limit the amount of things that can go… Read more »
Yup, the original point was that cleaners/thinners are formulated to work with their own brand paint, and that mixing cleaner/thinners from one brand with paint from another brand can sometimes have unforeseen effects. I think Brian brought up an example in an earlier video of someone having a really crapped up airbrush, but which cleaned up perfectly when the brand-matched cleaner was used. I think there might be some confusion about the brand-match message. The message was NOT saying to only use one brand of paint. As a series for beginners, I think it makes sense to say brand match… Read more »
u are right warren i just wanted to stress out the fact that the fun part of painting mostly resides in getting wild with your creativity but true i remember when i first started there was a lot to know and it was overwhelming. Vallejo are also in my opinion the best for airbrushing by the way. GW’s crimson inks have no competitors tho 😉 …ah one suggestion… while model air silvers are great (need to be heavily diluted for airbrushing unless u use a larger nosel), i suggest beginners go game air for golds. They are truly fantastic and… Read more »
Yes the way chemicals react together will depend on the manufacturer one cleaner will brake up paint cleaning the gun but another will actually make the paint congeal into a gluey mess.
You can ( and I do ) of course use different paints in combination, but as others have said its more about using a brands own cleaners and thinners. I have had multiple experiences of people using brand A paint, with brand B cleaner, and the cleaner just not doing its job.
.
Some paints also do not work well on top of each other, so always do some experiments first.
A bit harder than it looks this airbrushing lark. Had some issues with either no paint coming through or coming through really really faint/watery. Don’t have specific airbrush paints yet so I’m trying to use normal Army Painter stuff watered down to the fabled ‘milky’ consistency everyone talks about. I know you say lots of thin layers but this was black/brown mix and it barely covered the newsprint at all. Thinking it’s my paint mix rather than the pressure/connections as plenty air seems to come out. More experimentation needed, onwards and upwards.
Stick with it
I do recommend airbrush paints and tons of thinner though (don’t use tons but have plenty so you don’t run out!)
I have a couple of n00b questions. They’re not directly related to the video but figured this would be a good place to ask given it’s the most prominent current airbrushing video on the site.
1) What psi should be used for a) priming, b) base-coating, c) details?
2) Should the paints be mixed (whether with thinner or other paints) prior to going in the cup, or in the cup itself?
Your airbrush will have a preferred psi and I don’t believe what your doing should matter to much (Brian used a single setting the whole time he was over and only had a higher setting for cleaning) around 15psi seems to be the norm though.
Go ahead and mix in the cup and drop you thinners in there too, give it a shake and them spray through until the right colour comes out.
🙂
PSI and your paint mix take some time to dial in at first. If too thin you can still use the paint at a lower pressure. Too thick of paint clogging your needle can be blasted out at higher pressure. Fine detail is usually done at a lower pressure for more control.
You can mix paint in your cup, but I suggest addin a drop of thinner first so you dont have thick paint sitting at the bottom. I use a junk brush to mix and clean my cup.
If you are doing a large run it may be better to mix the paint in a spare pot so the colour consistence is kept.
Good advice on the technique. I’ve not tried this one yet myself but I do have a candidate model for it. Hopefully I can give it a go over the weekend!
Some useful info here, plus exercises to do to perfect technique: http://howtoairbrush.com/
I give a couple of recommendations that i found useful myself when i started with the airbrush: 1. ideal needle size should be from .15 to .3 2. upon changing the size of your needle remember to much the nosel that also has to be sized proportionally 3. use drying retarder on the tip of the nose in order to delay the drying up of paint 4. u may find yourself diluting paints in the airbrush’s cup; in this case always put the thinner first, then the paint – doing the contrary may clog your AB and give uneven results… Read more »
ah the last one… my biggest problem starting was understanding how diluted the paint should be while airbrushing… somebody told me it should have had milk consistency, which translates into “very diluted but not as much as an ink”. I found that it all depends on pressure (and needle size). The higher the psi the less diluted, the lower the most diluted. So 3 psi = more paint than thinner (think very watered down paint). 1,5 psi = more thinner than paint (think inks or water). Vallejo air colors can be used straight from the bottle but i personally always… Read more »
Excellent tips!
Great tips mate, I will second all of these, although the drying retardant I’ve found doesn’t really help where I am in Queensland and so as I stated below I never airbrush with the cap on. I find I get good results across the board running between 20 and 25 PSI, I run 2 brushes one for basecoating on a .3 needle and one for detail on a .2 needle. My dilutions run anywhere from 50% on Acrylic thinner all the way up to 10:1. I’ll second the cleaning as well, it is probably the most important part of airbrushing… Read more »
Great video @warzen & Brian keep them coming chaps.
Hi Warren, just a point for anyone living in hotter climates, I always spray with the needle cap off. Here in Queensland anyone that airbrushes knows what I mean when I say needle dry. Any painter here suffers from paint drying on the needle and blocking paint exit from the gun and you need to constantly scrape it off with your finger and thumb nail. You just need to be careful for obvious reasons. The other point I will make is I try to stick with a brand of thinner but it doesn’t always match my paints, I use Mig… Read more »