For a long time I’ve been thinking about getting into airbrushing, it seemed to have tons of advantages and looked like it’d be fun to do. After tons of research and digging around I decided to get an airbrush, compressor, and some paint and dive right in. The main goals I have with airbrushing have been painting tanks and terrain. While I’m not looking to do all the painting with an airbrush, I want to be able to do the basic colors / base colors of a given project. So far, I’ve been able to achieve this.
There are tons of options for paint that range from taking existing lines like Citadel, Vallejo, P3, etc and thinning them for use in an airbrush. So far, I’ve managed to clog up my airbrush a few times trying this so I’m setting it aside for now while I wait for a different thinner to come in the mail, hopefully this will help. What I’ve found is that you have to keep lots of little parts clean in the airbrush to keep the paint from clogging up, this wasn’t something I was expecting, but something you totally can’t ignore when you’re thinking about getting into this. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking about getting into airbrushing, seriously, buy airbrush cleaner, it’s awesome, I cant stress this enough.
After a bunch of failed paint tests, well, not failed per se, but tests that didn’t work out like they did in my head, I settled on picking up vallejo’s Model Air line of paints. The hellhounds above were painted using those paints and I’m super pleased with the results. I will have to go back and do a second coat on some areas as these paints tend to be thinner than normal acrylic paints, but given how easy it is to do, I’m ok with that. The last thing I noticed about painting with an airbrush is the fact that it felt like learning to paint all over again, learning to control the flow of paint with air pressure is a different thing, testing is totally necessary in this case. I would not start out with a nice model or piece of terrain, I’d start small and work your way up. I have 2 vendetta’s that I’m hoping to airbrush, but not before I go through at least 10 tanks and finish those and am comfortable with the whole process.
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Looking good, sir! I love my Iwata Kustom and agree completely with all the things you describe above. I never imagined just how much I’d have to learn even after my research into airbrushes. When I first started airbrushing the air pressure was way too high on the compressor and caused me fits. Looks like you’ve got a pretty good handle on yours though.