I see the great models airbrushed here and in FSM and all around. I have a double action a/b that I got on ebay. I am just to worried about making a mess to even try it. With mixing the paint to right consistancy, using canned air, living in an apartment, I worry about the mess and smell. Does it make a large mess? I have a patio but worry about overspray getting on the windows or side of the apartment. Heaven help me if the wife finds that I get something messed up inside…
Should I just go for it. Someone told me that I should try a single action before jumping into the double action that I have had for several years. The only thing that I have sprayed throught it was water just to see how it worked. I sound like a real rookie but I have building for some years now, just brushpainting everything. I sometimes just do not like how it looks though.
Prctice,practice, practice If your afraid to make a mess on the patio go down the home deepot and have peace of panelling cut to fit your patio. I usualy mix my paints by the eye but a good consistency is 2% milk. If worryed about smell the make acylic water based paints.
I agree with the practice but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be spoiled. The mess and operation is minimal. No reason to be intimidated at all. They don’t bite…hard [(-D]
What they said. The hardest part about airbrushing with me is seeing all of the outstanding results I see on here. I have to keep reminding myself that those results are from HOURS of practice. Just keep plugging away. Try and make it a “Journey” and not a “Destination”.
Whatever you do, DO NOT try and judge your work against folks on here who have been doing airbrushing for years. That way leads to nothing but madness and frustration.
You’ll have your good days and bad. I’ve had times where my AB does just seems to do what I want it to with little effort, and others where I swear it looks like I just dumped a gallon of paint on the model.
Go out and buy some acrylics, they wash off with soap and water, and can be completely removed, even when dry, with Windex with Ammonia. Then buy the cheapest kit you can get your hands on and build it without trying to detail it. It’s going to be your practice target.
Then practice, practice and practice. Then wash all the paint off with the Windex and practice some more. Spray wide area, and narrow area, play with the airbrush and see what it can do. The acrylics are easier to clean up and dry fast, so you don’t have to wait to do multiple coats. They also tend not to annoy SWMBO like the smell of enamels do, though your results may vary.
This will give you the confidence you need to do a “real” model.
I know it sounds a bit crazy, sometimes when I’ve got a little spaying to do, I just get a bunch of newpapers and start drawing lines, filling in the ads etc. I’ll spend a 1/2 hour to an hour just messing around painting on the newsprint. My confidence level has increased as well as my skills. I’m certainly not a world class painter, but just a little practice goes a long way.
[:)]Almost nothing can be done well without practice. Just know you’ll have good days and bad days. When you have bad days think about what you could do differently.
And just keep saying to yourself, ‘dumber people than me have figured out how to do this’.
When I first started airbrushing I practiced on blank sheets of white writing paper, and even now still do for zeroing my AB after a thorough cleaning.
This allows you to get used to the feel of the brush, and how it performs.
While I agree that practicing on paper will help teach you the basics of using an airbrush, I will caution that styrene does not react like paper. What you learn on paper can be very difficult to transfer to plastic!
Paper absorbs the paint so you are far less likely to get spidering and other things that happen on smoother surfaces like plastic and metal. I think it is far better to practice on an old model as that is what you are trying to learn to paint on. [:D]