Question on Airbrushes

[RuneBrush]

Hi all,

I\'ve done various bits of searching (both here and on Google), and am curious about something regarding airbrushes. I have a Badger 200, its a single action airbrush that you attach a pot of paint onto the bottom. Great for base coats and large things like terrain. Now I\'ve seen a few videos (including the miniature mentor dreadnought dvd) and can see that a dual action brush appears to give significant benefits over a single action one, more control, the ability to apply finer layers, etc.

Now here is the bit I\'m curious about. I, like many other\'s, use GW paints in my airbrush. I filter them when I water them down and they rarely clog my current brush. The process is pretty straight forward and I end up with a glass pot of my colour that I plug into my brush, nice and easy. Now many dual action brushes come with gravity feed cups - in all the video\'s I\'ve seen they also have cups and use them. What I haven\'t seen is how somebody uses these cups with regular acrylic paints like most of use use for painting with. All I can think is that people thin a pot of paint down with water and then pour the amount they want into the cup. But this strikes me as having the potential to be both messy and wasteful. Am I missing something?

Cheers

Pete

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by RuneBrush
...and can see that a dual action brush appears to give significant benefits over a single action one, more control, the ability to apply finer layers, etc.

This is probably largely true, however some single-action brushes do provide the same atomisation of \'equivalent\' double-action ones. But DA airbrushes aren\'t all the same by any means, and the very best of them provide the finest atomisation along with the ability to do the finest lines etc. (with the attendant cost).

Originally posted by RuneBrush
Now here is the bit I\'m curious about. I, like many other\'s, use GW paints in my airbrush. I filter them when I water them down and they rarely clog my current brush. The process is pretty straight forward and I end up with a glass pot of my colour that I plug into my brush, nice and easy. Now many dual action brushes come with gravity feed cups - in all the video\'s I\'ve seen they also have cups and use them. What I haven\'t seen is how somebody uses these cups with regular acrylic paints like most of use use for painting with. All I can think is that people thin a pot of paint down with water and then pour the amount they want into the cup. But this strikes me as having the potential to be both messy and wasteful. Am I missing something?

The loading of a traditional airbrush is pretty straightforward once you get used to it; airhead will be able to say lots more on this if he pops in but you just use an eyedropper, brush or syringe to transfer the paint, maybe even just pour it in! This style of open-cup airbrush body does have the potential for mess that you\'re seeing* - drop it or tilt it too far and you get the expected results.

Wasteful though, no, not really. You transfer a couple of drop of your paint to another container, add the water or whatever to thin and then transfer to the AB. At best there\'s just a few drops of diluted paint left in the mixing container - where the waste often comes I find is simply in mixing up too much of the thinned paint, but given how dilute it is (i.e. how little paint there actually is in it) I\'ve learned to not sweat it.

*This is one of the reasons that when they were designing the Aztek they included caps for all the sizes of side-mounted cups.

Einion

 

[airhead]

Originally posted by RuneBrush...What I haven\'t seen is how somebody uses these cups with regular acrylic paints like most of use use for painting with. All I can think is that people thin a pot of paint down with water and then pour the amount they want into the cup. But this strikes me as having the potential to be both messy and wasteful. Am I missing something?

Cheers

Pete

Pete, you\'ve answered your own question. And Enion did as well....

I saved baby food jars with my kids were little and when my grandkid was here. You can also get them at garage sales. Any small container will work. Others use fuji film cans. I\'ve also bought several small airbrush bottles for my bottom feed guns and save the small paint bottles (1 oz). Really, anything clear will do.

Just like your bottom feed gun, you have to mix up a separate amount of paint to use. Be that 3 drops or 3 quarts (liters)(think terrain).

From GW paints, 1 drop of paint to 2 drops reducer (or your favorite formula). Or 1 oz. of paint to 2 oz. of reducer or 1 ml of paint to 2 ml of reducer. or 1 can of paint to 2 pots of reducer. Get the drift?

The beauty is that as long as you are mixing pure GW colors (or your brand of paint) you can cap the leftover in a bottle and keep it. If you are mixing custom blended colors in the bottle then you always want to blend a bit extra for just-in-case.

If we are talking terrain, I\'ll mix a ML of craft paint (or interior house paint) and reducer for a base coat. (mud/earth/stone)

later, I\'ll be drybrushing over that or needing washes to put down in the crevasses or just minor changes in terrain color, so the next batch might have a drop or 2 of a different paint in it. But at that economy, waste is not an issue. Just spray until you\'re empty. Flush out everything after (gun, paint pot, mixing pot, brushes, etc.)

***
I hope I\'ve answered your question...?

 

[RuneBrush]

Thanks for the replies both. That now makes more sense - I had visions of trying to thin the paint down and pour it in whilst dripping it all over the table, floor and myself I\'ve got a fair number of small airbrush bottles for my bottom feed gun, so it sounds like that\'s probably the best route to go down. I\'m not sure why I\'d not thought of some kind of dropper/pipette to be honest, its what I use for my inks and washes, I guess it just had never occurred to me to use it for paint - how daft do I feel!

I\'ve just treated myself to a iwata hp-c plus, which has a lid for cup and I\'ve seen recommended by many people - yes it seems extravagant, but I\'ve put away every spare penny since christmas as I\'m saving the deposit for a house, so why not

@airhead, quite interesting that you use 1 part paint/2 parts liquid - So far I\'ve used a 50/50 mix (adjusted a little depending on how viscous the paint is), but when I get the new brush will try a thinner mix. I may also try using a thinner other than water (referring of course to the fantastic post linked in the FAQ). I think that having a brush that allows more control will make a world of difference. That said, for regular base coats I can\'t fault my badger

Pete