I am new to air brushing and am curious to know what you guys use as a container to mix paint in. I tried diluting it in the air brush pot with unsatisfactory results so assume it should be mixed first then poured in, hence the question.
Cheers Bill
Airbrushing takes a lot of practise and there are a lot of variables such as needle size, psi, how thin the paint is, what type of paint you use. Indeed with many brands there is even inconsistency across their colour range.
There is just no right solution.
Personally I would recommend using lacquers through the
airbrush. These have a lot of advantages over other types and are certainly much more user friendly that water based acrylics. There is one disadvantage of them, smell. So if that’s a problem you would be better off using something like Vallejo
Model Air or deal with the smell by getting a good extracting spray booth, ideally not one of the cheaper ones but one that has a good pull.
I have a small flat and spray only lacquers and, using a Benchvent booth, keeping a window open and throwing the extraction tube out of it, I have no issues with odour getting into the rest of the flat.
I specifically use MRP’s range of lacquers and spray them at 10-15 psi, I have never had to thin them, even for fine lines. I use three airbrushes with my workhorse having a .35 needle, another with a spreader cap to spray primer with a .30 needle and another for detail work using a .2 needle. MRP works faultlessly with all these at the same settings.
With water based acrylics you need a needle size larger then .2 (my MRP have particularly fine particles). You will also, almost certainly, have to spray at a higher psi. You will need to use flow improver to reduce the risk of tip-dry and prevent clogging. Thinning ratios will also vary based on set up and the paint. An added complication can be humidity, the performance of these paints will be affected by that both in spraying and curing times. The latter is why these type of paints and the leading brand, Vallejo, are like Marmite, love it or hate it, with everyone reporting different experiences using them.
There are other types of paint, enamels and those with an alcohol carrier. I don’t believe that these have any advantages over lacquers.
The best thing to do is experiment with your set up and practise, a lot.
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