Youl want a piston compressor with a small tank, (AS186 is pretty common, cheap china made stuff) Whatever you get youl want a manometer/moisture trap attached to it (most come with one)
If you live somewhere particularly humid, youl also want an inline moisture trap (I actually use 2, one mid line, one attached to my airbrush.
As for airbrush, theres a lot of decent brands, and a lot of cheap knock offs. Cheap ones are hit/miss, they can be great, they can be garbage !
lol ... but theyre cheap!
You will want a gravity feed brush, with a 0.3mm or bigger nozzle for spraying most acrylics.
To thin acrylics, use Liquitex (or Golden) brand airbrushing medium. This is a million times better than thinning with water, windex, alcohol, or anything else. (its better because its actually acrylic binder in its own right, and will actually improve the paint film strength in many cases, and certainly wont destroy it like most of the thinning agents will. This helps with coverage, tip dry, dry times, paint adhesion... bascially the paint gets improved whilst becoming 'airbrush thin.' cant be mixed in any ratio with the paint, for desired strength of colour.
When choosing your airbrush brand, look for shops near to you (with reasonable postage) to see what brands of spare parts you can get a hold of? You should want to be able to replace the needle, nozzle, o-rings or any other part that might wear out. (particularly if you spend money on higher end brushes and manufacturers)
A couple of names to look out for that are known for quality products are; Harder & Steenbeck, Badger, Iwata, Paasche... and more.
Edit; Any airbrush is good for general art
I like my 0.2mm Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Silverline for detail work. But it can be a bit finickey to get paint spraying nicely through a 0.2mm nozzle. I also use a siphon fed brush for painting canvases,thye work at a much higher pressure than gravity fed, and allow use of thicker paint mixes. it allows much faster colour swaps (have a bottle with cleaner, and multiple bottles of colour handy-quick rinse out and change bottle
), and area coverage, but you sacrifice a much of the detail capabilities of the brush. - both have their uses.
For culinary purposes (cake decorating) You really ought to get a dedicated brush, that only ever has food safe paints and cleaners and lubricants inside it.
The paints are based on food colourings I beleive.
