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G'day all,

Finally got my airbrush cranking today for the first time and was doing some painting with it. Took me a while to get the paint consistency right, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Started way too thin because everyone tells you to thin the paints heaps, but in the end I found the best consistency wasn't much thinner than I hand brush anyway.

ANYWAY, to the point. I tried a few paints, most the citadel paints were fine. P3 paints worked even better. However every time I tried a citadel "base" paint the damned thing clogged and I had to pull it apart to clean it, even heavily thinned.

I am using Humbrol thinner, which seems to be working well but I'm going through it quickly and it ain't cheap, so I might swap to something else when it runs out.

Anyone airbrush with citadel base paints? Is there some trick to it, or is the pigment just too heavy to put through an airbrush?

I currently use one of the "base" greys for my Space Wolves and I'd love to be able to airbrush them.

I airbrushed my Wolves with Mechanicus Standard Grey last summer. It worked pretty well, although I had to do some serious thinning (I used Liquitex airbrush medium) and turned the airbrush up to 30-35psi to get it to spray.

Liquitex airbrush medium works okay, but I found it dilutes the colour a bit more than with vallejo airbrush thinner.

Using either product I've happily sprayed all kinds of citadel colours through my 0.2mm tip airbrush at psi ranging from 10 to 30. The vallejo thinner does work a little better in my experience. The amount of thinning depends on the nozzle size and the pressure you want to spray at.

I've based all of my models (hundreds of guardsmen and 9-10 tanks) using an airbrush and Citadel paints. I've used distilled water as opposed to paint thinner because I believe the paints are water based acrylic, and it works very well. Just go buy a gallon of it for a couple dollars and you're all set...

Like caylentor said, I've had to get my airbrush up to 30-35 psi and a large nozzle to get it to spray well, but I've found that it gives me a nice even and flat base coat that I can never get with a brush consistently. I've done camo on my tanks this way as well, and even went as far as to spray the washes on them as well which has worked fine.

I would have gone absolutely insane painting hundreds of individual guardsmen so I'm glad I found a way to make the airbrush work. I hope this helps, it IS possible to spray with them, and definitely give distilled water a try as a thinner.

 rabidguineapig wrote:
I've based all of my models (hundreds of guardsmen and 9-10 tanks) using an airbrush and Citadel paints. I've used distilled water as opposed to paint thinner because I believe the paints are water based acrylic, and it works very well. Just go buy a gallon of it for a couple dollars and you're all set...

Like caylentor said, I've had to get my airbrush up to 30-35 psi and a large nozzle to get it to spray well, but I've found that it gives me a nice even and flat base coat that I can never get with a brush consistently. I've done camo on my tanks this way as well, and even went as far as to spray the washes on them as well which has worked fine.

I would have gone absolutely insane painting hundreds of individual guardsmen so I'm glad I found a way to make the airbrush work. I hope this helps, it IS possible to spray with them, and definitely give distilled water a try as a thinner.

Acrylic paint is waster based, but adding too much water will destroy surface tensions and adhesions qualities of the paint.
you see acrylic cures by the polymer strands inside it forming long tough hard to break chains, they require a certain % of acrylic resins within the paint to form suitably strong chains (that result in hard wearing paint layers)
Its generally reccomended to use some sort of acrylic medium in your thinner; try distilled water and some matte medium perhaps (thats the Les's recipe), all the purpose made store bought thinners will have additional binder pre mixed in, or perhaps even just be pure binder of a thinner variety than is used in most paints.

Using water alone is not optimal as more often than not you will have to thin passed the point where the qualities of the paint are ruined. Resulting in a paint job that will rub off and chip easily. Ofcourse using a protective clear coat might help a little with that.

I use Vallejo airbrush thinner for all my acrylic paints when I spray them. Never really had any issues other than thinning the "base" paints a little more as they tend to be thicker anyway.

2 things to know about GW Base paints:
1. They are naturally quite thick.
2. They dry out very fast straight out of the pot.

My fixes for these issues are:
As soon as you buy any GW paint, add 4-5 drops of a retardant. I use Liquitex Slow Dry personally. It will increase shelf life a good deal, and will keep the paint from drying out as quickly in your airbrush.

Second, thin the paint. Again, as soon as I get any GW paint, I add a solid amount of 10:1 distilled water:Flow Improver(again, Liquitex Flo-Aid for me). I transfer all GW paints into dropper bottles, so I end up with roughly 11ml GW paint and 3-4ml of that mix along with a lava bead as an agitator.

Those are GW prep 101 for me, even brushing by hand. For airbrushing, I then use my new mix roughly 1:1 with Liquitex Airbrush Medium and give that a solid mix.

The joy of this is that if it's too thin, you add a few more drops of paint, if it's too thick you add more medium. Worst case scenario it's thin, dries quickly and you have to do a few layers.

 Aerethan wrote:
2. They dry out very fast straight out of the pot.

This might be my problem. Since I'm thinning my paint in the cup itself, maybe it's partly drying out a bit before I even get the thinner in to it and causing it to clog more easily.

I am thinking I'll get some Vallejo Model Air colours or maybe some Minitaire paints, as I spend more than half the time just getting the paint from the pots in to the airbrush and thinning them. I never really felt the need for dropper bottles before, but they seem a bit more necessary now.

Many of my citadel paints have chunks of dried paint in them just because of the crappy pots, so I'm not sure it's worth putting them in dropper bottles at this point as I don't want those chunks going through my airbrush anyway. Just rebuy some of the citadel colours I need, put them in droppers, and then replace the others with P3, Vallejo or Minitaire.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
2. They dry out very fast straight out of the pot.

This might be my problem. Since I'm thinning my paint in the cup itself, maybe it's partly drying out a bit before I even get the thinner in to it and causing it to clog more easily.

I am thinking I'll get some Vallejo Model Air colours or maybe some Minitaire paints, as I spend more than half the time just getting the paint from the pots in to the airbrush and thinning them. I never really felt the need for dropper bottles before, but they seem a bit more necessary now.

Many of my citadel paints have chunks of dried paint in them just because of the crappy pots, so I'm not sure it's worth putting them in dropper bottles at this point as I don't want those chunks going through my airbrush anyway. Just rebuy some of the citadel colours I need, put them in droppers, and then replace the others with P3, Vallejo or Minitaire.

Before Airbrushing, paints really should be strained (and no, I usually don't do it either). However, if you're going to transfer paint from one bottle to another I recommend that you do strain them. Some people use old nylons, but as my wife doesn't wear them I had to buy something. Dick Blick sells strainer funnels under "Artist's Paint Strainers". The are the exact same ones sold by Micro-mark, but available individually.

Would something like cheese cloth work to strain the paints?

 Mak_the_Knife wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
2. They dry out very fast straight out of the pot.

This might be my problem. Since I'm thinning my paint in the cup itself, maybe it's partly drying out a bit before I even get the thinner in to it and causing it to clog more easily.

I am thinking I'll get some Vallejo Model Air colours or maybe some Minitaire paints, as I spend more than half the time just getting the paint from the pots in to the airbrush and thinning them. I never really felt the need for dropper bottles before, but they seem a bit more necessary now.

Many of my citadel paints have chunks of dried paint in them just because of the crappy pots, so I'm not sure it's worth putting them in dropper bottles at this point as I don't want those chunks going through my airbrush anyway. Just rebuy some of the citadel colours I need, put them in droppers, and then replace the others with P3, Vallejo or Minitaire.

Before Airbrushing, paints really should be strained (and no, I usually don't do it either). However, if you're going to transfer paint from one bottle to another I recommend that you do strain them. Some people use old nylons, but as my wife doesn't wear them I had to buy something. Dick Blick sells strainer funnels under "Artist's Paint Strainers". The are the exact same ones sold by Micro-mark, but available individually.

Which I totally should have done when I transferred all of my GW paints into dropper bottles, but I didn't and it's a mess.

The flip side to that is that the chunks don't make it out of the dropper bottles, they just block the tip. Nothing a needle can't clear.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 guinness707 wrote:
Would something like cheese cloth work to strain the paints?

Cheese cloth is too wide of a mesh to strain decently, hence people using nylon leggings where the screen is quite small.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
2. They dry out very fast straight out of the pot.

This might be my problem. Since I'm thinning my paint in the cup itself, maybe it's partly drying out a bit before I even get the thinner in to it and causing it to clog more easily.

I am thinking I'll get some Vallejo Model Air colours or maybe some Minitaire paints, as I spend more than half the time just getting the paint from the pots in to the airbrush and thinning them. I never really felt the need for dropper bottles before, but they seem a bit more necessary now.

Many of my citadel paints have chunks of dried paint in them just because of the crappy pots, so I'm not sure it's worth putting them in dropper bottles at this point as I don't want those chunks going through my airbrush anyway. Just rebuy some of the citadel colours I need, put them in droppers, and then replace the others with P3, Vallejo or Minitaire.

I highly recommend VMA for airbrushing. They'r amazing, and also brush on beautifully. I have the full Minitaire set too but find them more situational. If you can get the Minitaire set at 50% off still it's a steal, best price per volume hobby quality paint around, and I love the bottles even more than vallejo bottles which I greatly prefer to tubs. If you're airbrushing, bottles are well worth the investment, even if you just transfer your GW paints into empties (which can be bought cheap off ebay).