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Hey guys,

I'm looking at investing in an airbrush to 'up my painting'. I know this thread is all over the place, but thought I would pop it up again for some 2016 input.

From what I have seen, you can get very well blended effects from an airbrush (BuyPainted as an example, on YouTube) and then highlight the model with a thin brush. My opinion (ignorantly, as I have not used an airbrush) is that employing a decent amount of brushwork experience with decent airbrushing techniques will leave you with very good looking models; however you will ultimately reach a skill cap quite quickly once you find good paints to transition with through an airbrush and then highlight with a brush.

Hence, I guess my ultimate question is this: "Is it worth investing in an airbrush to get a quick improvement on my painting, as this will allow for smooth blended base coats on my models which I would not be able to achieve with a brush without extensive experience and then highlight the airbrushed work with a brush? Or should I stick with a paintbrush, as improving brush techniques will lead me to much better results when my technique continues improving?".

Jason

An airbrush will give you better results (difficult to replicate with a hairy brush) on certain models and on other models a hairy brush will give you better results (difficult to replicate with an airbrush).

It depends what army you're working on and how you want them to look.

Airbrushing can speed you up.... it can also slow you down. All depends on the techniques and the specific model.

If you look at high end figure painters, they will rarely, if ever, use an airbrush. They'll almost always use a hairy brush. But that sort of painting is beyond what most people want to achieve for an actual army, it's more of a display shelf thing.

If you look at high end scale aircraft, tanks, cars, they will almost always use an airbrush and then do finishing work with a hairy brush. Some do use hairy brush for the whole process but it is much more time consuming and difficult.

So I guess the answer to your question is "It depends".

It depends what models you are painting.
It depends what techniques you want to use.
It depends what you consider a good looking model.
It depends what standard you are aiming to achieve.

Most of the time in miniature painting and airbrush isn't going to automatically make your models look better. It also isn't going to automatically make you paint faster. It all depends.

hybrid of the 2. airbrush if anything saves a massive amount of time. with painting time = skill in a lot of ways. thats why i dislike airbrushes in the same competitions as brushes. By saving time on step A more time can go into step B and then you just have better blends because more time went into it

TLDR get good at both if you can.

I don't think it's a case of one or the other. An airbrush and a paint brush are just tools that help you achieve a result. There are things that an airbrush does better than a brush and vice versa. For instance look at the military scale modeling community every world class modeler uses an airbrush combined with paint brushes and dozens of other tools to make highly detailed realistic pieces. To answer your question if you have an interest in building models whether it's miniature war gaming or not then get an air brush. You'll find that an airbrush has a serious learning curve and technique to it just like a paint brush. I wouldn't worry about topping out. Look at automotive airbrush artists, scale modelers, free hand canvas airbrush artista there's a lot out there technique wise besides what you find on YouTube war gaming channels.

Check out

MassiveVoodoo

To answer the actual question:

"Is it worth investing in an airbrush to get a quick improvement on my painting, as this will allow for smooth blended base coats on my models which I would not be able to achieve with a brush without extensive experience and then highlight the airbrushed work with a brush? Or should I stick with a paintbrush, as improving brush techniques will lead me to much better results when my technique continues improving?"

This unfortunately won't happen in the vast vast majority of cases. Unless you have worked with an airbrush before, the time investment into learning the kit and balancing acts that go with it, will consume as much of your time as leaning to paint with a stick.
It is always worth adding to your arsenal of tools and techniques, but you will not find picking up from scratch gives rapid improvement immediately. A lot of the tutorials such a Buypainted do not show the 20 minute setup or 2-10 minute cleaning between each and every colour (especially metals), cleaning, unclogging, pressure testing... You are watching the highlight reel.
However as you've no doubt been tempted by, the basecoating is faster, and you will improve with every use.
So it's not going to speed you up instantly, but it's a very useful skill to have.

IMO an airbrush saves huge amounts of time for base coating and painting larger models.

You can also achieve some great looking effects quite quickly (blending, OSL) with an airbrush that would take quite some time and skill with a regular paintbrush.

That said, you will need to build up your skill with an airbrush to achieve these effects, so that takes time in itself. I'm still learning with mine, but I'm getting there slowly!

Also, for intricate details and normal sized models, your go to will be the standard paintbrush as you can pick out small details with no risk of over spray.

The main thing is to have fun and it never hurts to learn a new skill! If you want an airbrush, I'd say 100% give it a go!


TLDR: Use both, which one you use more will depend on the model and what you want to achieve.

 Jason1991 wrote:

Hence, I guess my ultimate question is this: "Is it worth investing in an airbrush to get a quick improvement on my painting, as this will allow for smooth blended base coats on my models which I would not be able to achieve with a brush without extensive experience and then highlight the airbrushed work with a brush? Or should I stick with a paintbrush, as improving brush techniques will lead me to much better results when my technique continues improving?".

Short answer, "Yes".

Investing in an airbrush will give you a quick improvement on your finished product if you plan to paint a decent number of miniatures, for example, a 40k-sized army or more, or large vehicles like tanks and buildings. The "easy" improvement in your output comes two-fold: Primer will go on more consistently than with a rattle can, and evenly in tiny nooks and crannies (you'll rarely over-prime, which is easy to do with rattle-can); and secondly, you'll be able to do beautiful basecoats with little skill, making a huge impact on things like tanks. Those large models will also take a lot less time to basecoat.

Large, jagged models like terrain or buildings is also hard on paintbrush bristles, and time consuming to get paint into the all the little crevices, but very easy and fast on an airbrush.

But...

The more complete answer is that if you aren't painting enough surface area at a time (eg complete squads, vehicles, buildings, etc), quite often, setting up, cleaning, and maintaining an airbrush is more work than just pulling out a paintbrush to do many of the same tasks. If you're painting one warcaster or one captain, for example basecoating with an airbrush will probably be negative efficiency. For a lot of models that are decorated with many color changes throughout the model and have a solid basecoat color (for example, a brettonian foot soldier), you're not going to get crisp output from an airbrush unless you're like, one of the best airbrush artists in the world. And even then, a comparably skilled painter could do the same task with a paintbrush in a much shorter time.

Finally. a lot of the "really cool effects" require a decent amount of skill, but also masking, and with tape. And, anyone who has done masking will tell you that the most important factor is to make sure your paint is dry, and that overnight doesn't always cut it. The side effect of this is that all those masked parts are often projects that are non-linear. For example, start project A, work on project B while A dries, start up on project C, mask A and spray, now go back to B, etc. It's not a work flow that some people like, and it certainly isn't fast.

Thanks guys.

You've all given very valuable insight into this and definitely given me plenty to think about.

I think what I am going to do for now is pick up a budget airbrush to practice on some custom terrain and large vehicles, as i'm sure this will sate my desire to use one.

In the meantime I guess i'll continue watching videos and improving my stick skills

Be careful with a 'budget' air brush. It will be harder to learn and to get the effects you want with a poor quality air brush, and unfortunately a lot of the 'budget' priced ones fit that description.


Also, don't forget you'll need to budget for an air source.

Define "Budget" cause im looking into one that will fit my budget.
like, do you mean a 20$ one? or an 80$ one? what price range is "Budget"

Airbrush be a tool just like any brush or knife
it wont instantly make you paint better. and it will take WAY more money or practice to get super fine details down with one.

But you could get a super cheap set up for about 100 or less and it will do 90% of the base coating work down fairly well. with a 3mm needle.

When I say 'budget', i'm going to spend mid-range, so all up around $250.00 AUD. I'm looking at a brand-name dual action brush with a tank-compressor.

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

airbrushmegastore.com is in Adelaide and pretty cheap. I was going to point you at Underground Wargames but they shut down!

I have an iwata hp-cs from abm, like $160 and brilliant - the compressor was quite a bit more though, but there are guys selling sparmax ones on facebook pretty cheap with is a good option.

Seeing as how you're in Australia, for my first airbrush I got an Artlogic AC330 airbrush with an AC1418 compressor.

I think I picked up the airbrush for about $50AUD and the compressor for about $180 or 170AUD and the guy threw in the air hose I needed for free. Artlogic is a brand many hobby stores in Australia carry. My local store actually carried it cheaper than I could get it online.

They've served me well over the past couple of years. I did get unlucky and had a leaky fitting on the compressor which I had to get fixed, the guy at the shop I took it back to said he's sold heaps of them and mine was the first one that had come back to him. It has gotten slightly louder over the years but it still works (that is the compressor got slightly louder, the hiss was fixed). The airbrush itself has a seal dying that needs to be replaced that I haven't gotten around to yet because I've bought a 2nd airbrush now.

I guess one downside is some of the seals are rubber, so you might not be able to use lacquers in it, though it's probably most dependant on the needle packing seal and I've never removed it to know if it's rubber or teflon.

A lot of airbrushes people overseas recommend cost a fortune out here. Though these days you might be able to find an airbrush on Amazon that ships to Australia.

Runway 13 is an Australian company that imports Taiwanese brushes and rebrands them (I think they're Iwata knock offs). They're reasonably cheap, it's about twice the price of an Artlogic and it does feel a little bit nicer, but honestly, there's nothing I can do with my Runway 13 that I can't also do with my Artlogic Sparmax is another brand I've heard people recommend as being a good cheap starter but I've never used one myself, many Sparmax parts are interchangable with Artlogic (though not all so you need to check).

The Paasche Talon is a good starter brush but overpriced in Australia, but you could try buying one from the US on Amazon and getting it shipped.

Incidentally, auspost has a service where they'll give you a us address you can get stuff posted to, and they'll reship

For army painting, nothing beats an airbrush for basecoats and rough shading/highlighting followed by line highlights or more specific highlights with a hairy brush.