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So i don't paint much even though i've been into wargaming for many years now. I used to use sprays a bit but i imagine they save so much time for the main base color. I am curious if any metallic sprays make it harder to paint the non-metallic parts of the model after spraying the whole thing however.

My main thing to this is i might want to use an airbrush but i have some perfectionism and OCD going on and i don't know how easy air brushing is and if it makes painting faster, easier and look better. I gotta be honest i don't paint often and my knowledge of how to paint well is very limited. I've also never seen any videos on how to airbrush yet.

My hope is this will be like my dislike of writing with OCD when i have a keyboard or similar and have gotten pretty fast at it whereas my writing is nice but slow. Would an airbrush counteract my perfectionism/OCD somewhat?

The other thing behind this is cost, maintenance, where to buy and so on. What recommendations do you guys have or do i sound far too amateurish to try such things as of this moment?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

It’s a useful tool and can get interesting and textured base coats quickly and easily with some simple shading methods. I do t paint that often but the following video really helped me understand how to actually get the paint to layer easily and smoothly

https://youtu.be/WezhNoebA2Y

There are loads of other videos about beginning with airbrushes, but that particular one helped explain the technicalbasics in a way that clicked for me.

Cost wise I would imagine that you can get a decent starter kit for $200, maybe a bit more to get consumables like cleaner and thinner and cleaning equipment. Add an Extra $100 for a half decent spray booth maybe.

If you have the space for the setup, it’s Definately worth trying. If it does t work for you, you should be able to sell o. A decent starter kit or not much mark down off what you bought it for.

Yes its easy to get into, but like all things, its just another tool in your bag to use. It takes time to get better with it, and learn the ropes, the ins and outs and all that jazz.

If you are just looking to use it to throw paint onto a model to get solid smooth base coats, yep that's a great way to start and learn how to use an air brush, and i would recommend it, it saves a LOT of time.

I cant speak for what ever OCD you are talking about, but like i said, its just a tool you can use, to perform given effects, looks, steps or really what ever, its up to you to find out and determine if how you use said airbrush is better.

This is my recommended package for "This is my first time buying an air brush what do it need?"
http://a.co/6LEOASF

This will have everything you need, minus paints, to get going with a quick detach airbrush, which trust me you want its nice.
Airbrushing is one of those things as well, you get what you pay for. you spend good money, you get a good brush. the Badger 105 is imo the best starter brush, its cheap, its very reliable, the .5 nozzles is great as a work horse and learning technique, you can upgrade to a .2 brush later.

As far as maintenance goes, they are super super easy to deal with. I have been using the same compressor and brush now for over 5 years, cleaning is super easy to do.
Just do these steps between paints:
1 Dump the pot
2 wipe the pot
3 rinse the pot with water into a garbage can
4 spray water through it
5 spray water into a papter towl to make it damp.
6 pull back on the needle and push the tip of the brush into the damp paper towel and pull the trigger (This is call back flowing)
7 dump the pot
8 repeat 3-7 until clear enough for a new paint

To store the brush when done painting. Just do the same exact steps, then do them again with rubbing alcohol and you are good, that's all i do for my brush and i have been using it now for over a year with out taking it apart.
Also never ever use wire brushes or anything metal to clean the brush, it damages it. just use those plastic stick things in the list i included.

You dont sound to "Amatureish" becasue everyone had to start somewhere with it. One tip i can give you though is shoot at around 17 PSI, and find the right mix of paint to thinner, what you use as thinner is your choice. I use a 1 part 90% rubbing alcohol, 9 parts distilled water.

As for your question regarding metalic parts, can you clarify that?

I was pretty petrified of buying and using an airbrush myself. The first thing I did was get a friend of mine to let me try his airbrush (on my models). He was able to 1) give me pointers, especially about how to thin, 2) walk me through maintenance/cleanup. That helped immensely.

Then, of course, it was off to YouTube to watch all manner of airbrushing tutorials and tips, which have also helped.

I bought a cheap Master airbrush (actually 2), so that if I messed something up in my learning phase, I could use the second, or (what happened) I was able to swap around parts to get the one working really well. Some will say getting a more expensive airbrush is better, but I didn't want to drop that much into a nice one and then mess it up.

I have since graduated to a Sotar 20/20 and Patriot 105 brush, and its no longer that intimidating. I do also still use the Masters brushes as well.

For doing basecoats, zenithal highlights, some detail work, and generally getting a nice even coating on large pieces (and single miniatures), I mostly only spray now with the airbrush. It has sped up my painting immensely. I'm also still continuing to learn.

Finally, I do woodworking, and already had an air compressor for my workshop, so I didn't have to purchase one for my airbrushing. I did eventually pick up a small, tankless (big mistake) compressor on super sale, and while it does the job and is really quiet, I prefer the big tank on my full size compressor. Again, the Masters airbrushes do come in "kits" with compressors for fairly cheap (but you also get what you pay for :-)

Hope that helps. Happy to provide additional info.

It gets easier the more you use it.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the OCD thing. If it means you'll want to do whatever you're doing flawlessly, then an airbrush may be a struggle because you'll be fighting to get a "perfect" result.

But if it lets you just spray a model quickly and be happy with the result even if it's not perfect, I guess it would be a good thing.

Generally being amateur with a hairy brush doesn't have a large impact on how you'll be with an airbrush, they're very different skills. There's a bit of overlap in how you thin the paints and the idea of multiple thin coats, but they're only similar in concept rather than application.

When I bought my first airbrush, it took me a few hours of practice before I was producing models I was reasonably happy with, but many more hours to refine. Basically start off being crap, pretty quickly get to the point of being decent, then a slow ascent to actually getting "good".

Whether an airbrush is good or not, meh, I think they've become a bit overrated. They're good for certain tasks and bad for other tasks, it depends what models you're painting and what effects you are trying to achieve as to whether they're actually worth it or not.

it is quite easy to use, but it is identical to a hairbrush aka, you need to learn how to paint with it by learning how do set it up and adjust it. a double action airbrush has alot of settings to play with and adjust.

But what "kills you" is the cleaning. you will be cleaning the brush more then you use it to paint with, cuz airbrush is a delicate tool and can only provide a solid result if it is clean.


AB will NOT be the salvation for your OCD ticks. For the scale that is beeing used in wargaming aka 6-28mm, AB even with a tiny nozzle is too inaccurate for sutch small work. It can do primer (main job it is used for) and maybe basecoat on some large areas on a 28mm fig, but that is where it completely stops. It will however do wonders on a vehicle whitin the 15mm to 28mm range or bigger, IF the user skills is on the level.

Have a land raider or a rhino? AB to the rescue. Have a gravtank or a wraithlord, AB to the rescue. Have a hammerhead or a monolith, AB to the rescue.

Where AB wont be of mutch help is if you have lots of small objects on a large model, sutch as bikes, walkers, heavy weapons. you can prime and basecoat, but that is all you will be able to do, and unless you use sub assembly, you are going to get paint where you do not want it, due to the small scale.
When it comes to accuracy of laying down paint on small figuriens, nothing can beat the hairbrush. For large models using AB, maskin tape or gum can help you out.

For you it seems you simply have to try it out for yourself, and in that regards, buy a pre owned double action AB complete with a compressor.



There is an alternative to a double action AB, BUT that alternative is exlusivly only ment for priming your models, NOTHING else, and it means you MUST have a paint booth as the paint dust cone is quite large. Sparmax Flyer: https://store.sparmaxair.com/products/flyer

It is a single action AB using detachable flasks to hold the paint, meaning basicly no cleaning is required, and it takes 16 sec to switch paint whitout any cleaning needed. They allso sell a very small compressor ment to be used with the flyer: https://store.sparmaxair.com/collections/compressors/products/beetle

Moust painters will prolly advice agasint the flyer, but it has its uses if you understand what it is ment to be doing. Downside is, it is all made of plastic and feels like a chinese super low quality product.

So thats actually a huge misconception, airbrushes are not hard to clean at all, and honestly takes only a minute or two, four or five if its really gunky.

I have been using my same patriot 105 for like 3 or 4 years now and only disassembled it a hand full of times, and it still will shoot just fine. You can fully clean and air brush ready for storage just by:
-Wiping the pot with a paper towel
-rinsing the pot out with water
-spraying the water into a paper towel.
-back flowing the water
-Dump and wipe with a paper towel.

repeat with rubbing alcohol until the water and or alcohol is clear in the pot after a back flow.

Takes all of like 2 min to do.

The other thing i did not see mentioned either is because of how an airbrush works, it lets you do a lot of fun tricks that have really fun results. Because it throws out basically little dots of paint, it makes things semi transparent unless you build it up. so you can mix and blend colors to get interesting effects. My personal favorite is doing tinting, and using GW contrast.

You can shoot GW contrast out of the pot and MAN, let me tell you, it gives you some crazy rich color saturation, its like if you just took your model and turned the saturation up to the max, and it makes thing POP.

To give you an example. this is a knight i did with an airbrush, the blue and yellow were exclusively done with an airbrush and tape. that rich blue is from shooting contrast over pale blues, this entire think from black primer to finish took me maybe.....idk, 2 hours?

Wow well that’s a big selling point. I dunno if I’d buy an airbrush mostly due to price. I was thinking of dropping maybe 150 usd total for an airbrush and tools.

I think I will use spray paints though.