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I bought an airbrush (HP Eclipse) and im now figuring out what else i need to get and by that i mean paints and thinners. I have always used GW paint with a brush so i dont have anything else to compare with.

I'm hoping to be able to use some of my older paints with the airbrush but i need to thin those down a lot i guess. Here is my first question;

What is easiest to use when i'm start out (thinning the paints)? I'm thinking of Vallejo Thinner but then again i don't really know much .
I'm not very comfortable with mixing window cleaner with god knows what. Something straight out of a bottle please.

Second question;
What do you use as a primer for your models, brand and color ?

Third question;
If i can't thin my older paints, what new brand of paints should i go for ?
I like the colors of GW and its easy for me to follow their guides so something that can be "translated" into GWs color charts would be awesome.
I bought a few bottles of the Citadel Air and transferred those to dropper bottles and i'm eager to try them out.

Is there anything else i need to consider ?

Welcome to Airbrushing!

Vallejo Thinner works great to start but it will get expensive in the mid-term. Do NOT thin your paints with Windex. When you get more comfy you can make your own thinning solution which will cost alot less in the long run.

2/3 Matte Medium
1/3 Distilled Water
One cap of flow-aid
One cap of Slow-Dry

Mix this into a big bottle and transfer some into a dropper bottle and work with that.

I use Vallejo white primer but you need to give it a day or so to properly cure and minimize the risks of chipping.

New brand of paint?

That's a tough one. It really depends on the colors you need.

Minitaire is great bang for your buck as one of the cheapest brand / ml. It was made to be used straight into the airbrush with no thinning. (Still recommend a little bit of thinner but sometimes I just spray with no problem.)

Vallejo Air has some great metallics and colors.

P3's consistency makes it easy to work with.

I have not tried the Citadel Air or the FW Air series yet.

Cliffisen wrote:
I bought an airbrush (HP Eclipse) and im now figuring out what else i need to get and by that i mean paints and thinners. I have always used GW paint with a brush so i dont have anything else to compare with.

I'm hoping to be able to use some of my older paints with the airbrush but i need to thin those down a lot i guess. Here is my first question;

What is easiest to use when i'm start out (thinning the paints)? I'm thinking of Vallejo Thinner but then again i don't really know much .
I'm not very comfortable with mixing window cleaner with god knows what. Something straight out of a bottle please.

Second question;
What do you use as a primer for your models, brand and color ?

Third question;
If i can't thin my older paints, what new brand of paints should i go for ?
I like the colors of GW and its easy for me to follow their guides so something that can be "translated" into GWs color charts would be awesome.
I bought a few bottles of the Citadel Air and transferred those to dropper bottles and i'm eager to try them out.

Is there anything else i need to consider ?

Good choice in brush. I had used mine for six years of commission work. It is a workhorse.

For thinning, I use exclusively Liquitex Airbrush Medium. I eyeball my mixes, but you can just use droppers and tinker with ratios. 2:1 Thinneraint to start, maybe? Works with all paints well, including P3 and Citadel. Though I prefer Vallejo to anything else, especially Air series.

I use Vallejo Primer (Blk, White, and Gray) and apply with my airbrush.

I use Medea cleaner for during use and Simple Green for a soak after. Keep the brush clean and don't pull the needle to clean, push it out the front.

Good luck and enjoy! Airbrushing is a very useful skillset to have.

Get some demineralised water (battery water wherever cheap car parts are had), good to have when cleaning, can be used for thinning.

GW Air paints are pretty good, I use them simply because they're easy to get and I already know exactly which colours I need.

As for primer, I use Vallejo's brush-on primers and run it through my airbrush with either a 0.3 or 0.4 needle.

Remember that airbrushes atomise paint, to avoid breathing in the particles and getting them in your lungs, get a mask. A spray booth is necessary if you want to safely use your airbrush if other people or pets will be in the room when you spray.


Also; if you don't already have this, get a nozzle reamer and some airbrush lube. Interdental brushes are also recommended rather than the wire brushes, although keeping a set of wire brushes around isn't a bad idea either.

I'll second the recommendation for Badger Minitaire paint. It's great stuff.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:
For thinning, I use exclusively Liquitex Airbrush Medium. I eyeball my mixes, but you can just use droppers and tinker with ratios. 2:1 Thinneraint to start, maybe? Works with all paints well, including P3 and Citadel. Though I prefer Vallejo to anything else, especially Air series.

That thin, eh? Very new to airbrushing myself, have been using P3 + Airbrush Medium but having a lot of problems with clogging. Makes sense I guess, as I've gone nowhere near 2:1

- Salvage

I usually go 2:1 the other way, it all depends on the paint though

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:
For thinning, I use exclusively Liquitex Airbrush Medium. I eyeball my mixes, but you can just use droppers and tinker with ratios. 2:1 Thinneraint to start, maybe? Works with all paints well, including P3 and Citadel. Though I prefer Vallejo to anything else, especially Air series.

That thin, eh? Very new to airbrushing myself, have been using P3 + Airbrush Medium but having a lot of problems with clogging. Makes sense I guess, as I've gone nowhere near 2:1

- Salvage

Paint brand is a big factor. Vallejo Air, I barely thin, if at all. P3, I thin a lot. But I do go thin and many with paint.

Thank you all for your input and advice !

I learned a lot and basically i should thin the paint around 2-3 part mark. I guess i get the feel for it eventually.

Many (not just here) do say they have issues with clogging, specially with citadell paints. Do anyone use retarder!? (the thing that makes the paint not dry so fast) together with a thinner ?

Apparently my google-fu skills suck. Anyone know if there is a new paint conversion chart out for Vallejo air vs citadell ?
I only find old one, from 2010 and such.

I use flo-aide and stop-dri

The rule of thumb, which some people hate because it doesn't make sense to them, is that your paints should have the consistency of skim milk - ie., you can brush it against the side of something and most of it slides right off. THAT is what I generally aim for when mixing my paints

Cliffisen wrote:
What is easiest to use when i'm start out (thinning the paints)? I'm thinking of Vallejo Thinner but then again i don't really know much .
I'm not very comfortable with mixing window cleaner with god knows what. Something straight out of a bottle please.

Vallejo thinner works well with Citadel and Vallejo paints.

Second question;
What do you use as a primer for your models, brand and color ?

I use Gunze lacquer based primer. Most people are going to recommend Vallejo's primer but I don't particularly like it. I don't find it very tough, it takes a long time to cure after spraying it and in general I don't like spraying it.

The problem with using a lacquer based primer is that lacquer paints stink (but the upside is they don't stink for long, they cure very fast and the bad smell is short lived) and they require lacquer thinners for thinning and cleaning up. The upside is they spray very smoothly, are tough, cure fast (so can be handled soon after spraying, can be overcoated with another paint pretty much immediately and they can be masked within minutes of spraying and so on), they're sandable (not something you usually care about on wargaming models) and with a self levelling thinner like Gunze's self levelling thinner they go down super smooth.

Whether you think it's worth the extra effort of using it is up to you I guess. I own a bunch of lacquer paints so it's no big deal for me to use a lacquer primer.

Oh, and make sure your airbrush has seals that can deal with lacquer thinner. The Gunze thinner isn't too bad, but for clean up I just use hardware store lacquer thinner which is harsh on some rubber seals. Teflon seals are fine.

Third question;
If i can't thin my older paints, what new brand of paints should i go for ?
I like the colors of GW and its easy for me to follow their guides so something that can be "translated" into GWs color charts would be awesome.
I bought a few bottles of the Citadel Air and transferred those to dropper bottles and i'm eager to try them out.

I spray with pretty much anything. Citadel, Vallejo, Reaper, P3, Humbrol acrylic, Humbrol enamel, Testors enamel, Tamiya acrylic, Gunze acrylic, Gunze lacquer, probably some others I'm forgetting.

You just need to get a hang of thinning and then you can spray with damned near anything, though different brands obviously have pros and cons. Reaper is super matte which I don't really like, enamels stink but tend to go on smoother than acrylics, lacquers are fast drying and smooth but you don't want to be breathing in the fumes and aren't great for hairy-brush painting. At this point my favourite paints are probable Gunze lacquers, Gunze acrylics and Tamiya acrylics thinned with Gunze's self levelling thinner. They are tough, they go on smooth over a wide range of thinning (as in it's harder to over or under thin them, basically have a larger window for errors), they stand up to masking pretty much immediately after spraying (I can even use the cheap supermarket masking tapes that would destroy the likes of Vallejo or Citadel paint), they dry fast and in general I find them nicer to spray.

But I wouldn't necessarily recommend them to a newbie, depends if you're willing to put up with the idiosyncrasies of them. I would recommend just getting a few (not lots) of an airbrush paint like Vallejo air (I don't know about citadel air because I've never tried them, but they might be just as good). Practice with them and you'll get a feel for the correct consistency. Once you've figured out the correct consistency it'll be easier to branch out in to spraying with paints that aren't specific airbrush paints.

Some people love having airbrush specific paints. Personally I don't really care, I can thin any paint to what I need, so I just look for the colour I want first and then worry about whether it's an airbrush specific paint afterwards. The only exception to that is when I'm spraying very large surfaces where it's critical the paint has a smooth and consistent finish, which for me is when I'm spraying historic aircraft or car models rather than miniatures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cliffisen wrote:Thank you all for your input and advice !

I learned a lot and basically i should thin the paint around 2-3 part mark. I guess i get the feel for it eventually.

Many (not just here) do say they have issues with clogging, specially with citadell paints. Do anyone use retarder!? (the thing that makes the paint not dry so fast) together with a thinner ?

Apparently my google-fu skills suck. Anyone know if there is a new paint conversion chart out for Vallejo air vs citadell ?
I only find old one, from 2010 and such.

I sometimes use a drying retarder. Gunze's self levelling thinner comes with a drying retarder already mixed in. Most the time I don't feel the need for drying retarder when using Vallejo thinner, only if it's a hot day (my painting room isn't air conditioned) I might consider putting in a bit of drying retarder.

Vallejo themselves might have an equivalency chart for their air paints to citadel paints. I'm at work at the moment so I can't easily check, but that might help guide your googling.

kb_lock wrote:The rule of thumb, which some people hate because it doesn't make sense to them, is that your paints should have the consistency of skim milk - ie., you can brush it against the side of something and most of it slides right off. THAT is what I generally aim for when mixing my paints

I'm one of the people who hate the use of skim milk as an analogy to paint thickness because it has a completely different surface energy so no matter how much you thin paint it'll never behave like skim milk If I put some milk in a cup and fiddle with it with my brush, I don't find it a useful measure of how thick paint should be. Also it varies from place to place. But obviously enough people like the analogy that it keeps getting used

The way I learned to get the right consistency is just to start with really thin paint, almost entirely thinner, then slowly thicken it up while playing with spraying distance and pressure. There is a useful guide with pictures on the internet somewhere but I can't find it at the moment.

kb_lock wrote:
I use flo-aide and stop-dri

The rule of thumb, which some people hate because it doesn't make sense to them, is that your paints should have the consistency of skim milk - ie., you can brush it against the side of something and most of it slides right off. THAT is what I generally aim for when mixing my paints

This. If you want to save some money, you can also used demineralized water instead of paint thinner. That's what I do if I want to thin down paints and it works like a charm.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

kb_lock wrote:The rule of thumb, which some people hate because it doesn't make sense to them, is that your paints should have the consistency of skim milk - ie., you can brush it against the side of something and most of it slides right off. THAT is what I generally aim for when mixing my paints

I'm one of the people who hate the use of skim milk as an analogy to paint thickness because it has a completely different surface energy so no matter how much you thin paint it'll never behave like skim milk If I put some milk in a cup and fiddle with it with my brush, I don't find it a useful measure of how thick paint should be. Also it varies from place to place. But obviously enough people like the analogy that it keeps getting used

You're right - I think it is more a visualisation aide. Skim milk will pretty much 100% fall off the edge of the cup and leave nothing there, properly thinned paint will leave a little colour. I've never actually tried using skim milk, and so that is why I think it makes sense to me

I don't use any flow-aid or retarder. I find with the Liquitex Airbrush Medium I don't really need anything extra, nor do I want extended working time with airbrushing. I want the layers to be thin and dry quickly so I can slowly build them up. Just my $.02.

Some good tips in here....keep 'em coming!

Use Vallejo model air, they have an extensive range and although you won't always get the exact Game Workshop colour you'll usually find something close enough. Once you become more proficient with an airbrush then start concocting your own mixes, by that time you will have learnt to control most of the variables that need to be mastered without also having to get your paint consistency correct.
When I first started with an airbrush I was making too many mistakes simple due to the paint not being mixed correct. And I didn't know at the time if it was my airbrush control being the problem.

Vallejo game color translates easily into GW colors, and their game air works nicely out of the bottle for airbrushing.

Citadel air, obviously, is a good choice for colors to align with, uh, citadel colors too

Vallejo primers are awesome. And personally, my preference is Vallejo thinner, though I have used a pretty wide variety of other products. If cost is an issue, liquitex airbrush medium works well and per mL is quite inexpensive.

kb_lock wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

kb_lock wrote:The rule of thumb, which some people hate because it doesn't make sense to them, is that your paints should have the consistency of skim milk - ie., you can brush it against the side of something and most of it slides right off. THAT is what I generally aim for when mixing my paints

I'm one of the people who hate the use of skim milk as an analogy to paint thickness because it has a completely different surface energy so no matter how much you thin paint it'll never behave like skim milk If I put some milk in a cup and fiddle with it with my brush, I don't find it a useful measure of how thick paint should be. Also it varies from place to place. But obviously enough people like the analogy that it keeps getting used

You're right - I think it is more a visualisation aide. Skim milk will pretty much 100% fall off the edge of the cup and leave nothing there, properly thinned paint will leave a little colour. I've never actually tried using skim milk, and so that is why I think it makes sense to me

Yeah true, it's probably more the way it looks on the walls of a cup. Actual viscosity wise skim milk to me seems way too thin to me, you'd get non stop pooling if you tried to match the viscosity, but then the surface energy is so different. I probably dislike the comparison between paint and milk because I've over thought it because a large part of my day job is analysing fluid flows.

em_en_oh_pee wrote:I don't use any flow-aid or retarder. I find with the Liquitex Airbrush Medium I don't really need anything extra, nor do I want extended working time with airbrushing. I want the layers to be thin and dry quickly so I can slowly build them up. Just my $.02.

I think flow aid and retarder is more of a specialty thing rather than an "always use" thing. High end spray booths are temperature and humidity controlled, most rooms us model painters spray in aren't. A good temperature for spraying vallejo and citadel paint thinned with vallejo AB thinner is probably 15-20C, if you're up around 25-30C then you'll start getting a grainy finish, start getting more clogs and find it harder to lay down a consistent coat. Adding a bit of drying retarder can help it. A lot of my problems in my early days of airbrushing came up simply because I bought my airbrush in summer and summer in Melbourne has such wildly varying temperatures that it seemed like I could never get the same result twice. Usually you don't add enough to affect how long before you can apply another layer, it's just to stop it drying in the air or before it's had a chance to level after hitting the surface. Gunze's self levelling thinner has a drying retarder in it, but you won't notice vs their regular thinner as far as overcoating time is concerned, where you notice it is that you get less tip dry and the paint sprays closer to satin rather than matte. If you're adding so much retarder that it's affecting how long before you can put down another coat then you're probably adding too much.

Aside from hot days, I use drying retarder with certain paints that are more annoying to spray. One of the main colors on my Space Wolves is Reaper's Midnight Blue, it's a horrible colour to spray because it is very prone to getting a grainy finish and inconsistent finish (when I say inconsistent finish I mean some areas are grainy, some areas are smooth or even glossy), a bit of drying retarder in with vallejo's thinner makes it a bit more manageable.

Some airbrush thinners do come with varying amounts of flow aids and drying retarders mixed in already though. Humbrol acrylic thinners have lots of drying retarder, to the point where you need to cut them with something else if you want to go extra thin, they certainly don't need more retarders added in. But then Humbrol acrylics themselves tend to dry very grainy (at least the few I've used), so it probably makes sense that their thinner has lots of retarder and flow aid in it as it's designed to match with their paints.

I never considered it before but perhaps Humbrol acrylic thinners would work well with Reaper paints, I'll have to try it next time.

There are a lot of good tips in this thread - but even more out there.

Do a search for airbrush and thinning paints - you will find literally hundreds of posts on it.

Now for some personal experience;
I have used just about everything to thin my paints in the past
Water, windex, alcohol, flow aid, airbrush medium, etc.

I can say, hands down, my personal favorite is actual aribrush medium - its amazing and worth every penny.

(some paints may be incompatible with some combos - a few paints react very poorly with alcohol for example).

What ever you do, try multiple things - see what works well.
Nothing replaces experience.