MDSW wrote:Again, as I said, it depends on your preferences. If you made your living (as I did for about 15 years) with an airbrush and some of your brushes cost about $600 (this is back about 30 years ago) you have a very definite method.
Out of interest, what were you airbrushing professionally?
The subject and the substrate are going to have a big effect on technique.
1. Spraying with too low a pressure will splotch or spatter - definitely a no-no when doing cover art for Time magazine.
I know what you mean by splatter due to excessively low pressure, but it's a balancing act and you just have to find what works. I don't find splatter a problem until I get down around the 10PSI mark, but it depends on the paint. Every paint is different, I don't even just mean every brand, each paint is made of different pigments and they can behave differently, what works for one might not work for another.
I only go down to 10PSI for really fine work though, because the brush needs to be very close to the model and so pooling and blowing wet paint around is a real problem. When painting flat surfaces you can move your hand quicker to avoid pooling but on a miniature that is plastic and a complex 3D shape that's not always a possibility.
2. Sure - go ahead and shoot acrylics through your brush if you want, I have no issue with you doing it. I just will not through my good brushes and the habit just follows me even with my cheaper brushes. Lacquers are fine, too, since they flow fine and clean up nicely.
If you don't mind lacquers, have you tried Tamiya acrylics? They behave very much like lacquers, especially if you thin them with a lacquer thinner, (I thin them with Gunze self levelling lacquer thinner).
Also have you tried Vallejo's airbrush cleaner? It's actually quite gentle on airbrushes, gentle on the seals and leaves a slightly oily film that protects the brush while dissolving the paint. It's really not much harder to clean an acrylic out with a good cleaner than it is to clean out an enamel. As long as you clean them out as soon as you finish spraying and don't let the acrylic start to cure (where as enamels you can get away with waiting because even after several hours they'll break down very easily when you apply an appropriate solvent).
Vallejo's airbrush cleaner is gentler on airbrushes than your average lacquer thinner/cleaner. Stronger lacquer cleaners like you might buy from a hardware store can actually eat rubber seals so you need to be careful.
Those that say not using acrylics in your brush is terrible advice, go and do what you want - really makes no difference to me. I was simply giving my advice as a professional for many years. Take it or leave the advice, but never say any advice is terrible - that just shows your inability to see anyone's POV, except your own.
I'm sure the way you emphasized "NEVER" in your post drew the comments because the vast majority of miniature painters (some of whom produce incredible work) do airbrush acrylics. If you go over to scale modelling, you'll find a lot of older guys use enamels exclusively, but these days there's a lot of people in scale modelling as well that use acrylics. With the rise of Tamiya acrylics, Gunze acrylics and Vallejo's airbrush range of acrylics and acrylic airbrush accessories (thinner, cleaner, flow improver, etc) acrylic airbrushing has grown as well.
As I said I have quite a lot of enamels myself. When I started airbrushing, I started on acrylics because it's what I owned mostly. Then I started buying enamels on the recommendation of people at the hobby shop and I like them. But these days I just use whatever paint comes in the colour I want and acrylics are usually a bit more convenient (dry faster, less fumes, typically come in less obnoxious bottles, I'm usually hairy brush painting acrylics over the top anyway and so it's more convenient to use an airbrushed acrylic base)..
