Stephanius wrote:If paint doesn't come out of your airbrush regardless of pressure, the paint is too thick. The paint is supposed to be very thin indeed. That is why people say skimmed milk as a likeness of the consistency of the paint.
One of these days I'm going to have to spray skim milk out of my
AB to figure out what the hell that means
Rabidmofo wrote:Frustrated.
Ive spent most of my weekend playing around with this.
It either goes on wet, and puddles, or tip drys and clogs my airbrush.
Is the window of right thickness so thin?
If you're trying to do fine detail work, the window is very small for getting the correct PSI and viscosity. If you're doing detail work, you have to get close and have no options there.
A good indicator of the correct viscosity is whether the paint puddles or splatters. This website has some images that might help:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~safc/airbrush1.htm Have some spare plastic around to test on. You can NOT do that test on paper/cardboard, as it is more absorbent than plastic so spraying paper/cardboard is more forgiving on having paint too thin. Ideally you can just have some random plastic sheet around, prime it and paint it alongside your models so you can test exactly what will happen on the model itself. I made the mistake earlier of thinking "I can paint perfect lines on this piece of cardboard why can't I do the same on the model!" until I realised it was because the cardboard was absorbing excess paint which the model wasn't
If you're not doing fine detail work, it's a lot easier. As if you get slight splatter, you can just crank up the pressure until you don't get splatter and then move the airbrush further away from the model. But if you're dead set on doing some really fine detail work, that's not an option and instead you have to thin the paint. Too thin and you get the spider webbing.
The other thing you have to learn is just getting the right amount of pull on the trigger. You might have the correct consistency but are pulling back too hard on the trigger, which introduces too much paint and you then end up with spider webbing. If the paint is nice and thin for fine detail work, you want to pull back on the trigger just far enough that a tiny dot of paint starts to form after a few seconds, that way you don't get the big blob which leads to spider webbing. If you are doing fine detail work, you will have to clean the tip very often and do a big spray often to clear the nozzle. If you watch videos like BuyPainted when he's doing fine detail work, you'll notice he does it without the cap, cleans the tip with his fingers every few passes, and sprays on his table occasionally to ensure the paint is flowing properly.
When I'm doing fine detail work with the
AB, I end up with more paint on my table than on the model as I'm constantly having to pull the trigger all the way back (while pointing at the table not the model!) to clear the nozzle and ensure the paint is flowing properly. You have to do it before it starts to clog badly, as once it's clogged it's very hard to clear sufficiently well to do fine detail work without pulling the whole
AB apart.
I'm still just learning myself, so this is what I'm figuring out as I go... some god of airbrushing could come along and tell me everything I'm saying is
BS,
lol.
For thinners, I really like Humbrol acrylic thinner for
GW paint. I use Vallejo thinner with Vallejo paint, but I find
GW paint separates from Vallejo thinner. Humbrol thinner, however, is well suited to
GW paint and won't separate from it. The thing you have to watch out with Humbrol thinner, it DOES have drying retarder in it already. So if you have a particularly thick paint and thin it done only with Humbrol thinner, you're effectively putting in a ton of drying retarder. I've had some models that took over an hour to dry after I sprayed them. So sometimes I use a mix of Humbrol thinner and water.
But that will help reduce tip dry as well. You could also try some drying retarder in whatever your current mix is to see if that helps.
EDIT: Made several edits,
lol.
