Airbrush a must?

[JohnT]

One thing that's quite ironic is that, as I am a child of the 1960's I learned on a brush before the hobby really used airbrushes so I am always more comfortable with a hairy stick than an airbrush rather than the other way around.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

A cheap spray booth can be made from a kitchen extractor hood inverted and fitted with a melamine board surround, evacuating through the nearest wall/window. Mine cost £30 plus the cost of the board, which is dirt cheap. Might have to replace the hood soon, as it's getting on a bit (8+ years) and sounding like the bearings are going, but it has served me well, and I've not exploded due to the vapours getting into the motor. Afterall, they wouldn't put a source of ignition in a cooker hood that might be over a gas hob, would they?

Quite.

I popped out on Saturday to procure pictured items and knocked this together inside an hour. It works spectacularly well, if I do say so myself.

My day job is in the oil & gas industry, in early phases of project design. Whilst not my speciality, I do know that explosion hazards require what is known as a dimensioning cloud. This really means a cloud of flammable gas sufficient in size to be ignitable. Whilst not down-playing safety, the likelihood of generating a cloud of paint and thinners vapour in the extract duct sufficiently concentrated to explode is just not a practical concern. Consider it like fuel/air ratio required to burn in a combustion engine. Whilst one can smell thinners vapour, it's an incredibly lean mixture. People would be blowing their modelling rooms up left, right and centre lighting candles to stretch sprue the same evening as painting if it were a concern.

[Mike]

Nice booth James - I think someone did the maths once on the forum, and the concentrations were ridiculously high for it to be feasible. Me, I just sprayed some neat thinners into the booth and closed my eyes

[steelpillow]

It's horses for courses. An airbrush is great for large areas, a traditional brush for smaller detail. Everybody draws the line somewhere different.

I hardly ever use my airbrush now, except for high-gloss all-over coats. But mostly at 1:72 the finish needs to be off-gloss and I use the old craftsman's trick of thinning the paint and applying several coats, allowing it to dry each time, to build up the required amount of paint (next time you are in a fine art museum, go stare at a Rembrandt for half an hour). That way, any brush marks fade into the general surface texture. The thinner and the more the coats, the less visible the brushmarks but the bigger the dust problem. Since you would have to do that with an airbrush anyway, nothing is lost.

On the other hand, some folks prefer to mask, mask, mask and airbrush their way to heaven on even quite small detail.

Edited August 7, 2016 by steelpillow

[Giorgio N]

Just a generic comment after having read of the posts in this thread: an airbrush is not something designed to quickly cover large areas with paint without leaving brush marks ! Of course an airbrush can do this but looking at an airbrush with this in mind means missing the true point of what an airbrush can do. If the main goal is to apply a thin layer of paint over a large area, then a cheap external mix spraygun may well be the best answer.

An airbrush is not simply a spray gun but it's a tool designed to lay very thin layers of paint with great control. Through the control of thinning ratio, pressure and width of the sprayed area, the airbrush allows the modeller to apply to a model a whole range of effects. Some are great at reproducing certain camouflage schemes (like the mottling and scribbling seen on WW2 Luftwaffe aircrafts or the spots seen on Italian aircrafts), others can reproduce the various effects of weathering on a finish, others can enhance shadows and highlights. A careful use of the airbrush allows to blend colours together, apply a patina, highlight panel lines or other areas of a model, all things that go well beyond the capabilities of a simpler spray gun.

Of course nobody is expecting a modeller to be able to do these things within a week of having bought an airbrush, but I believe that the full capabilities of this tool should be kept in mind from day one. Each modeller can choose if he/she wants to explore these, in any case there's no way to be able to do the same things with other tools

[ZitchDog]

So I took the plunge after 1 too many poorly finished brushed jobs. Just done my first camo colour on my p-40 and wow! I love it, did a bit of practice before hand and I am loving the result.

Only question I have, so far I have done the first colour free hand and only masked off certain parts. For the next colour am I best to do it free hand or mask off the pattern? So far I am pleased with the pattern and control and I don't fancy the possibility of having a step caused by masking the pattern, but at the same time I don't want to mess up the pattern?

Thanks

Dan

[Levin]

Only question I have, so far I have done the first colour free hand and only masked off certain parts. For the next colour am I best to do it free hand or mask off the pattern? So far I am pleased with the pattern and control and I don't fancy the possibility of having a step caused by masking the pattern, but at the same time I don't want to mess up the pattern?

Thanks

Dan

you can do both though I definitely would mask the pattern with blutac or something similar, in my opinion it gives a nice feathered edge whith no need of being unreasonably careful

(Thread on the forum: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/61996-how-do-you-do-the-cammo-technique-with-blu-tac/ )

Regards Levin

Edited August 27, 2016 by Levin

[ZitchDog]

Thanks Levin, think I will give the blu tac method a bash tomorrow. Really liking the feathered look it seems to achieve. Just wish now I had pre shaded my panel lines. But you live and learn!

[Giorgio N]

So I took the plunge after 1 too many poorly finished brushed jobs. Just done my first camo colour on my p-40 and wow! I love it, did a bit of practice before hand and I am loving the result.

Only question I have, so far I have done the first colour free hand and only masked off certain parts. For the next colour am I best to do it free hand or mask off the pattern? So far I am pleased with the pattern and control and I don't fancy the possibility of having a step caused by masking the pattern, but at the same time I don't want to mess up the pattern?

Thanks

Dan

The fact that you're already achieving some good free-hand patterns means that you have the right kind of talent, one more reason to consider the purchase of an airbrush as a good choice.

Masking or freehand depends on a number of things. Of course one is how good you are at a freehand pattern, you already seem to have achieved good results, with practice things will only get better.

Another thing to consider is the kind of camouflage: some have hard edges, others are feathered. For a feathered camo the blutack method is very good if you can't get the right overspray. For hard edges generally some form of masking is desirable. A ridge between paint coats can be avoided by spraying away from the mask (never spray against the mask, paint will accumulate there and create a ridge). Small ridges can also be eliminated with very fine sandpaper or a sanding stick (again, very, very fine).

[gunpowder17]

I am kind of starting over again. I want to go back to brush painting. I have used an airbrush for years but lack of space now and the feeling of making it a hobby again i want to go back to basics.I know that i used Tamiya paints constantly with the airbrush. What paints give the best brush finish. Humbrol Tamiya or the Revell aqua ones?

[little-cars]

Best thing to do is to buy a few and try them, we all paint differently, what you use to thin the paint with can affect how the paint behaves. 

 

Personally didn't like brush painting with Tamiya, preferred  the water based acrylics, Vallejo/AK interactive/Mig Ammo type of  acrylics.

 

Paul

[gunpowder17]

Thanks Paul. I was thinking Vallejo actually. I know they airbrush beautifully

[Greenshirt]

5 hours ago, gunpowder17 said:

Thanks Paul. I was thinking Vallejo actually. I know they airbrush beautifully

I'm finding Vallejo Model Color brushes quite nicely, but it needs to be prepped a bit. I mix 1-1 with Future to both thin and get it to retard/flow on the model surface. I mostly airbrush but occasionally need to brush a color. I've tried Vallejo retarder medium and it worked even better, but Future is cheap plus the surface is very smooth and hard. 

 

 

[Marvel Onkey]

I like the challenge of getting a good finish with a brush- but most of my modelling is done on the dining room table so an airbrush is impractical right now.

 

All I know about brush painting I learnt on this site.

 

Biggest tip for brush painting is thinning the paint with plenty of flow improver until it is the consistency of milk (I aim for semi-skimmed), then paint thin coats of paint, micro-meshing between coats.

 

Flow improver is the truth.

 

To minimise brush strokes- make a brush stroke, then do not go over it even if you miss a bit. I find it is the inadvertent second pass that makes the worst brush strokes, probably something to do with the fractionally dry paint of the first brush stroke sticking to the paintbrush.