« Who's The Daddy! | HomePage | The Golden Years »
03/16/2006
Paints and Airbrushing
How do you mix paint for airbrushing, and what do you use?
I keep seeing this same question over and over on different modelling forums. It's a recurring theme, and though I'm no expert I'll tell you what I do.
The paint I use for all my modelling is MP Paints, from Gamecraft (I could'nt find a website for them but they are based in Liverpool and there address can be easily found on the net), I buy mine from D9 Models in Newport, South Wales.
I know others who swear by other brands like Tamiya, Vallerjo or Mr Colour, but I'm going to tell you what I do with MP, though I expect the formula would be the same for the rest too.
The actual paints come in nice screw top bottles with a huge variety which means I hardly do much mixing and use a lot of the paint straight from the bottle, they also have a range of inks. The bottles are great for reuseing to store your mixed colours in, though I find they last so long it's easy to run out of jars. Now I've spent hours looking for small inexpensive jars for keeping my mixes in, they do sell spare jars in hobby stores, but I found they are either the same cost as the paint or more expensive! This seems ridiculous to me, why would you pay the same price for a small jar empty as one full of paint? Incidentally, MP Paints are £1 a pot.
So after much searching the result I came up with was Sample Bottles, yes that's right, for doing samples in LOL, you can buy them in 10's, 20's and 30's on eBay for around £6-7. I think I got 30 for £12. This worked out at the cheapest bottle I could find (pictured at the top on the left).
Incidentally I keep one of those sample Bottles full of washing up liquid, when I've finished painting and cleaned my brush I dip the end in the liquid and it helps keep a nice tip to the brush as well as look after it.
OK, so for mixing for my airbrush it's pretty simple. I have a bottle of water that has boiled water (now cooled) in it, this I use for the mixing rather than straight from the tap. It's the equivalent of distilled water with impurities boiled out of it. I roughly mix 50-50 paint and water, though sometimes a little less water. You should get a pretty runny consistency, too this I add a couple of small drops of the washing up liquid to help break up surface tension. Some people sieve there mixes but I've never bothered.
What your aiming for in spraying is a nice fine spray, not watery that leaves droplets on the surface, but not too dry that your airbrush clogs up every few minutes. Also remember that your not going to get a clean finish in one spray, especially if it's a darker colour (lighter are more forgiving).
One tip is to have a bit of card next to you and before you spray the model, just put your finger down on the trigger whilst aimed at the card, but not back, any droplets on the tip will fly off onto the card rather than your model.
I keep a hairdryer next to my spraying area and when I've given it a light coat, I give it a blast of heat (you can usually see the paint drying very quickly) then re-coat. I might do this 3-7 times to get a nice flat finish.
I have put inks neat through the airbrush, but found this can be a bit hit and miss, with glossy finishes where you dont want them and sometimes the ink will not dry very well. I've also tried mixing ink and paint and water together, but again this can be hit and miss, so I "go for what I know" and now just use paint.
Well, I hope that helps some. As usual because this is'nt a definitive tutorial, and things may be different for your paints and airbrush, my advice is to head on over to The Clubhouse where you are almost gauranteed someone has the same set-up as you.
Good luck spraying!
10:31 Posted in Scale Models | Permalink | Email this
Trackbacks
The URL to Trackback this post is: http://modelcitizen.blogspirit.com/trackback/636316