Any Articles or Books of interest I should read/pick up?
All the manufacturers have guides online and all the brushes come with instructions and suggestions too. Advice on cleaning and how to practice to gain better control etc.
Good sites for buying a kit? Is it Better even to buy a kit or piece it together?
Um, not so simple to answer, highly dependant on what you want out of your \"kit\". Depends what you want and what\'s available. You can get these cheap craft/nailbrush kits from Michaels that have a single action airbrush and a can of propellant for $30-40 CAD, but they\'re not much use, no better than spitting paint really.
Many stores will give you a discount if you buy an airbrush and compressor and accessories all in one go. I havent checked much other than the manufacturers sites online so I cant comment about them too much. What I\'d suggest you do is go to the Azteck and Badger sites or any other company that makes airbrushes and check out their selection. They\'ll have the best info on their products after all. Once you find something that suits you, call your local art store and see if they have it available or do a google search for local or online retailers.
How much is the whole start up going to run me?
Again, depends how much you want to spend. If you\'re going to use it more than once a year I highly recomend you get a compressor. Canned air is only cheaper for the first couple cans then it gets expensive real quick. Depending what else you might want to do with your airbrush will dictate what type of compressor you\'d want to get. You need a \"working\" or \"running\" PSI of around 30 for the thinner types of paints you\'ll be using on miniatures. If you want to use automotive paint you\'d want around 60-80? Also the amount of time you\'ll use it will matter as well. The lower end compressors can have a running PSI of 15-20 and are listed as for light work, some have warnings to not run the compressor for more than 30 minutes to an hour type thing. Just something to keep in mind and be aware of when you look through your options.
You dont need a compressor that\'s designed for airbrushing. But you will need to make sure whatever type you get has a moisture trap, if you go for one without a trap, you can buy them anywhere you can get airbrushes from and most places you get compressors from. The other thing you need is a pressure gauge and regulator, so that you can monitor and control the flow of air. You can get those large tank compressors that contractors use for air tools for example and if you let one of those blow full boar through your airbrush I\'d imagine it would break something if you couldnt tone down the pressure. A friend in highschool had a large tank compressor that was manually operated, as in he had to pump up the air pressure with a lever, it was stored in a big tank, when it was around 60 lbs he stopped and could use his airbrush for quite a while before needing to repump it up. Kinda neat, nice and cheap compared to some of the other compressors, might be too much extra work if you use your airbrush alot.
You\'re probably looking at a couple hundred dollars for an airbrush compressor or slightly less for a contractors compressor (but watch out for the gauges and water traps, if you have to buy those it quickly eats into your savings, trap is about $15-20 US) and another $100-150 US for a decent dual action internal mix airbrush (you want a dual action, the lever controls airflow and paint flow). Most airbrushes will have various sized needles and nozzles/tips/heads to give you a wide variety of line width options.
Note that thicker paints need larger holes in the head of your airbrush to go through. Typically the brush will come with a medium setup which should be fine for priming and basecoating mini\'s and doing camo patterns on larger mini\'s. There\'s really no need or reason to go for an airbrush that does super fine lines or to get the needle/head setup for that as it\'s easier to paint the camo pattern on your Imperial Guardsmen with a paintbrush for the most part.
So I guess there\'s not much in way of specific answers or links but hopefully it\'ll help.
Cheers
